In the 2006 financial year the Mama Dance! Music Library of Cape Town signed a representation deal with a small company in Victoria, on Canada’s Pacific coast. No consideration was ever disclosed, and this desk has found none. What changed hands was not ownership. It was access. Mama Dance kept its rights, and DittyBase Technologies Inc. got to place that repertoire with licensees and keep between 20 and 50 per cent of every licence fee per production.
That split, the payment terms attached to it and the length of the contract are on the public record for one reason only. DittyBase was a reporting company with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, so once a year it had to describe its business to shareholders in writing. Mama Dance has never had to describe anything to anyone, and it never has. Three annual reports on Form 20-F, lodged in 2007, 2008 and 2009, are the only public account of how a Cape Town sync catalogue reached buyers abroad in that period.
What the filing actually says#
The disclosure naming the library is two sentences long. From the annual report for the year ended 31 December 2006, lodged on EDGAR on 16 July 2007: “Dittybase also signed 2 new music libraries Mama Dance! and Drama King. The Mama Dance! Music Library combines emerging artists that blend traditional South African music with modern electronica and rock genres.”
The commercial terms sit elsewhere in the same document, in the general description of how DittyBase contracted with its partner libraries: “The Company acts as an agent/distributor for 14 music libraries (partners) and distributes this music through its on line hub or portal. The Company expects to continue to derive revenue chiefly from the licensing of music by way of taking a percentage of license fees per production ranging from 20-50%. Payment terms are 60 days after the end of each quarter.”
On duration and exit: “Contract terms with partners are generally three years with a clause to automatically renew for a further three years unless notice is given by either party. Written notice by either party must be received within 90 days before expiration of the current period.” A material breach could be cured within 30 days.
The filing does not confirm that the Mama Dance contract followed that general pattern, and the contract itself has never been published.
There is a second money line pointing the other way, and it is never quantified: “Fee Structure for Music Libraries: Music libraries pay fees to the Company based on products or services provided.” Whether Mama Dance paid anything under that heading is not stated.
Agent, not owner, and the filing draws the line itself#
The most common error in writing about catalogue is to treat a distribution deal as a sale. Here the distinction does not have to be inferred, because the document makes it.
DittyBase listed “publishing acquisition” as a separate activity from distribution and defined it in a footnote: “‘publishing acquisition’ means acquiring music on which the Company would own a significant portion of the publishing rights. The Company would earn residual income every time a project that includes this music is aired or performed.” Partner libraries appear under agency and distribution. They do not appear under acquisition.
The economics confirm the split. For its own label, the Decibel Collective, DittyBase described “a 50/50 split of revenues for both synchronization fees and publishing royalties” with its musicians. That is a publishing arrangement with writers. The 20 to 50 per cent of licence fees is a commission on somebody else’s catalogue. Elsewhere the filing refers to “the publisher (owner) of the music” as a party other than itself.
So: DittyBase licensed and distributed. It did not own and it did not administer in the publishing sense. On this record Mama Dance retained its rights and rented out a shopfront.
The arithmetic nobody in the filings explains#
The partner library count runs 14 for 2006, 13 for 2007 and 16 for 2008. The 2007 report also records two new signings that year, Clemistry Music and Wax Labs. Fourteen plus two is sixteen, and the company reported thirteen. At least three partner relationships ended during 2007, and no filing names a single one of them.
This is why it cannot be said how long the Cape Town arrangement lasted. The 2006 paragraph naming Mama Dance is repeated word for word in the 2007 and 2008 filings, but it is repeated inside a standing three-year history section, which means its reappearance proves nothing about whether the relationship was still live. Whether Mama Dance was one of the three that left in 2007 could not be established.
Traffic also ran the other way, and the African counterparty is unnamed. The 2006 filing records that the Decibel Collective “entered into negotiations with 4 foreign distributers Japan, France, Australia and South Africa” and that “All foreign distributers were signed by the end of 2006”. A South African distributor was therefore appointed to carry Canadian production music into South Africa in the same year a South African library was appointing a Canadian agent to carry its music out. The filing does not say who it was.
The Universal line is about the label, not the library#
The same paragraph adds: “Mama Dance Records has quickly become one of the most successful labels in Capetown, distributed and marketed by Universal Records – SA.”
Two things have to be separated there. The sentence is about Mama Dance Records, a label, which the filing treats as distinct from the Mama Dance! Music Library in the very same breath. It makes no claim that Universal distributed the production music catalogue DittyBase was placing. And “Universal Records – SA” is not a company name of record: Universal Music Group’s South African operation is Universal Music (Pty) Ltd, trading as Universal Music South Africa.
Registry evidence corroborates a Universal connection, thinly, and three years earlier. A MusicBrainz release record for “Got to Have It” by the Cape Town pop singer Jerusha, released in South Africa on 10 March 2003 under barcode 7071245001872, carries two labels on the one release: Mama Dance Records and Universal Music South Africa. Neither has a catalogue number attached and the registry states no role for either. That establishes only that the two names appeared together on a release in 2003. MusicBrainz holds exactly one Mama Dance release in total, a useful measure of how much African catalogue is absent from the registries the industry treats as authoritative.
What happened to each side#
The agent is gone. DittyBase filed nothing after its annual report for 2008, lodged on 15 July 2009. It filed a notification of late filing in June 2010 and a final 6-K in May 2010. On 13 May 2015 the SEC revoked the registration of each class of its registered securities under Section 12(j) of the Exchange Act, by Exchange Act Release No. 74941, after an initial decision entered by default because the company filed no answer. Its last reported year showed a net loss of 449,461 Canadian dollars against cumulative revenues of roughly 500,000 dollars since the end of 2001.
The library is still here. Mama Dance now advertises more than 600,000 African and international tracks spanning Amapiano, Afrobeats, Gqom, house, hip hop, pop and rock, and describes itself as “the leading source of African production music”. Its team page lists Craig McGahey as founding partner and Jeff Moffatt, who joined in 2011, under the heading “The owners”. Its licensing and royalties administrator sits as a non-executive director on the SAMRO board and chairs Production Music SA.
What this means for artists#
Production music is the part of the business that pays quietly and never trends. If an advert, a drama, a channel ident or a YouTube series uses your track, somebody licensed it, and the terms of that licence decide whether you get paid once or keep getting paid.
Three practical things come out of this record.
First, representation is not sale. A library or an aggregator that places your music is taking a commission on income it generates. It is not buying your catalogue, and you should be able to point at the clause that says so. DittyBase itself kept those two activities in separate boxes in a document it signed for a securities regulator.
Second, read the renewal clause before the royalty rate. A three-year term that rolls into another three unless you give notice in a 90-day window is a six-year commitment with a short escape hatch. Rate matters less than how long you are locked in and how easy it is to leave.
Third, know who takes what along the chain. On this record the agent took 20 to 50 per cent of the licence fee before the library saw anything, and whatever the library then paid its composers came out of the remainder. Mama Dance today says it “shares all the income we receive with our composers” and refuses subscription models on the grounds that they buy out or dilute composer rights, but it publishes no split. It is a rights-managed library rather than a royalty-free one, so fees are charged per usage, or needle drop, calculated from the CAPASSO rate card. In a buy-out you are paid once and the user keeps using. In a rights-managed licence the next use is a new fee.
Twenty years on, the structural point has not changed much. Mama Dance licenses directly across Africa and refers clients outside Africa to partners in their own country. In 2006 the route out of Cape Town ran through a company quoted on the US over-the-counter market that was already carrying a shareholders’ deficiency of more than 1.2 million Canadian dollars, and the only reason anyone can read the terms today is that its securities regulator obliged it to write them down.
