‘Songwriters and publishers should be seeing a larger slice of the digital pie.’
MBW’s World Leaders is a regular series in which we turn the spotlight toward some of the most influential industry figures overseeing key international markets. In this feature, we speak to Spek, PopArabia Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Reservoir‘s Executive Vice President of International and Emerging Markets. World Leaders is supported by PPL.
Reservoir aims to be the largest holder of Arabic music copyrights in the world.
The New York-headquartered company’s founder and CEO, Golnar Khosrowshahi, outlined this ambitious plan on an earnings call last summer.
Khosrowshahi noted at the time that Reservoir had already struck a number of deals in the region. For example, in conjunction with MENA-based music publisher and music company PopArabia, it acquired Lebanese label and music publisher Voice of Beirut in September 2022.
In May 2022, Reservoir and PopArabia acquired Egyptian label 100COPIES and formed a joint venture with the company to sign and develop Egyptian talent.
And, in June last year, Reservoir and Poparabia acquired the catalog of, and struck a JV with, Saudi Arabia-based hip-hop label Mashrex.
Reservoir’s investment in the region arrives at a time of significant growth for the music industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Total recorded music revenues in MENA rose by 14.4% in 2023, according to IFPI (global revenues grew 10.2% YoY), with music streaming holding a 98.4% share of the music market in MENA last year.
Speaking with MBW for the latest edition of our World Leaders Series, PopArabia Founder and CEO Spek (Hussain Yoosuf), who also acts as Executive Vice President of International and Emerging Markets at Reservoir, reiterates the company’s ambition to own more Arabic music rights than any other company in the world.
“We are confident that’s achievable,” he tells us. The Abu Dhabi-based exec adds that over the past couple of years, Reservoir has “demonstrated the ability to create a strong deal flow pipeline, sourcing and actually closing deals”.
The company’s Arabic catalog of master and publishing rights now totals over 15,000 tracks, which, as Spek points out, already makes Reservoir “among the largest” holders of Arabic music content globally.
“At a broader level, we believe we can grow into a market dominant position as an indie in the region,” he adds. “We are working toward this with every signing and acquisition.”
“At a broader level, we believe we can grow into a market dominant position as an indie in the region. “We are working toward this with every signing and acquisition.”
Spek
Reservoir signed a JV with PopArabia in 2020. As part of the deal, PopArabia assumed the role of sub-publisher for all of Reservoir’s copyrights in the region, including collecting and distributing royalties and licensing music for sync.
“By the time we announced the deal, I had already been at Reservoir for five years, leading Creative out of New York, so I had established a great relationship with Golnar Khosrowshahi and [Reservoir President & COO] Rell Lafargue,” Spek tells us.
“I had a pretty good understanding of how the company worked and how I could best use the resources at my disposal to help achieve our mutual strategic goals.”
That same year, PopArabia established music rights management organization ESMAA, claimed to be the first music rights management organization operating in the Gulf states.
Spek tells us that “ESMAA fills a void in the historical ecosystem”.
At launch, the org struck deals to represent the rights of global collecting societies including SOCAN (Canada) and the UK’s PRS For Music, and has since partnered with numerous publishers and CMOs to represent their catalogs.
Spek started his career in the music industry in the early 1990s as a rapper in Canadian hiphop group, Dream Warriors, which he joined when he was 17. He continued to make music until around 2005, when he got into publishing.
By then, he was living in London, and had been signed by Reservoir Managing Director/Global Strategic Liaison Annette Barrett in her previous role as Head of International at Warner Chappell Music.
He tells us that he “had made a life in the UK as a songwriter and artist”, but, in 2006, he decided to relocate from London to the Middle East, with the view to focus on emerging markets “out of a passion for the region”.
In 2011, he set up PopArabia. He explains that PopArabia “is and has always been about pop culture in the Middle East,” and having its “finger on the pulse of the region”.
