Press kit

Everything here is free to quote and to reproduce. If you need something that is not on this page, write to press@kobyna.com and say what you are working on.

In one paragraph

Kobyna is a music streaming service built so that what a listener pays reaches the artists that listener actually plays, rather than a pool shared out by market share. It is in early access: listening is free, nothing is charged, and artists join by invitation. Kobyna is published by Kobyna Entertainment, a company being formed, founded by Christian Kakesa.

The name

Kobyna — ko-BY-na, rhyming with "China".

Kobyna takes its name from kobina, a Lingala verb meaning "to dance". Lingala is spoken in both Congos and is one of the languages of the service's first catalogue. The pronunciation is anglicised for an international audience; the word is not.

What is true today

Worth checking against, because a service in early access is easy to describe as more finished than it is.

• Listening is free, and nothing is charged. There is no subscription and no payment.
• Artists join by invitation, one at a time. Registration is not open.
• No artist has been paid. Kobyna is building a model in which a listener's payment follows the artists that listener played; the ledger that would measure it already runs, and the payments do not exist. Please do not write that Kobyna pays artists.
• A play counts after 30 seconds, once per track per day.
• Kobyna Entertainment is a company being formed. It has no registration number, registered office or VAT number to quote yet. The Legal Notice carries whatever is current.
• There are no listener or artist numbers to give. We would rather say that than round one up.

The logo

The files are the originals — plain paths, no text and no embedded fonts — so they can be set at any size. A publication that needs a raster can export one; a publication that needs to place the logo in a layout cannot work from a raster at all.

Single-colour versions are at the same paths with -white, -black, -ink or -sand in place of -gold, for a context where the brand colour cannot be used.

There is also a link-preview image, 1200 × 630.

Using it. Keep clear space around the logo of at least the height of the symbol's crest. Do not recolour it outside the variants above, do not stretch it, do not add effects, and do not set the wordmark in another typeface — it is drawn from DM Serif Display's own outlines and is never retyped. The symbol may be used on its own; the wordmark may not be rebuilt.

Screenshots

The player as it is, at 2× for print: the running service, signed out, with nothing mocked up or staged. Taken 24 September 2026 — the catalogue grows, so a shot may show fewer artists than the site does today. Ask if you need a current one.

There are deliberately no screenshots of My Listening or Your Audience, the two screens that show the idea best. Both are made of numbers, and this catalogue is small enough that any figure on them would be somebody's real listening or an invention. Neither belongs in a press photograph. If you want to see them, ask and we will walk you through the running service.

Colour and type

The symbol, if you are writing about the mark

The mark is a sphere with a crest and paired grooves. It draws on two traditions: the Kifwebe masks of the Songye and Luba peoples of the DR Congo, whose crest and parallel grooves follow the form of the face; and Aya, the fern of the Akan Adinkra symbols of Ghana, which stands for endurance and resourcefulness.

Contact

press@kobyna.com — please say what you are working on and by when.

For anything legal, legal@kobyna.com. For privacy and data questions, privacy@kobyna.com.

The About page has the same story written for a listener rather than for a newsroom.