…N1.21bn Levy Dispute Exposes Divisions Among Rights Owners
…MCSN Fails To Provide Figures On Collections, Distributions
…House Probe Remains Without Published Findings
Nigeria’s music industry generated increasingly large sums from streaming in 2025, with Nigerian artists generating more than N60bn in royalties on Spotify alone.
But THE WHISTLER investigations revealed that while streaming revenue continues to grow, a separate pool of copyright money, N1.21bn collected under Nigeria’s Private Copy Levy had become the subject of a court battle after the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN) received it as the first tranche of the statutory levy.
The Federal High Court in Lagos subsequently restrained the disbursement or transfer of the disputed copyright-levy funds after the Record Label Proprietors’ Initiative (ReLPI) and 11 record labels and music companies challenged the arrangement.
As at the time of this report, the dispute remains unresolved, while questions persist over how much is collected through Nigeria’s collective royalty system, how much is distributed and how rights owners can verify what they are entitled to.
THE WHISTLER’s investigation, based on a review of court records, official copyright regulations, Spotify’s Loud & Clear reports, public disclosures by the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), and records and responses from Nigeria’s rival collective management organisations, found a music economy producing increasingly significant revenue alongside a royalty-collection system whose financial trail remains difficult for creators to independently follow.
The scale of Nigeria’s streaming economy has changed dramatically in just a few years.
Spotify reported that royalties generated by Nigerian artists on the platform rose from more than N11bn in 2022 to more than N25bn in 2023 and more than N58bn in 2024. In 2025, the figure crossed N60bn.
The increase from N11bn in 2022 to N25bn in 2023 represented about 127 per cent growth, while the rise from N25bn to N58bn in 2024 represented about 132 per cent growth.
The increase from N58bn in 2024 to more than N60bn in 2025 was comparatively modest at about 3.45 per cent when the reported figures are used.
The N60bn figure, however, should not be interpreted as N60bn deposited directly into the bank accounts of individual Nigerian artists.
Spotify’s royalty figures relate to the wider rights ecosystem through which music revenue is paid and shared. Depending on the ownership and contractual arrangements surrounding a recording or composition, money can flow through labels, distributors, publishers and other rights holders before an artist receives their contractual share. Spotify itself describes its Loud & Clear figures as payments to the music industry and rights holders.
The scale of consumption behind the revenue is equally striking.
In 2025, Nigerian artists generated 30.3bn streams and 1.6bn listening hours on Spotify. Their music was discovered by first-time listeners more than 1.3bn times, a 26 per cent increase from 2024.
Nigerian artists also accounted for more than 80 per cent of the tracks on Spotify Nigeria’s Daily Top 50, while local consumption of Nigerian music on the platform grew by 170 per cent year-on-year.
About 58 per cent of the royalties generated by Nigerian artists on Spotify in 2025 came from independent artists or labels, according to the platform’s data.
The figures point to an industry whose commercial reach is expanding rapidly.
But the growth raises another question: when the music generates money, who collects it, how much is distributed and how can the creator verify what is due?
That question becomes more complicated when the streaming economy is compared with the country’s collective royalty system.
In 2024, the Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) announced that it had distributed N465.5m in royalties to members and affiliates, its highest distribution to that point.
The distribution was announced during COSON’s 14th annual general meeting in Lagos, where Chairman Tony Okoroji said the amount represented a 123 per cent increase from the previous year.
At N465.5m, the distribution was less than one per cent of the more than N58bn in royalties generated by Nigerian artists on Spotify in 2024.
The comparison does not mean the two figures represent the same category of money. Spotify’s figure relates to streaming royalties generated through its platform, while COSON’s figure represents collective royalty distributions to its members and affiliates.
But the scale difference illustrates the size of the separate royalty channels through which Nigerian music generates income.
COSON’s own disclosure also provides a rare public figure against which the industry’s collective royalty activity can be measured.
MCSN, meanwhile, has publicly confirmed that it completed a 2023 royalty distribution, but did not disclose the total amount distributed in the announcement.
In December 2025, MCSN said it had completed its 2023 royalty distribution and attributed a decline in collections to music users’ failure to respond to invoices. It identified broadcasters, event organisers, hotels, restaurants and streaming services among the users from whom royalties were expected.
The issue, therefore, is not whether MCSN has distributed royalties. It has said that it has. The unanswered question is how much it distributed, how much it collected, what was deducted as administrative costs, what remained unclaimed and how individual members’ shares were calculated.
That distinction is central to the transparency problem confronting Nigeria’s music royalty system.
The dispute over Nigeria’s Private Copy Levy adds another layer to the problem.
Section 89 of the Copyright Act 2022 provides for a levy on material used or capable of being used to infringe copyright. The law provides that, subject to approved deductions, the levy is paid into the Fund of the Nigerian Copyright Commission, which has the power to disburse the funds to approved collective management organisations or other representatives of rights owners in accordance with regulations.
The provision therefore does not simply state that the money must be paid directly to individual musicians. It establishes a statutory collection and disbursement mechanism involving the NCC and approved representatives of rights owners.
In February 2026, MCSN confirmed that it had received N1.21bn from the Nigeria Customs Service as the first tranche of the levy.
