Deal sheet
- Status
- Announced 20 November 2023 in near-identical language across at least four trade outlets, all tracing to the same underlying statement; corroborated by Tuned Global's own company blog two days later. Not confirmed on Universal Music Group's own newsroom or on Universal Music Africa's site, searched and not found. A September 2024 Music In Africa report of UMG "renewing" a separate, global licensing agreement with Tuned Global, carrying on-record quotes from named executives at both companies, is the only document in this record that names an actual contracting party opposite UMG. No source resolves whether that global UMG-Tuned Global agreement is what put UMG's catalogue on Sewasew's app in 2023, or whether Sewasew separately holds its own licence from UMG.
- Parties
- Universal Music Group, Sewasew Multimedia
- Amount
- Not disclosed. No announcement or report names a fee, advance, revenue split or minimum guarantee.
- Rights covered
- Trade press and Universal Music Group's own quoted statement describe this as a licence: Sewasew Multimedia would "license and market" UMG's catalogue in Ethiopia, covering Def Jam, Interscope, Island, Motown, Republic and Virgin alongside UMG's African imprints. The Addis Standard/allAfrica wire text and a Music Business Association summary instead call it a "distribution agreement." No source states a term, a minimum spend or an exclusivity period, and no source identifies which entity is the actual signatory on a licence with UMG: Sewasew Multimedia, or Tuned Global, the Australian B2B streaming-technology firm that both delivered the catalogue into Sewasew's app and, ten months later, was separately reported renewing its own GLOBAL licensing agreement with UMG.
- Territory
- Ethiopia (per every rendering of the November 2023 announcement). The September 2024 UMG-Tuned Global renewal reported by Music In Africa is described as global, not Ethiopia-specific.
- Announced
- 2023-11-20
- Primary document
- Trade press
- Sources
- Trade press report, published 20 November 2023, naming Universal Music Group and Sewasew Multimedia, quoting UMG's Ulrik Cahn (EVP Africa, Middle East and Asia) and Sewasew managing director Abraham F., and describing the arrangement as a "first of its kind" licensing deal for Ethiopia covering Def Jam, Interscope, Island, Motown, Republic and Virgin · Second trade rendering of the same 20 November 2023 statement, naming the same labels and quoting the same two executives · Trade press report, 21-22 November 2023, on Tuned Global's expanded work with Sewasew, describing Tuned Global as the B2B technology provider that added UMG's catalogue to Sewasew's app and helped launch its Betemezmur service · Tuned Global's own company blog, published 22 November 2023: a direct statement from a named party attributing the UMG deal to Sewasew ("Sewasew now has announced a deal with Universal Music group") while describing Tuned Global's own role as the technology that delivered the catalogue · Trade press report, 11 September 2024, on UMG renewing a separate GLOBAL licensing agreement directly with Tuned Global, quoting Tuned Global managing director Con Raso and UMG SVP James Healy; does not mention Sewasew or Ethiopia
Read this before citing: Every public description of this arrangement, including Universal Music Group's own quoted statement, uses licensing and distribution language interchangeably, and no document resolves which of the two applies, or names the actual signatory opposite UMG. Tuned Global's own blog post describes the deal as Sewasew's ("Sewasew now has announced a deal with Universal Music Group") while simultaneously presenting itself as the party that delivered UMG's catalogue into Sewasew's app, a description consistent with either reading: a bespoke Sewasew-UMG licence that Tuned Global merely carried technically, or UMG content already covered by a platform-level Tuned Global licence that Sewasew received as one of Tuned Global's client apps. The September 2024 report that UMG "renewed" a global licensing agreement with Tuned Global itself, carrying named, on-record executives from both companies, is the only document in this record naming an actual contracting party opposite UMG, and it does not mention Sewasew or Ethiopia. No source checked states a fee, a term, an exclusivity period or a minimum guarantee for any of these arrangements. No party's own newsroom (UMG's or Universal Music Africa's) carries an announcement of the Sewasew deal; every rendering traces to agency wire copy or trade-press coverage of a statement, and the earliest full copy located (Addis Standard, syndicated via allAfrica) could not be fetched directly to confirm its own byline.
