The BK–Weedhsame Brawl: Behind the Noise Lies a Broken Music Industry.
I. The Surface Spark: The BK–Weedhsame Feud
The viral brawl between the artists on social media is the talk of the day. Mr. BK, once a widely adored singer, could not quite find himself in the pulsating stages and thunderous applause after he returned from the solemn mosque sermons to the boisterous art scene, so he started kicking up dust and dirt at his prominent poet, describing Weedhsame’s lyrics as tasteless claptrap without his voice and distinctive melodic engineering. It was an interesting and rather refreshing break from the endless political talk to see the fans divided along the lines of BK and Weedhsame. Even the so-called artistic elite are now among the increasingly heated fighting line-ups. It happens at a time when there is still no intellectual-property law that clearly defines the blurred boundaries between the creative roles of lyricists, composers, vocalists, musicians, and the largely invisible audio and visual editors who toil quietly behind the scenes to produce the blaring playbacks through which fake-performing singers take the stage at the expense of those other creators.
Yet beneath the dust and dirt of this particular artistic quarrel lies a much larger and far more consequential question: when a song begins generating money, who actually gets paid?
That question is considerably more complicated than the spectacle of one singer standing before a microphone. A song may begin with a poet's words, acquire a composer's melody, pass through the voice of a vocalist, gather the work of instrumentalists and arrangers, and then undergo the painstaking intervention of producers, recording engineers, editors, and mastering technicians before it emerges as the polished recording that the public eventually hears. By the time the song reaches the audience, the creative labour that produced it may have passed through many hands, even though only one face may appear on the poster.
The distinction becomes sharper once the song begins to generate commercial value. A recording can earn money through streaming, sales, radio broadcasts, licensing, live performances, social-media exploitation, and other forms of commercial use. The money generated from these uses may pass through several layers of rights holders, platforms, distributors, and other intermediaries. The precise division depends on the platform, territory, contractual arrangements, and the particular rights involved. There is therefore no universal “70/30” rule under which every streaming service simply gives seventy per cent to creators and keeps thirty per cent for itself.
The deeper problem is that the public often hears a song as one indivisible thing when the law and the music business may see several different interests inside it. There is the composition—principally the lyrics and melody—and there is the master recording, the particular sound recording in which that composition has been performed, arranged, recorded, produced, and fixed. Those interests can belong to different contributors and can be subject to different forms of ownership or control. The person who wrote the words is not necessarily the person who owns the recording; the person who supplied the voice is not automatically the owner of the composition; and a producer may hold contractual interests in the recording without having written a single line of the song.
All of this tends to disappear beneath the glare of the stage.
The audience sees one singer, one microphone, and one performer standing beneath the lights. What it hears, however, may be the accumulated work of a lyricist, composer, musicians, arranger, backing-vocal performers, vocal producer, recording engineer, editor, mixer, mastering technician, and others whose names may never appear when the applause begins. The singer becomes the visible face of a much larger creative construction.
The microphone makes one person visible. The speakers make many people's work audible. The applause, however, usually follows the person the audience can see.
II. The Root Causes of Industry Vulnerability
That imbalance between the visible performer and the invisible creator also has a history. The Somali music industry was not born as today's fragmented private market. Under the socialist regime of Maxamed Siyaad Barre, a substantial part of musical and theatrical production operated through a state-controlled cultural system. Iconic groups such as Waaberi, Iftin, and Onkod, alongside other government-supported artistic institutions, were woven into a structure in which the state provided much of the organisational, financial, broadcasting, and performance infrastructure. Artists were often sustained through institutions rather than through the modern private chain of recording ownership, licensing, royalties, and commercial exploitation.
This was not a world without independent artists or private musical activity, nor did copyright as a legal concept simply vanish. But the economic organisation of music was fundamentally different. Creative production was heavily embedded in state institutions, and the relationship between individual creators and the commercial ownership of their works was far less developed than the private music economy that would emerge later.
Then the state collapsed, and with it much of the machinery that had organised the artistic world.
The music survived. The institutional scaffolding did not.
What followed was an uneven migration from state-organised cultural production towards a private and increasingly market-driven music economy. The salaried troupe gave way to the independent singer; the government-supported production structure gave way to private studios and producers; state broadcasting was joined by private media, cassettes, satellite television, social media, and digital platforms. The old institutional relationship between artist and state was gradually replaced by a looser and more commercially exposed relationship between artist, poet, producer, promoter, distributor, platform, and audience.
But the rights architecture did not grow at the same pace.
The industry became increasingly private before the rules governing private creative ownership, licensing, attribution, and revenue-sharing became equally clear and effective. The old system had disappeared, but no comparably coherent private system had fully taken its place. In the space between the two emerged a fragmented artistic society in which personal relationships, reputation, visibility, informal understandings, and bargaining power can sometimes carry more practical weight than clearly documented rights.
III. The Economic Consequence: Exploitation Through Invisibility
That historical gap is important because the modern song is no longer merely a performance. It is a commercial asset with a life of its own.
