Ibraah got out of his record deal in May 2025 without paying a shilling. He also left without his catalogue. The TSh 1 billion at the centre of the dispute was never a fine for leaving: on the label founder’s own account it was the contractual price of buying his master recordings outright. He did not pay it, so he did not get them. Sixteen months later the phonogram credit on every one of his releases from April 2020 to April 2025 still names the label. This is what a release from a contract looks like when it is not a buyback.
The Tanzanian singer Ibrahim Abdallah Nampunga, who records as Ibraah, was the first artist signed to Konde Music Worldwide, the label founded by Rajabu Abdul Kahali, the Bongo Flava star Harmonize. The signing was announced on Harmonize’s Instagram on 13 April 2020, weeks after Harmonize had extracted himself from Diamond Platnumz’s WCB Wasafi. Five years later the arrangement ended in public, in front of a government regulator, and the record of what actually changed hands is thinner than the volume of coverage suggests.
What the TSh 1 billion was actually for#
On 3 May 2025 Ibraah posted an appeal to his followers. He said his label boss was demanding one billion Tanzanian shillings, roughly USD 400,000, and that he had never earned a quarter of that in his career. He published a paybill number. “This issue of paying a billion is depriving me of sleep,” he wrote.
The response arrived in two incompatible parts. On 11 May, in an Instagram message widely quoted at the time, Harmonize told him: “Since you’ve decided to air this publicly, let the world know the truth, you owe the label, and you have to pay.” He added: “I don’t need you anymore.” Four days later, speaking on camera, he said the opposite: “I haven’t asked for that money.”
Both statements are on the record and neither has been withdrawn. What Harmonize added on 15 May is the single most useful sentence anyone in this dispute has said, because it describes the mechanism rather than the grievance. “The contract says for him to own the masters and make them his own for life and make him money, he needed to pay the amount stated in the contract.” Speaking a day later, he put it as a decision not to enforce: the agreement required payment for master recording rights, and he chose not to collect, because he did not want his own money to become the reason his name was damaged.
Read carefully, that is not a label waiving an exit penalty. It is a label declining to sell. Waiving a price does not transfer a catalogue; it just means nobody bought it.
The credit line proves it#
Apple Music’s catalogue metadata for Ibraah, read live this week, gives an unbroken line. Every lead-artist release from “Nimekubali” on 12 April 2020 through “Dharau” on 23 February 2024 carries the phonogram notice “℗ Konde Music Worldwide.” Deezer’s catalogue returns the same label on the same titles, with matching barcodes, which means two independent databases agree.
From mid 2024 the corporate name changes but the ownership does not. “Mchuchu,” “Tubariki,” “Nafunga Mwaka,” “Air Piano,” “Love Season” and “Copy & Paste” all read “℗ Harmonize Entertainment Limited, with exclusive license to ONErpm.” Harmonize Entertainment Limited is the same legal person that issued the suspension notice on 11 May 2025, acting, in its own words, through the Konde Gang Music Worldwide label. “Copy & Paste” came out on 25 April 2025, eight days before Ibraah went public.
Then the break. “Asante,” released 27 June 2025, six weeks after the exit, reads “℗ 2025 Ibraah, with exclusive license to ONErpm.” Everything since, including “Unga Mwana,” “Bei Chee!,” “Tumewazika” and the PM EP of April 2026, credits Ibraah in his own name. The line moved, cleanly and on a date. It moved only forward.
Sixteen months after the settlement, not one of the 2020 to 2025 recordings has been recredited. That is the finding. Labels are often slow to update retroactive metadata, so a single stale credit proves little. Twenty-odd releases across two platforms, unchanged well over a year after a publicly mediated separation, and consistent with what the label founder himself said the money was for, is not a metadata lag. It is the deal.
The distributor never changed sides#
One detail cuts against the framing of this as a clean break. ONErpm is the named exclusive licensee before and after. It licensed from Harmonize Entertainment Limited through April 2025, and it licenses from Ibraah from June 2025. The artist changed rights holder; the pipe to the streaming services stayed exactly where it was. Distribution and ownership are different relationships, and this case separates them unusually neatly.
