BREAKING NEWS: Naira Rain On Entertainers As Copyright Levy Is Released To MCSN For Music Industry.

Dr. John Asein.

The Musical Copyright Society Nigeria Ltd/Gte (MCSN) is pleased to announce the receipt of the first tranche of the Copyright Levy under Section 89 of the Copyright Act 2022 in the sum of One Billion, Two Hundred and Five Million Nine Hundred and Fifty-Six Thousand, Five Hundred and Eighty Naira, Twenty Kobo (N1,205,956,580.20) for musical works and sound recordings.

The role played by the Honourable Minister of Finance and the Accountant General of the Federation are highly noted and greatly valued as this payment falls on all fours with the renewed hope agenda of the present government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, to make the creative industry a very viable sector in the Nigerian economy. 

According to the MCSN through information obtained by “News PlatformNG”, the copyright levy has been one of the legal provisions of Copyright Laws in Nigeria since 1988 but never implemented until President Bola Tinubu came into power.

The eventual disbursement of the fund will certainly reach the grassroots and every Nigerian creator, no matter where they are located, in order to begin to actually lift our poor musicians out of deep poverty.

MCSN says we are not unaware of the grumblings of certain interests fronting some Nigerian entities to continue with the unprofitable actions of more than 30 years to hold down the progress of the Nigerian music industry. They have been operating under various guises confusing the copyright system, thus preventing it to deliver the desired results to our creatives, particularly in the music industry.

The latest of such antics is the one being peddled by Record Labels Proprietors Initiative (RELPI), which is falsely campaigning that they represent sound recordings owners, without properly defining their status and interests.

For a start, sound recordings is a shared interest between record producers and performers (performing musicians) whose performances were recorded.  The rights in sound recordings are normally shared between the producers and performers, in certain territories at the ratio of 50% a-piece.

In Nigeria, most performers (performing musicians) whose performances were recorded in albums are direct members and assignors of MCSN, vis-à-vis many independent record producers and label owners.  These are the real owners of sound recordings in Nigeria.

Therefore, the Performing Employers’ Association of Nigeria (PMAN), which is the only legally recognised union/association of performing and employers of musicians (including recording producers and labels) has a subsisting agreement with MCSN with which MCSN represents the copyright interests of all performers and producers in Nigeria.

Every country determines how intellectual property, particularly copyright, is protected within their territories in line with relevant international bilateral and multilateral conventions and treaties.  Nigeria is not an exception as it has in place its law, the Copyright Act 2022, under which copyright in seven or eight categories of works/rights are protected within the Nigerian economy and market.

“News PlatformNG” learned that RELPI, based on their public statement and publication, consists of only 9 entities, namely Mavin Record, Chocolate City, Davido Music Worldwide (DMW), Premier Records, Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME), Warner Music Group (WMG), Digital Music Commerce & Exchange (DMCE) and Hypertek Digital.

These entities are mostly foreign-interest dominated who mostly operate within the collective management system in their various home countries.  The collective management systems in their various home countries, particularly UMG, WMG and SME, are operating very well with these entities as members either as publishers or producers.

Coming to Nigeria they are presenting the picture that nothing good works in Nigeria, without taking any step to support what the government is building through the MCSN, AVRS and REPRONIG; the three collective management organisations (CMOs) operating in Nigeria.  Lifting the veil a bit more, certain members of RELPI are agents or lawyers acting as agents of certain of these foreign entities, and as agents, they are merely fighting to protect and sustain their expected commissions.  In all, the activities and campaign of RELPI is for the foreign entities to take over the Nigerian creative market using the back door, through the cover of copyright ownership.  This most certainly is against the fundamental national interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.  It is also against the policy of the African Union, which is working towards making and establishing strong CMOs in its member-countries.

Virtually all of the entities in RELPI are members of CMOs, namely ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, PRS, SACEM, SAMRO all in the United States of America, United Kingdom, France, South Africa to mention a few.  In line with international norm and best practices, MCSN will administer the rights of ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, PRS, SACEM, SAMRO, etc in Nigeria and remit the appropriate royalties to them after deducting the appropriate taxes for the Nigerian government. This is one key area that the people in RELPI are apparently not considering. No Nigerian, not even RELPI can go to the USA, UK, Kenya or South Africa to dictate to the government of those countries on how they should run their copyright system.  Nigeria will not give room to this.

The Nigerian government in line with its obligation under the Berne Convention, Rome Convention and WIPO Copyright Treaty among others, enacted the Copyright Act 2022 under which MCSN was licensed and approved to collectively manage the rights in musical works and sound recordings, aside other separate organisations for other classes of works/rights.  Doing otherwise will most certainly leave the system in another round of chaos.

Every discerning Nigerian author, composer, publisher, performer and producer of music are aligned with MCSN for the collective administration of their copyright.  The collective management system is the only viable avenue through which the Nigerian Government can effectively administer and enforce copyright including the copyright levy scheme.  RELPI, on the other hand, has opted out of collective management system.  Can RELPI in all good conscience, now want to benefit from the same system it has opted out of?

We want to state that with the benefit of hindsight of more than 30 years, the current Copyright Act 2022 and its implementation by the Nigerian Copyright Commission and Federal Ministry of Justice, have brought sanity and progress to the copyright system, particularly in the collective management of copyright

This has effectively reduced, if not outrightly eliminated, the confusion that has bedevilled the music industry for more than three decades, particularly with regards to getting users of music and its related products to respect the right granted to musical works and sound recordings by law, by paying due royalties.

Since this is an issue deep in legal implications, we will limit our public reaction for now and concentrate on the works at hand.