MPAN Petitions NCC Over State of Music Publishing Business in Nigeria

The Music Publishers Association of Nigeria, (MPAN), through Olumide Mustapha its Chairman, has petitioned the Nigeria Copyright Commission over the state of the music publishing business in Nigeria.

This took place during the inaugural town hall meeting of the association recently held in Lagos, which sought to address the varying issues of publishing rights rocking the industry.

The theme ‘The Music Publishing Business in Nigeria – Regulations, Challenges and the Future’ was well tackled by the members of the panel at the meeting.

Each of the panelists, made up of MPAN members, gave an overview of the issues plaguing the music industry and they all agreed that the Copyright Society of Nigeria has not been transparent enough in some of its functions.

MPAN Chairman, Olumide Mustapha revealed that four sections of petitions will be submitted at the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) office and these petitions were presented during the meeting and signed by those in attendance.

“We presented four petitions to all the attendees and those petitions cover areas we’ll forward to the Copyright Commission. We are confident we’ll have a significant impact in the decision making of how to resolve this issue in the industry after meeting the commission,” he said.

The petition that reads in part says, “That the Nigerian Copyright Commission issues a directive to all collating societies in the music industry to allocate no less than 60% of gross royalties collected per annum for specific distribution for a period of three years after which a further directive shall be passed limiting general distribution to a maximum of 10 per cent of gross royalties collected per annum.”

Mustapha, with the aid of a detailed data analysis, explained that the avoidable loss of revenue was as a result of lack of industry knowledge and know-how around music publishing, adding that lack of data was responsible for the irregularities. He added that specific distribution of revenue is important.

The meeting was graced by music stakeholders and artistes including Programme Director Beat 99.9FM, Olisa Adibua, and Efe Omorogbe of Hypertek Digital, amongst others.