There is a second wrinkle. Harmonize’s own releases do not carry his label’s name at all. From August 2024 through September 2026 his lead-artist credits read “℗ Ziiki Media,” the same company that appears in Warner Music’s 2021 partnership with WCB Wasafi, or “℗ Deep Strips Records.” The imprint that held its signed artists’ masters is not the imprint on the founder’s own records. And the one collaboration the two men have released since the split, “Friend Zone” on 17 October 2025, credits Ziiki Media, naming neither party’s company.
Where the reporting runs out#
A settlement term has circulated widely: that Harmonize takes 60 per cent of streaming revenue on joint recordings where he is the lead artist, with Ibraah taking 40, and the reverse on Ibraah’s own tracks. It appears in one report published on 23 May 2025, and this desk could not corroborate it in a second outlet, in Tanzanian press, or anywhere in the National Arts Council’s own publications. It is not established, and it is not recorded here as a term.
Nor is there a document. BASATA, the National Arts Council, summoned both men on 12 and 14 May 2025. Its head of legal, Christopher Kamugisha, was named at the time. Ibraah attended both sessions; Harmonize did not, sending a lawyer and later his management. The council’s own website carries a press releases section, a notices section, and published lists of banned artists and songs. It carries nothing at all about this dispute. Whether the outcome is a signed agreement, a mediated understanding or a unilateral waiver could not be established.
Three further gaps are worth stating plainly. Publishing was never mentioned by anyone: who owns or administers the compositions, and what the songwriter splits are, is simply absent from the public record, and this piece covers sound recordings only. The 2020 contract’s length, territory and royalty rate have never been published. And whether Konde Music Worldwide is a registered company or a trading name of Harmonize Entertainment Limited could not be checked, because Tanzania’s business register offers no public company search.
The billion was not new#
The figure did not appear for the first time in 2025. In August 2023 the artist Cheed, describing his own exit from the same operation, said his contract required an artist who terminated to pay the label TSh 1 billion, while a label that terminated owed the artist TSh 10 million. That is Cheed’s characterisation and no contract has been published, but it supports Harmonize’s position that the number was a standing clause, not one invented for Ibraah.
The symmetry with Harmonize’s own history is hard to miss. He has described his WCB Wasafi deal as a 10-year contract on a 60/40 split in Diamond Platnumz’s favour, with a TSh 500 million release clause paid in two instalments and a further TSh 100 million penalty on top, TSh 600 million in all. Reporting since has quoted both 500 million and 600 million, and both a 10-year and a 15-year term; the instalments-plus-penalty account is the only one that reconciles the figures, and it came from Harmonize himself. He paid to own his masters. His first signee did not.
What this means for artists#
The lesson here is not that exit fees are unfair. It is that an exit fee and a buyback price are often the same clause, and being let off one is not the same as being given the other.
If you are signing, find the clause that prices your masters and read it as a purchase option, because that is what it is. Ask what the number is, ask how it is calculated, and ask whether it falls over time as the label recoups. A fixed billion that never moves means the option is decorative. Ask separately what happens if you leave without exercising it, and get the answer in writing, because “you are free to go” and “you own your records” are two different sentences and only one of them is about property.
If you are leaving, get the outcome documented. A regulator convening a meeting is not the same as a regulator issuing a determination, and a founder saying kind words on Instagram is not an instrument of transfer. Ibraah won the thing he was fighting for, the right to work, and he won it quickly. But the settlement that freed him is not written down anywhere the public can see, and the catalogue he made across five years is still credited to somebody else. Check your own credit lines on Apple and Deezer after any separation. They will tell you what you actually agreed to, and they update on a schedule that has nothing to do with what either side said in the press.
Sourcing note: statements attributed to Harmonize and Ibraah are taken from dated public reporting of remarks each made on his own social accounts or on camera between 3 and 23 May 2025, cross-checked across Tanzanian and regional outlets. Ownership claims rest on Apple Music and Deezer catalogue metadata read on 9 September 2026. MusicBrainz holds one Ibraah release with no label attached and corroborates nothing. No party was reached directly for comment.
