Collecting Society

For a business that uses music or other protected works publicly, the position is simple and widely ignored.

Playing recorded music in a hotel, restaurant, bar, gym, salon, shop or bus is a public performance or communication of the work. It requires a licence, and buying the track or subscribing to a streaming service does not provide one. Consumer streaming subscriptions are licensed for personal use.

Broadcasters, event organisers, venues and telecommunications companies using music in products all fall within the same principle.

The practical steps for a user are to identify which societies cover the works being used, take the licence, keep the certificate, and budget for it as an operating cost.

For a creator, joining a society means signing a membership agreement authorising it to license your works. What to check before signing: which rights you are assigning or licensing to the society and which you keep, the territory, the term and how you can leave, the distribution rules and how often they pay, the deductions for administration, and whether the arrangement is exclusive.

Registering your works with the society is what makes distribution possible. Unregistered works cannot be matched to usage.

Two practical realities dominate.

The first is that most Nigerian businesses playing music publicly hold no licence. Restaurants, gyms, salons, buses and event venues use music as a matter of course, and very few have considered whether they need permission. That is an exposure rather than a settled position, and enforcement activity does happen.

The cost of a licence is generally modest relative to the risk, and it is a straightforward operating expense once identified.

The second is that the Nigerian collective management landscape has been contested, with disputes over approval and standing that have gone to court. The consequence for a user is to confirm that a body demanding a licence fee is actually approved by the Nigerian Copyright Commission before paying, and to obtain a receipt and a licence certificate.

For creators, the practical position is that collective management is the only realistic route to being paid for public performance and broadcast. An individual songwriter cannot monitor usage across the country.

What they should not do is sign a membership agreement without reading it. The key questions are what rights the society takes, whether the arrangement is exclusive, the deduction rate, how often distributions are made, and how to leave. Those terms vary, and a creator who signed an exclusive worldwide assignment when they intended a licence has given away more than they meant to.

Three ways somebody might think they are cleared to use music, only two of which work for a business.

A collecting society licence is a blanket licence covering the society's repertoire. It is how a venue, broadcaster or business clears the public use of a large body of works without negotiating individually.

A direct licence is negotiated with the rights holder for specified works. It suits a business using a small number of identified tracks, such as in an advertisement, and it is the route where a society does not control the right in question.

A consumer streaming subscription licenses personal listening. It does not license public performance, and playing a personal subscription through speakers in a commercial premises is not covered by it.

That last point is the one Nigerian businesses most often get wrong, and it is the easiest to correct.

Distribution accuracy depends on usage data, and matching plays to works is imperfect, so what a creator receives may not reflect what was actually used.

Administration deductions also reduce distributions, and members should understand the rate.

Repertoire coverage is not universal. A society licenses what its members and affiliated societies control, so a user may need more than one licence and may still not be covered for everything.

Institutional disputes in the Nigerian sector have created uncertainty for both users and members at various points.

And for creators, collective management addresses public performance and broadcast. It does not replace direct negotiation for synchronisation in advertisements and film, which is usually the more valuable licence.