Rayvanny left WCB Wasafi in July 2022 in a public split that the two sides have since priced almost a billion Tanzanian shillings apart: roughly KSh 50 million by the label manager’s account, roughly KSh 69 million by the artist’s own. Four months later he announced what he called his first distribution deal in the world, with a company whose name had already been printed on 44 of his previous 53 releases. The catalogue did not change hands in November 2022. On the evidence available, it had barely moved at all.
Six years, one name that kept reappearing#
Rayvanny, born Raymond Shaban Mwakyusa, signed to Diamond Platnumz’s WCB Wasafi in Dar es Salaam and released his debut single, “Kwetu,” in 2016. Apple Music’s catalogue metadata for his account, read live this week, carries a “Ziiki Media” phonogram credit on that single and on 44 of the 53 own-artist releases he put out in the six years before his exit. Only three releases in that period carry “WCB WASAFI” directly in the credit line: “Penzi” with Harmonize (27 April 2018), “Mwanza” featuring Diamond Platnumz (15 November 2018), and the Pitbull-featured remix of “Tetema” (9 August 2019, credited “WCB Wasafi/Powerhouse”). Deezer’s catalogue API, checked independently, returns the same “WCB WASAFI” label on “Mwanza” and the same “Ziiki Media” label on his later single “Nitongoze,” corroborating the Apple reading rather than merely repeating it.
One release in the run-up to the exit stands out. “Jenifer (Rimix),” dated 8 March 2022, already carries a “Next Level Music” credit, four months before Rayvanny’s public departure video. Next Level Music, his own label, had in fact launched in March 2021, more than a year earlier, with the artist Macvoice as its first signing. Whatever the July 2022 announcement changed, a label bearing his own name was not new, and neither, on this catalogue reading, was Ziiki Media’s presence on his music.
The buyout that two people priced differently#
The exit itself was not disputed. Rayvanny posted a video that July describing six years at WCB Wasafi and thanking Diamond Platnumz, who replied publicly, “NLM PRESIDENT! Let’s Gooooooo!” What is disputed, and remains unreconciled, is what the departure cost and what it bought him.
Six weeks after the exit, WCB Wasafi’s manager, Babu Tale, said in comments carried on 24 August 2022 that Rayvanny’s full back catalogue remained under the label’s control: “Catalogue zote zipo chini ya mikono ya Wasafi mbaka leo,” meaning all his catalogue stays in Wasafi’s hands to this day. Tale cited a termination clause of TSh 1 billion, about KSh 50 million, that Rayvanny would need to pay to fully buy out the remaining years of his contract and gain complete rights to his songs.
Five months after that, in a January 2023 social-media exchange with fellow ex-WCB artist Harmonize, Rayvanny gave a different number for what he had already paid: “In case you don’t know I paid Wasafi Tsh1.3 billion,” about KSh 69 million, a figure he offered specifically to contrast with the TSh 600 million Harmonize said he had paid to leave the same label. Neither figure is backed by a contract, a receipt or a company filing that this desk could obtain; both come directly from the parties, at different times, in the middle of separate public disputes. What the payment, in either amount, actually transferred, rights, a release from obligation, or both, is not stated by either speaker and could not be established from any document read for this record.
A “first” deal that had already been running#
On or about 1 November 2022, Rayvanny announced a new arrangement with Mziiki, the streaming brand of Ziiki Media, calling it, in his own words, “my first distribution deal in the world” with his new “family.” Trade coverage at the time described it as a multi-million deal giving him the ability to distribute, market and monetise his catalogue across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, without publishing a figure, a term length or a rights schedule. Diamond Platnumz welcomed him to the “Billionaire Club” in the comments. The full sourcing behind these figures is in the deal record.
Set against the catalogue data, the “first” framing does not hold up. A Ziiki Media phonogram credit runs through Rayvanny’s own-artist releases from his 2016 debut onward, through most of his years at WCB Wasafi, and continues on 29 of his 41 own-artist releases logged after the exit, right up to his most recent singles, “Touch” (14 August 2026) and “Rwanda,” featuring Kusslove (21 August 2026). If Ziiki Media administered or distributed his phonographic rights before November 2022, as the pre-exit credits suggest it did, then the announcement described the continuation of an existing relationship in the language of a new one. Next Level Music, meanwhile, has not displaced Ziiki Media as the dominant credit on his catalogue at any point, before the exit or after it.
Where the reporting runs out#
Several questions that matter to anyone trying to work out who controls Rayvanny’s masters cannot be answered from what is publicly available. No Tanzanian, Kenyan or South African company register could be checked in this run, so nothing here establishes who owns equity in Ziiki Media, in WCB Wasafi, or in Next Level Music itself; “founder” and “owner” are not the same claim, and this record does not make the second one. No document states whether the November 2022 Mziiki agreement formalised, replaced or simply continued whatever arrangement had put Ziiki Media’s name on Rayvanny’s releases since 2016. And no financial disclosure exists for either the WCB Wasafi buyout or the Mziiki deal beyond the two conflicting figures the artist and the label have each put in public, which this record treats as a live contradiction, not a settled fact.
What this means for artists#
The practical lesson sits underneath the headlines about billions of shillings and billionaire clubs. A phonogram credit, the small print that reads “Ziiki Media” or “WCB Wasafi” under a track title, is not a press release and it does not change to suit an announcement. It is closer to a receipt. Before believing that a new partner has just taken over your distribution, or that an old one has fully let go, check what the credit line on your own last five releases actually says, on more than one platform, and compare it with the date of whatever deal was announced. If the name on the credit was already there before the deal, the deal did not introduce that relationship, whatever the caption says.
It is also worth separating two different questions that get collapsed into one figure in disputes like this: what you pay to be released from a contract, and what you pay to own your masters outright. Rayvanny and his former label have each quoted a number, six weeks and five months apart, without either of them saying which of those two things the number was for. If you are negotiating an exit of your own, get that distinction written down before you pay anything, because a figure that settles one does not automatically settle the other, and a label that says your catalogue “stays in its hands” until a payment clears is telling you, plainly, which of the two it means.
Sourcing note: quotes attributed to Rayvanny, Babu Tale and Diamond Platnumz are taken from dated public reporting of remarks made on social accounts or on camera, cross-checked across Tanzanian and regional trade coverage. Catalogue and credit-line claims rest on Apple Music catalogue metadata and Deezer’s catalogue API, both read directly on 9 September 2026. No party was reached directly for comment.