A poem can become a melody. A melody can become a recording. A recording can become a playback. A playback can become a stage performance. A performance can gather an audience, and an audience can generate money. At each turn, however, the creative contribution may belong to more than the person standing beneath the spotlight.
This is where disputes such as the BK–Weedhsame quarrel begin to reveal something larger than the quarrel itself. When the boundaries between poet, composer, vocalist, musician, producer, and recording technician remain unclear, an artistic disagreement can quickly acquire a second life as a dispute over ownership, recognition, privilege, and money. The more successful the song becomes, the more valuable those unresolved interests become.
The problem, therefore, is not simply that artists argue. Artists have always argued. The deeper problem is what happens when an industry moves from state-supported artistic production to private commercial exploitation without developing equally strong mechanisms for allocating the value created by collective artistic labour.
The playback stage makes that weakness particularly visible. Once a fully completed recording is placed behind a singer, the performer can occupy the entire stage while the labour embedded in the recording disappears behind the speakers. Visibility begins to cast a long shadow over authorship. The singer becomes the public face of a work whose creative identity may have been built by many others.
And when that work begins generating money, invisibility can become economic invisibility.
A lyricist may have created the words. A composer may have created the melody. Musicians may have supplied the instrumental performance. A producer may have shaped the sound. Engineers and editors may have transformed raw recordings into the finished product. Yet without clear arrangements concerning attribution, ownership, licensing, and remuneration, the person most visible to the audience may become the person most readily associated with the value of the entire work.
That is how artistic privilege can grow out of structural uncertainty.
The strongest bargaining position can begin to substitute for the strongest legal right. The most recognisable performer may command the audience, the stage, and the commercial relationship, while the less visible creator struggles to establish what portion of the work belongs to them and what economic benefit should follow from that contribution.
IV. The Pathway to Reform
This is why intellectual-property law matters. It is not merely a weapon against piracy. It is the institutional architecture through which creative labour is turned into recognisable economic interests. It should provide clarity concerning authorship, ownership, licensing, attribution, remuneration, performances and recordings, and remedies when recognised rights are infringed.
Where that architecture is incomplete or difficult to enforce, uncertainty travels from the law book into the studio, from the studio onto the stage, from the stage to the streaming account, and finally into the creator's pocket.
Until that supporting framework becomes sufficiently clear and effective, private contractual discipline becomes particularly important. Before the microphone is switched on, before the playback begins, before the song reaches the radio, and certainly before the first dollar—or shilling—begins to flow, collaborators need to establish their respective contributions and economic interests as clearly as possible.
A properly drafted agreement can record who wrote the lyrics, who composed the melody, who performed the music, who produced the recording, who owns or controls the master, how revenue will be divided, how attribution will be given, who may license the work, and what happens if the song unexpectedly becomes commercially successful.
Such questions may sound painfully unromantic in the middle of an artistic collaboration. But they are considerably less painful than answering them after the song has become a hit.
Without clear statutory protection and without clear, enforceable private agreements operating within such a framework, the completed song can become a kind of commercial orphan: everyone can hear it, everyone can enjoy it, someone can perform it, platforms can monetise it, audiences can applaud it, yet the people whose labour created its value may struggle to establish exactly what they are legally and economically entitled to receive.
That is where the absence of effective intellectual-property protection becomes more than a technical legal deficiency. It becomes a direct economic problem for the creative class.
V. Conclusion
And that is why the BK–Weedhsame quarrel is more interesting than a mere exchange of artistic insults.
And that is why the BK–Weedhsame quarrel is more interesting than a mere exchange of artistic insults.
Beneath the competing loyalties of fans, the social-media noise, the poetic jabs, and the arguments over whose artistic contribution carries the greater weight lies a much more enduring problem for the Somali music industry. The real difficulty is not simply deciding which artist deserves the louder applause. It is creating a system in which the different people who make a song possible can have their contributions properly recognised, their rights clearly defined, their names appropriately attached, and their economic interests fairly protected.
A commercially successful song may begin as a poem, acquire a melody, pass through a vocalist, gather instrumental performances, receive production and technical refinement, and eventually become a recording capable of generating income long after everyone has left the studio. Its commercial life may therefore extend far beyond the moment of creation, while the rights and economic interests arising from that creation may continue to matter for years.
That continuing economic life is precisely why informal assumptions are not enough. Popularity cannot substitute for ownership. Applause cannot substitute for attribution. A microphone cannot substitute for a contract. And commercial success cannot, by itself, determine who is legally entitled to the value generated by the work.
What is needed is a clear legal architecture capable of recognising creative contributions, defining corresponding rights, documenting ownership, regulating licensing, facilitating remuneration, and providing meaningful remedies when those rights are violated.
The microphone may belong to one person.
The spotlight may fall upon one performer.
The applause may erupt for one voice.
But the song may have been created by many hands.
And unless the law is capable of recognising those hands, the loudest voice may continue to receive the loudest applause—and the least visible creator may continue to receive the least protection.
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