The term “starving artist” could aptly describe many recording artists across Kenya and the greater East- African region. This is due, in part, to music piracy, a thriving business that continues to rob musicians of their expected earnings. According to Robert Sigei, legal counsel for the Kenya Copyright Board, piracy is an estimated KES 4 billion industry, one that stakeholders have fought hard to remedy but with very little success.

According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance 2006 Report on Kenya, 90 percent of all music consumed in Kenya is pirated material. The 2001 Copyright Act was supposed to usher in a new area of copyright protection by establishing the Kenya Copyright Board and implementing much stricter legislation. Another effort to combat piracy was the provision of subsidized anti-piracy security devices ,such as tamper-proof stickers and barcodes.

But none of these preventative measures has made as big an impact as the “Studio to Deck” program introduced by mobile technology company Cellulant. In 2004, Cellulant made its debut in Kenya’s Silicon Savannah as a mobile-technology company selling ringtones. This area of specialization leads to interaction with a vast array of artists, and the company quickly realized that there was a serious problem within the industry.

And Cellulant was ready to help provide a remedy. The company launched “Studio to Deck”. Just as the name suggests, the program takes music straight from the recording studio and into the hands of the audience, effectively nullifying middlemen in the industry’s sales chain. Cellulant achieves this by partnering with artists and giving them a selling platform, using their mobile technology and their payment system called Lipuka. Lee Maina, Senior Product Manager at Cellulant, explains: “When we first entered the market, we saw the artists’ struggle.

We saw that they we’re going to great pains to distribute their music to radio stations and matatus, but that they we’re making very little due to rampant piracy.” The way “Studio To Deck” works: Cellulant invites interested artists to sign partnership agreements. These musicians and performers then supply their music to Cellulant, which makes it available to the company’s customer database of over four million users. The artists make 10% of the gross revenue, which might not sound like a lot, but the power is in the numbers.

The potential consumer pool for “mobile music” continues to look promising. The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) pegs the number of mobile-phone subscribers at 26 million, and the GSM Association forecasts a mobile penetration of 735 million mobile phone subscribers across Africa by the end of 2012. The key to Cellulant’s success has been to make music affordable and easily accessible, and to offer a large variety of artists. Each download is KES 50, and the “Studio to Deck” program now boasts over 1,800 artists.

To date, Cellulant has partnered with some of the biggest names in the Kenyan music industry, such as Daddy Owen, Juacali, Ekodydda and Emmy Kosgey. Award-winning gospel music artist Emmy Kosgey agrees that traditional album sales are an outdated revenue stream for musicians and that everyone needs to adjust. “Cellulant pays artists. I would advise artists who are looking to make a living off their craft to diversify and look beyond album sales, because ‘pirates’ really make it hard for us in that area.

Look to music downloads and performances. Cellulant’s Lipuka service is a great place to start with regards to downloads,” she attests. Although Lee declined to divulge exact figures, all indicators point to hefty profits (Lipuka also has subscribers in countries as far as Mali). The service is helping artists get compensation for their work, as well as giving them a platform to interact with their fans.

“There’s a group of artists who earn up to KES 700,000 every quarter from downloads alone, so it’s a program that is very profitable [for] them. Our platform also allows artists to get feedback directly from their fans, which allows them to grow,” Lee expounds. This all bodes well for a promising future for an artist who wants to go from studio to deck, propelling themselves out of the “starving artist” category.