In a small studio tucked away in Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria, a young singer named Amaka poured her soul into a melody she wrote after losing her father. The song, raw, emotional, and haunting, went viral within weeks. DJs spun it in clubs across the country. Radio stations played it on loop. TikTok creators used it as the background for heartfelt videos.
But Amaka wasn’t smiling. Months passed, and her bank account didn’t reflect the song’s success. The royalties were nowhere to be found. “People loved the song,” she said, “but I couldn’t even afford studio time to make my next one.”
This story isn’t unique to Amaka alone. Nigeria’s creative economy, rich with storytellers, singers, writers, filmmakers, and designers, has long battled a fundamental problem: creators not being compensated for their work. Even when their content becomes wildly popular, many artists don’t know how their rights are managed, who collects on their behalf, or what they’re truly owed.
Nigeria’s new Collective Management Regulations, 2025, aims to change this narrative by ensuring artists get paid their due.
This is the backdrop against which Nigeria’s Collective Management Regulation, 2025, was introduced. This new rule promise to turn the page on a troubled history of unpaid royalties and opaque collecting societies.
What’s the Problem?
For years, Collective Management Organisations (CMOs), were the middlemen between creators and users of creative works, have operated with little structure or oversight. In theory, these CMOs are meant to license works, collect royalties, and ensure artists get paid. In practice, many rights-holders were left in the dark no reports, no payments, and no recourse.
This lack of transparency, poor governance, and insufficient data management meant artists often walked away empty-handed while their intellectual property generated wealth for others.
What is the Collective Management Regulations, 2025?
Think of collective management organisations (CMOs) as the middlemen of the creative world. If a radio station, hotel, or bar plays your song or a cinema shows your movie, you as an individual artist can’t possibly chase every single user for fees. That’s where a CMO steps in, it licenses users, collects royalties, and pays creators on behalf of thousands of rightsholders.
In Nigeria, the prominent CMO in music was for years the Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), later joined by the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN). Unfortunately, this system, meant to protect artists, often became a source of frustration.
The Collective Management Regulation, 2025, effective from January 2025, is Nigeria’s answer to those frustrations. In simple terms, this regulation lays down rules for how CMOs must operate with transparency, accountability, and fairness. It replaced the older regulation (the 2007 CMO regulations) to reflect current realities. Here are some key things the new regulations do:
- Transparent Finances and Payouts: The law caps how much a CMO can spend on its operations, to prevent excessive overhead or executives from enriching themselves. If a CMO exceeds its allowed administrative expense limit, it and its officers can face sanctions. Every naira that a broadcaster or streaming service pays is meant to reach the rightful owners, minus onlythe minimal necessary costs.
- Mandatory Accountability and Complaints Process: The 2025 Regulations require that each CMO have clear procedures for handling complaints and disputes, and they must share these procedures with members on request. If a musician thinks they were short-changed or suspects foul play, the CMO is obligated to respond in writing and explain any decision within 30 days. Disputes between a CMO and an artist, or between two CMOs, can be referred to an independent Dispute Resolution Panel under the Copyright Actrather than lingering unresolved. This means creators have a channel to seek justice when something seems off, instead of being kept in the dark.
- Clear Governance and Oversight: The regulations go further to list certain “unethical practices” that are outright prohibited. For example, a CMO cannot collect money for works it isn’t authorised to manage, nor can it issue licenses for songs or films outside its repertoire. This prevents the scenario where a rogue organisation tries to grab royalties for everyone’s content without approval. Also, a CMO must not hide information needed for others to administer rights – no more secret repertoires or backdoor deals. These rules essentially force CMOs to stick to their lane and operate above board. The Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) the regulator, is empowered to keep a close eye on compliance. If a CMO breaks the rules, the NCC can issue warnings, fines, suspend the CMO’s license, or even disqualify its officers.
- Multiple CMOs and Competition: Unlike a monopoly scenario, Nigeria’s law does not mandate only one CMO. In fact, nothing stops multiple CMOs from operating, as long as each is approved by NCC. This imeans if one organisation isn’t serving creators well, there’s room for another to step in, and artists can choose who represents them. For a while Nigeria had two music CMOs (COSON and MCSN) competing until COSON’s troubles took it off the field. The new regulations implicitly support a healthy environment where more than one CMO can exist, provided they play by the rules. This potential for competition can push the societies to offer better service to members (no one wants to lose popular artists to a rival). However, the regulations also guard against pitfalls of multiple CMOs like double-dipping. For instance, a CMO must not induce a music user (say a TV station) to avoid getting a license from another CMO that legitimately manages certain songs.And if two CMOs have a representation agreement (one manages rights on behalf of another, perhaps for international catalogs), they must share information so that royalties are correctly distributed without overlap.