He adds: “The first iteration of that was representing international publishing catalogs in the MENA region and capturing value through the licensing of music in a market where that didn’t really exist for stakeholders, both locally and globally.
“That has evolved into a full-blown indie label and publisher focused on signing regional talent with Reservoir, acquiring Arabic catalogs and signing frontline artists.”
Here, Spek outlines Reservoir and PopArabia’s MENA strategy and shares his insight about the region’s challenges and opportunities. He also tells us about trends he’s seeing globally as the executive in charge of Reservoir’s international and emerging markets strategy.
PopArabia signed a JV with Reservoir in 2020. Tell us about your goals going into the partnership, and the highlights of the partnership with Reservoir over the past few years?
Going into the partnership, we sought to establish a boots on the ground approach to music in the region utilizing Reservoir’s established global presence and infrastructure with PopArabia’s regional expertise in working with local creatives. We have celebrated a lot over the last few years, acquiring catalogs and signing deals including with iconic legends and pop music from the region spanning the past 50 years.
We signed Egypt’s Mohamad Ramadan to a publishing deal and acquired his independent publishing back catalog, and we recently signed a long-term publishing deal with Lebanese icon Nancy Ajram via her company In2musica.
“Going into the partnership, we sought to establish a boots on the ground approach to music in the region utilizing Reservoir’s established global presence and infrastructure with PopArabia’s regional expertise in working with local creatives.”
We also acquired numerous catalogs and signed Syrian/ Lebanese duo Bedouin Burger to our label; a band touring Europe, the US and Middle East that recently recorded a Tiny Desk episode for NPR. PopArabia this year is also the label partner throughout Asia, Africa and MENA for the Cricket World Cup, with a single featuring Sean Paul, Kes and other regional stars on remixes we helped make happen. Our PopArabia label also just released Champion, the newest album from hit Moroccan rapper 7Liwa, whom we also publish.
The album is absolutely crushing it: 15 tracks landed on Spotify Top 50 – Morrocco, with every song charting throughout North Africa, plus Douwi Douwi reached No.4 on the official IFPI North Africa chart and Kakashi reached No.5. This is our first major release on the label, and we’re excited to continue building from here. We also expect to continue to build the company’s publisher platform, while continuing to grow licensing in the region.
What are your predictions for the music business in the MENA region in the months and years to come?
We expect to see growth and more competition as the market opens up. The growth of paying subscribers over the course of the next five years will bring more money into the industry, which will drive further investment in the region.
“We expect to see growth and more competition as the market opens up.”
The market to service all this new indie content bursting out of the MENA countries is a bit patchy regionally, and there will be no shortage of businesses trying to fill that gap.
This will change how we define pop in new markets, as new, younger and locally-influenced genres rise to the top. Music royalties will continue to be a hot topic, particularly in the Gulf, and remain an area we expect to see major developments. That is something we are very well placed to deliver solutions on through our rights management entity, ESMAA.
What are the biggest challenges in the region?
There has not generally been a history of a functioning copyright infrastructure throughout the region for music stakeholders and that issue is at the heart of a lot of the challenges we face across the region.
Creators are not able to get paid consistently for their work. Without that fundamental business element, the other verticals don’t work, at least not as well. So supporting the building and development of that infrastructure is a big part of what we have done for 13 years and will continue to focus on for the future.
Where are the biggest opportunities for the global music business within the wider MENA region?
From a financial perspective – there is a huge upside to look forward to: continued growth of streaming, big/youthful populations who are well connected, markets opening up, etc. From a creative perspective I think the region has a lot to offer with music creators, innovators and pioneers of entirely new genres that connect the dots between the East and West.
“The musical output is rich and varied, so there’s a lot of room for investment.”
The musical output is rich and varied, so there’s a lot of room for investment. Exposing the West to that music is extremely exciting and beyond that, existing fans of that music are so widespread due in large part to the global diaspora.
