Warner Music Group Licenses Its Catalogue to Audiomack Across Africa, Then to 47 More Countries

Warner Music Group licenses its recorded music catalogue to Audiomack for streaming. It does not own the platform, does not hold equity in it, and has not acquired it. The two companies signed their first agreement in 2019, extended it to five African markets, Canada and Jamaica in November 2020, and expanded it again in February 2025 to 47 further countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Caribbean, Uganda and Zimbabwe. No party has disclosed what either side pays or earns under the arrangement.

What the documents establish

Warner Music Group’s own press release, dated 5 February 2025, states that the label and Audiomack “announced an expanded licensing agreement” adding 47 new countries to territories already covered, and that “the complete Audiomack catalog of WMG artists” for those markets was live on the service at announcement. Allan Coye, credited as EVP and Global Head of Recorded Music Business Development at Warner Music Group, is quoted calling Audiomack a partner that shares the label’s “vision for driving music discovery and amplifying emerging talent.” Audiomack’s chief marketing officer, David Ponte, is quoted describing the platform as having “evolved into a global streaming service in every sense of the word.”

A separate Warner press release, dated 11 November 2020, documents the earlier agreement that first brought Warner’s catalogue to African listeners on Audiomack, naming Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania alongside Canada and Jamaica. That release quotes Alfonso Perez Soto, then Warner’s EVP for Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, calling it “another important step in growing Warner Music’s presence in Africa,” and Audiomack co-founder and chief executive Dave Macli welcoming the chance to “bring the Warner Music catalog to Audiomack’s millions of listeners across Africa.” That 2020 release also states that Audiomack agreed to support Warner’s A&R research activity in the covered territories, a term neither company’s 2025 announcement repeats or explicitly extends.

Licence, not ownership

The distinction matters because Warner Music Group’s African activity spans several different legal relationships, and this is not the same kind as the others. Warner wholly owns the Johannesburg distributor Africori, acquired in February 2025. Warner’s subsidiary WEA International holds convertible loan positions in the Nigerian group Chocolate City, a stake this desk has separately reported as unsettled. Neither of those facts has anything to do with Audiomack. What Warner has done with Audiomack is grant a licence: permission for a named recorded music catalogue to be streamed on a named platform, in named territories, in exchange for terms that neither company has made public. Audiomack does not become a Warner subsidiary by carrying Warner’s catalogue, any more than a radio station becomes a record label by playing its songs. Ownership of the masters stays exactly where it sat before either agreement, inside Warner Music Group’s recorded music division and the individual label imprints beneath it.

It is also worth being precise about what Audiomack is. Unlike Boomplay or Mdundo, which operate primarily as licensed catalogue streaming services, Audiomack was built around direct artist uploads: any user can put a track on the platform without a label or a licensing deal standing behind it. That upload layer is unaffected by this agreement. An unsigned Nigerian artist uploading a track directly to Audiomack today is operating under a completely different arrangement, Audiomack’s standard user terms, than a Warner-signed artist whose Warner-distributed catalogue now streams there under this licence. Both kinds of music sit on the same app. Only one of them is covered by anything Warner Music Group and Audiomack have announced.

What isn’t established

Financial terms are not disclosed in either press release, and no other source checked for this record states a royalty rate, a minimum guarantee, an advance or a revenue split. Afrobeats Wire is not aware of any regulatory filing, since Audiomack is privately held and has not registered debt or equity with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and a full-text search of Warner Music Group’s own SEC filings turned up no mention of Audiomack by name. Whether Audiomack’s 2020 commitment to support Warner’s A&R research continues under the 2025 expansion could not be established from either release; it is stated in the 2020 document and simply absent from the 2025 one, which is not the same as confirmation that it lapsed.

Why this deal, and why now

Audiomack’s growth in Africa preceded this formal licensing relationship by years: the app built its audience on user uploads and unofficial mixtape culture before any major label agreed to license catalogue to it. Warner’s 2019 deal with Audiomack was, by Warner’s own account, the platform’s first agreement with any major label, at a point when Audiomack already claimed tens of millions of monthly listeners with particular strength in West and East Africa. The 2020 extension into five African countries formalised something the app’s usage patterns had already made true: Warner’s artists were being heard there regardless of whether Warner had licensed the catalogue for it. The 2025 expansion to 47 additional countries reads as the same logic applied globally, licensing catalogue into markets where Audiomack’s user base had already grown past the point where leaving it unlicensed made commercial sense for a major label with royalty obligations to its own artists and songwriters.

What this means for artists

If you are signed to a label or distributor whose catalogue runs through Warner Music Group, and your music streams on Audiomack in one of the countries this agreement covers, that stream is now licensed rather than informal, which is the mechanism by which it should generate royalties back through your normal label or distribution accounting, the same way a licensed stream on Spotify or Apple Music does. This agreement does not touch your masters, your publishing, or your contract with your own label. It changes the commercial status of one delivery pipe for a WMG-affiliated catalogue into one additional app.

If you are not signed to a Warner-affiliated label and you upload your own music directly to Audiomack, this deal has no bearing on you at all. Your relationship with the platform runs on Audiomack’s standard terms for user uploads, a separate arrangement that predates this agreement and sits outside it. The two systems, licensed major-label catalogue and direct artist upload, coexist on the same app without touching each other, and conflating “my music is on Audiomack” with “my music is covered by the Warner Music Group licensing deal” is exactly the kind of error this record is built to prevent.

Afrobeats Wire found no source disclosing financial terms for either the November 2020 or February 2025 agreement between Warner Music Group and Audiomack, and none establishing whether Audiomack’s 2020 commitment to support Warner’s A&R research continues under the 2025 expansion. A full-text search of Warner Music Group’s SEC filings found no mention of Audiomack. Warner Music Group and Audiomack are both tracked in Afrobeats Wire’s company directory.