An Ethiopian digital distributor says it has struck direct partnerships with ASCAP, the US performing rights body, and Sentric Music, the UK publishing administrator, to carry international royalties home to Ethiopian songwriters and artists. We checked what both named organisations publish about themselves. Neither mentions Ethiopia. Neither mentions the distributor.
The claim comes from Dawit Solomon, chief executive of Geez Creative, an Addis Ababa-based digital music distributor, in an interview published by The Reporter on 31 October 2026. Geez Creative has run for eight months, Solomon told the paper, and close to 20 Ethiopian artists are now registered and receiving quarterly payouts. The company’s pitch is specific: direct partnerships with ASCAP and Sentric Music let it collect royalties Ethiopian music earns abroad and bring 80 per cent of what it collects back to the artist, after its international partners take their cut, on top of a one-time distribution fee Geez Creative does not disclose the size of.
That is the full extent of what is on the public record for this arrangement. One interview, one named executive, two named counterparties who have said nothing about it themselves. The full deal record is here.
What the two counterparties’ own materials say#
Sentric Music’s current website, sentric.com, makes no reference to Ethiopia, to Geez Creative, or to any African distributor. Its public roster and partner mentions stop at the UK and Europe. That does not prove no relationship exists: plenty of sub-publishing and administration deals never make it onto a homepage. It does mean the claim rests on Geez Creative’s account alone, not on anything Sentric has said about itself.
ASCAP is harder to check directly. Its own page listing affiliated foreign societies returned an access-denied response when this desk tried to fetch it, a common anti-automation measure rather than evidence of anything. So this record leans on how ASCAP’s international system is documented to work elsewhere. ASCAP’s international royalties flow through reciprocal agreements with sister performing rights organisations, the collecting societies that between them make up the CISAC network: ASCAP licenses a foreign society’s repertoire in the US and remits the proceeds back to that society, which pays its own members. Cross-checked against reciprocal-partner lists published by Canada’s SOCAN and Australia’s APRA AMCOS, that network includes recognised societies for Nigeria (MCSN), Ghana (COSGA or GHAMRO, depending on the list), Kenya (MCSK) and South Africa (SAMRO). None of the lists checked name an Ethiopian society. Ethiopia does not currently appear to have a CISAC-member collecting society at all.
If that is right, there is no existing pipe for the kind of “direct partnership” ASCAP typically signs, because that kind of partnership is a society-to-society reciprocal agreement, not a deal with a commercial distributor. Two things can still both be true without any contradiction: ASCAP does accept individual songwriters as direct members regardless of what country they live in, so an Ethiopian songwriter could join ASCAP personally, with no partnership and no Geez Creative required. Whether that is what is actually happening, dressed up in the interview as a company-to-company “partnership,” could not be established from the documents available. Neither could the alternative, that some institutional arrangement exists that neither party has chosen to publicise. We checked what we could reach and did not find a document that resolves it.
Who “Sentric Music” actually is matters here#
There is a second layer worth setting out, because it is the kind of thing an Ethiopian songwriter signing anything with “Sentric” in the name would want to know, and it has nothing to do with whether the Geez Creative claim is accurate.
The operating company, Sentric Music Limited (UK company number 05721428), is majority controlled by a separate holding company, Sentric Music Group Limited (number 12566815), which has held 75 per cent or more of its shares and voting rights since 27 May 2020. That much is stable. What sits above the holding company has not been. The UK’s persons-with-significant-control register for Sentric Music Group Limited shows three changes of controlling interest inside five years: BGF-linked shareholders held the controlling stake through 2022; Switzerland’s Utopia Music AG was notified as the controlling party on 4 May 2022; France’s Believe SA took over as the controlling party on 29 March 2023. Then, on 5 August 2025, Believe SA ceased to be recorded as a person with significant control, and the register has shown no party meeting the UK’s disclosure threshold since. As of this writing, the statutory record does not say who, if anyone, controls Sentric Music Group Limited.
That is not necessarily irregular. A company can genuinely have no single shareholder above the 25 per cent threshold, particularly after a sale into a wider, more dispersed structure. But it does mean that anyone who still thinks of “Sentric Music” as the independent UK publisher it was before 2022, or assumes it is still the Believe-owned business widely reported in 2023, is working from an out-of-date picture. The brand has not changed. What sits behind it, according to its own public filings, has moved three times and currently shows nobody in the seat.
What this means for artists#
A claimed partnership is not the same as a confirmed one, and the gap matters for anyone about to sign something. If you are an Ethiopian artist or songwriter considering Geez Creative, the honest position is that its royalty-collection pitch is currently backed by one interview and nothing from either named counterparty. That is not a reason to assume bad faith. It is a reason to ask Geez Creative directly for the paperwork, the name of the ASCAP or Sentric contact, and the actual agreement number or reference, before assuming your international royalties are already covered.
Ask which entity, not which brand, whenever a deal involves a UK or US rights company. “Sentric Music” is a trading name sitting on top of a holding structure that has changed hands three times since 2020 and currently discloses no controlling party at all. None of that necessarily affects an individual songwriter’s existing contract with the operating company, but it is exactly the kind of fact that is invisible from a press release and fully visible in a statutory filing, for free, to anyone who checks.
Direct ASCAP membership is open to individuals regardless of country. A songwriter does not need a local distributor’s permission or a “partnership” to join a performing rights organisation directly, where that option exists. Whether Geez Creative’s arrangement adds something beyond that, a genuine institutional bridge where none currently exists in the CISAC network for Ethiopia, is the single most important open question in this story, and it remains open.
What could not be established#
Whether Geez Creative has a documented agreement with ASCAP, with Sentric Music, with both, or with neither in the form described. The size of Geez Creative’s one-time distribution fee. Whether Ethiopia has any CISAC-member collecting society today; the absence from two reciprocal-partner lists is suggestive, not a definitive negative, and ASCAP’s own page could not be read directly to check. And who currently controls Sentric Music Group Limited, which its own UK filings do not currently say.