According to the UN, about 20 million MENA citizens live abroad, which means there is a vast opportunity to export music coming out of MENA to fans who reside all around the world and can help introduce it to new markets.
PopArabia and Reservoir have been very active on the M&A front. Can you give us some insight into what you look for in the companies/ catalogs you acquire and can you share any info about deals you have in the pipeline?
Relationship building has been at the forefront of all our activity in the region. We have worked to build up a knowledgeable, experienced team on the ground through PopArabia with access to a global operation through Reservoir.
“We expect to continue to buy quality Arabic music from all eras and genres.”
So instead of doing business by proxy, we are in the territory and give creators the support they need and want directly. With regard to the types of deals we make, we have been primarily focused on acquisitions of music assets as opposed to service-based businesses, like some of the other companies seeking to establish or bolster a presence in the region.
I can’t share exactly what’s in the pipeline, but we expect to continue to buy quality Arabic music from all eras and genres, further establishing our label platform.
We have also invested in and will continue to invest in active songwriters/producers and artists, helping nurture their talents.
You also lead Reservoir’s international and emerging markets strategy. What trends are you seeing globally that you can tell us about?
What’s exciting is the sheer rise of indie music. That means something different in emerging markets. In India where Bollywood film music controlled and manufactured by studios dominated consumption for decades, we are seeing Bollywood market share ceding ground to indie music: hip hop, singer/ songwriter, new genres largely informed by the culture that produced it – is a pattern we are seeing throughout new markets.
Traditionally regional labels with scale never invested in anything that they deemed alternatives to the mainstream, but that alternative music is about to take over the mainstream in a way similar to how grunge or hip hop came to dominate pop culture in the West.
In 2020, PopArabia launched the music rights management organization ESMAA. Tell us about the organization’s work in the Gulf states so far and your ambitions for ESMAA in the long term.
As rights owners, we complained for years that there was no infrastructure in the Gulf states to license, collect or distribute performance royalties, and we recognized that the industry needed to coalesce around a licensing hub to simplify licensing regionally.
“Long-term, we hope to continue honing this ecosystem and creating a thriving licensing business that supports creators and consumers alike.”
So, we set about doing it ourselves with support from our partners at the Abu Dhabi Media Zone, twofour54. In order to deliver a solution to licensing in the market, first you need to represent global rights holders, have a system in place to identify and match data to distribute royalties, create a tariff structure that works in value and of course to educate much of the market.
Through the work we’ve put in and the foundation we have laid with ESMAA, that is all underway.
We have partnered with numerous publishers and CMOs to represent their catalogs – we represent PRS, SESAC, STIM, SOCAN and SoundExchange among others, helping us to provide an aggregated licensing solution in the market. We have developed the first comprehensive database of publishing and neighbouring rights for the Gulf, which includes data across musical genres and music from all geographies.
All that we have invested in building resources has bolstered our ability to license and distribute on global events like DubaiExpo, the World Cup etc. Long-term, we hope to continue honing this ecosystem and creating a thriving licensing business that supports creators and consumers alike.
If there was one thing you could change about the global music business what would it be and why?
There are a few areas that certainly have room for improvement. Songwriters and publishers should really be seeing a larger slice of the digital pie that reflects the value of the song in the equation.
“The world is expanding marketplaces for music in a way that is new – that’s all positive. What’s less positive is approaching those new markets with a bit of an imperialistic approach.”
David Israelite and the NMPA continually fight that fight on behalf of the industry in the U.S. At a bit more of a regional level, we get a lot of credit for being one of the early players in the regional scene – but now that the region is much more sought after, there is a pattern of global organizations seeking to wade in and push the local players out of the way.
The world is expanding marketplaces for music in a way that is new – that’s all positive. What’s less positive is approaching those new markets with a bit of an imperialistic approach.
It’s a great time for music overall, but to grasp the full opportunity will mean working with local players, taking a nuanced approach to market entry.
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