Universal Music Group’s catalogue reached Ethiopian listeners through a local streaming app called Sewasew Multimedia in November 2023. That much every source agrees on. What none of them agree on, and what no document checked for this piece resolves, is which company actually signed the licence with Universal: Sewasew, or the Australian technology firm that was quietly running Sewasew’s back end the whole time.
On 20 November 2023, Universal Music Group put out a statement, carried in near-identical form by Music In Africa, Music Business Worldwide, CelebrityAccess and the Music Business Association, announcing what it called a “first of its kind” arrangement for the Ethiopian market. Sewasew Multimedia, the statement said, would “license and market” Universal’s catalogue in Ethiopia, covering the labels Def Jam, Interscope, Island, Motown and Republic alongside Universal’s African imprints, Def Jam Africa, Motown Gospel Africa and Republic Records Africa. Ulrik Cahn, Universal’s EVP for Africa, the Middle East and Asia, was quoted saying the company was “excited to partner with Sewasew Multimedia to bring UMG’s music to the Ethiopian market.” Sewasew’s managing director, identified in the coverage only as Abraham F., said the company was “thrilled to partner with UMG, the world leader in music-based entertainment.”
That is a licence, in the language every outlet used. A separate wire version of the same announcement, syndicated through allAfrica and credited to the Addis Standard, instead called it a “distribution agreement.” Afrobeats Wire could not fetch that wire copy directly to check its own byline, so it is cited here only for the discrepancy it shows: the people writing about this deal, including the two companies named in it, were not applying the word licence and the word distribution to two different things. They were using them for the same thing.
The company nobody named in the announcement#
Two days later, on 22 November 2023, a different company published its own account of the same arrangement. Tuned Global, a Sydney-based business-to-business streaming technology provider, posted to its own company blog that it had expanded its existing work with Sewasew: adding Universal’s catalogue to Sewasew’s app, and separately helping Sewasew launch a religious-music service called Betemezmur. Music Business Worldwide’s write-up of that post, published the following day, described Tuned Global as the firm supplying the “tailor-made streaming services” and “technological expertise” behind the move.
Tuned Global’s own post is careful about whose deal it is calling this. It says “Sewasew now has announced a deal with Universal Music group,” attributing the agreement to Sewasew, not to itself. But in the same breath it describes itself as the party that put Universal’s catalogue into Sewasew’s app. Neither Tuned Global’s post nor either Universal statement says whether Tuned Global was simply running pipes for a licence Sewasew held in its own name, or whether Universal’s content arrived in Ethiopia because Tuned Global already had rights to move it there and Sewasew was one of the apps Tuned Global served it to. No document checked distinguishes those two very different legal positions, and they matter: one makes Sewasew a direct Universal licensee with its own obligations and own exposure if it breaches the licence; the other makes Sewasew a sub-licensee, or simply a storefront, inside an arrangement it is not actually a party to.
Ten months later, a different contract surfaces#
On 11 September 2024, Music In Africa reported that Universal Music Group had renewed a licensing agreement with Tuned Global. This report does not mention Sewasew or Ethiopia once. It describes a global deal: Tuned Global’s clients, plural, gaining “integrated access” to Universal’s recorded catalogue, with Tuned Global’s managing director Con Raso quoted calling it “a consolidated route to market” and Universal’s SVP for digital strategy, James Healy, calling it a “new global licensing agreement” that folds Universal’s recorded-music licensing into Tuned Global’s technology stack.
This is the only document in this record that names an actual signatory standing opposite Universal Music Group, with named, on-record executives from both sides attached to it. It is also the only one that uses the word “renewed,” which means some version of this UMG-Tuned Global relationship existed before September 2024, which in turn means it may well have existed before the November 2023 Sewasew announcement too. Afrobeats Wire could not find any document dating that earlier agreement, confirming its scope, or stating outright that it is what carried Universal’s music onto Sewasew’s app in the first place. The sequence is suggestive. It is not proof.
What is established: Universal Music Group’s catalogue was made available on an Ethiopian streaming app in November 2023, under an arrangement every public source calls a licence or a distribution deal interchangeably, and the only company shown holding a direct, named, on-record licensing contract with Universal in this entire record is Tuned Global, the technology vendor, not Sewasew, the consumer-facing streaming brand whose name was in every headline.
What this means for artists#
For an Ethiopian or diaspora artist trying to work out where a Universal recording in their market actually sits, the headline company is not necessarily the company with the contract. Sewasew’s own public statements describe itself as a recording label in its own right, separate from this licensing arrangement: its head of music told an Ethiopian newspaper in 2023 that Sewasew signs and pays artists directly, spending as much as 250 million birr on one album. That business, Sewasew signing and releasing its own artists, is distinct from Sewasew carrying Universal’s international catalogue, and the two should not be assumed to run on the same terms, the same ownership or even the same corporate entity behind the app. An artist signed to Sewasew directly is dealing with Sewasew’s own label contract. An Ethiopian listener streaming a Universal release through the Sewasew app is, on the evidence here, more likely dealing with an arrangement that actually runs through Tuned Global’s technology and, per the September 2024 report, Tuned Global’s own licence with Universal.
The broader lesson generalises past this one app. When a major label’s catalogue appears on a market-specific African streaming platform, the announcement naming the local platform is not always the document that tells you who holds the rights. Increasingly, the company doing the actual licensing with a major is the backend technology vendor serving several such apps at once, and the local platform’s name is the one that makes the press release, not necessarily the one on the contract.
What could not be established: the date Universal and Tuned Global’s underlying global agreement first took effect; whether Sewasew holds any direct licence of its own with Universal Music Group, separate from whatever Tuned Global supplies; any financial terms for either the 2023 Sewasew announcement or the 2024 Tuned Global renewal; and the current status of Universal’s catalogue on Sewasew’s app as of this writing, which Afrobeats Wire could not independently confirm through the app or through either company’s newsroom.