In essence, the 2025 Regulations aim to make collective management work for those it’s meant to serve: the creators. By enforcing transparency (open books, regular audits and reports), ensuring money flows where it should, and setting up ways to resolve grievances, the law seeks to rebuild trust.
Why Nigeria’s Creative Economy Needed This Reform
Nigeria’s creative industries are not just about glitz and glamour – they are a significant and growing piece of the economy. Music, film, and other creative arts provide livelihoods to millions and generate big money. To understand why royalty regulations matter so much, let’s look at some real-world numbers:
- Nigeria’s film industry, Nollywood, is the second most prolific globally and the largest in Africa, producing around 2,500 films annually. It also employs over one million people, making it one of Nigeria’s biggest job creators after agriculture. From directors to costume designers, millions depend on a system that ensures fair payment when their work is used.
- Nigeria’s music industry is a major driver of the economy, the beating heart of Africa’s music scene, giving the world Afrobeats superstars and countless hit songs. The industry’s growth has been explosive. Nigerian artists earned over ₦11 billion from Spotify alone in 2022. That year, streaming income jumped 74%, and artists earning over ₦5 million in royalties grew by 25%. Overall industry revenue rose 63% between 2021 and 2022. Despite this growth, without proper rights management, artists risk losing earnings to piracy and poor accountability.
- Beyond film and music, Nigeria’s creative economy includes fashion, art, and literature. In 2022, it contributed about $5.6 billion to GDP. That year, motion picture and music added ₦154 billion ( $198 million) alone. The sector accounted for roughly 2.3% of GDP and is projected to reach $14.8 billion by 2025, potentially adding 2.7 million more jobs. In recognition of its potential, the government established the Ministry of Art, Culture, and the Creative Economy in 2023.
All this data tells a clear story: the stakes are sky-high. When royalties don’t get to the right people, it’s not just an accounting error it’s lost income for families, lost tax revenue, and a threat to one of Nigeria’s brightest economic hopes. Conversely, if the system works properly, creators big and small can sustain their careers and reinvest in their craft, which drives more growth. The 2025 Regulations are essentially trying to plug leaks in a very large ship. And there have been plenty of leaks in the past.
What Went Wrong with Royalty Collection in Nigeria?
For years, many Nigerian artists weren’t getting paid their royalties. The issue wasn’t just technical it stemmed from how Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) were run: plagued by power struggles, lack of transparency, and alleged mismanagement.
COSON was for a long time Nigeria’s only licensed music CMO. MCSN, a rival group, spent years fighting for legal recognition and was eventually approved between 2017 and 2018. This ended COSON’s monopoly but sparked a turf war. COSON’s leadership faced allegations of financial mismanagement and failed to comply with NCC’s directives to hold board elections. The Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) revoked COSON’s license in 2018. Despite being suspended, COSON continued collecting royalties illegally. For a while, MCSN became the sole functioning CMO while COSON faced lawsuits and backlash.
Due to past failures, many creators became skeptical of CMOs. The NCC struggled to regulate effectively. The 2025 Regulations aim to fix this by requiring transparent governance, regular member involvement, and giving the NCC stronger powers to intervene early.
Why These Reforms are Important.
Behind every beat, every scene, every piece of art, there is a human story an artist who poured their soul into creating something. When those creators are consistently rewarded for their work, it fuels a virtuous cycle of creativity, economic growth, and cultural richness. Nigeria has no shortage of talent; by fixing the plumbing of how royalties flow, the country is effectively investing in its own creative future. The journey isn’t over with the passing of a regulation in fact, it’s just beginning a new chapter. But if artists, CMOs, users, and regulators all play their parts, we might finally see a Nigeria where the music not only plays but also truly pays, and where the slogan “the laborer deserves their wages” is an everyday reality in the creative industries. The stage is set; now it’s time for all stakeholders to perform.
Nigeria’s Collective Management Regulations, 2025 will represent a pivotal turning point for the nation’s creative sector implemented well. The regulations set the stage for a more transparent and just system: one where a hit song’s success translates into real earnings for the songwriter, where a filmmaker doesn’t lose sleep worrying if the CMO will ever pay up, and where users of creative content know exactly how to legally license and pay for what they use. Real-world data shows Nigeria’s creative economy is a sleeping giant now awakening and these rules are like the guide ropes to ensure it grows in a healthy, sustainable way.
