Who Really Owns the Song? Splits, Masters and the Money Nobody Writes Down

Picture the session. Four people in a Lekki studio at 2 a.m. The artiste brings the voice and the vision. The producer lays down drums and a bassline that will not leave your head. A writer drops the second verse on the spot. Someone's cousin shouts a background hook that ends up as the most replayed six seconds on the record. Everybody is happy. Nobody opens a document.

Two years later, the song is on every playlist in Lagos, a telco wants it for a Christmas advert, and the question finally comes: who gets what?

This piece answers that question. You will learn where the money really comes from, how to split it without starting a war, and which tools can stop the leakage before it starts.

Two copyrights inside one record

Every recorded track carries two separate copyrights. The first is the sound recording, usually called the master. That is the actual performance captured in the studio. The second is the composition, which is the melody and lyrics underneath. Copyright follows ownership, so each one has its own owners and its own income.

The master usually belongs to the artiste and their label, because they paid for the session, the mixing, the marketing and the risk. That is the investment side of the story, and it deserves respect. A label that funds a record is not a charity. It is betting against a reality where most songs will never earn back what was spent on them.

The composition belongs to whoever wrote it. This is where most Nigerian sessions go wrong. The person who wrote the chorus, the producer who shaped the melody, and the hook singer can all hold a real legal stake in the composition, even though none of them thought of themselves as "the songwriter."

The Nigerian Copyright Act 2022 gives sound recordings protection for up to 50 years. Compositions are protected for 70 years after the songwriter's death. That is a long time to be owed money you never asked for.

Where the money actually comes from

The Nigerian music industry was estimated at ₦901.7 billion in 2024. Live performance made up 65.7 percent of that. Streaming made up 30.1 percent. Publishing, the main income stream for songwriters, made up 0.7 percent.

That 0.7 percent is the sleeping giant. Publishing money is not small globally. Globally, music publishing is a billion-dollar industry. The gap in Nigeria is a systems problem, not a market problem.

Four income streams sit under every song:

Performance royalties. Paid when a song is played on radio, TV, at a live venue or on a streaming platform. In Nigeria, MCSN collects them. Abroad, the equivalents are ASCAP, BMI and PRS.

Mechanical royalties. Generated every time a song is reproduced, including streams and downloads.

Sync fees. Paid when a song is licensed for a film, TV show, advert or game. The writer gets an upfront fee and then keeps earning every time that content airs.

Print royalties. Paid for sheet music and published lyrics.

Register with MCSN. For Nigerian writers, the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN) is the first body to get your works into. A registered work is a work that can be paid. Make sure your name, your IPI number, and your split are on file with MCSN before the song goes out.

None of this flows without registration. A song with no ISRC code, a misspelt writer name or a wrong IPI number can sit in an unmatched pool for years. MCSN has named incomplete split sheets as a main cause of delayed and inaccurate distributions in Nigeria. The money exists, but it goes to whoever is correctly on the paperwork.

What a producer is actually owed

Producers are often the most underpaid people in the room, and often the least protected. There are three common ways they get paid.

1. The flat fee. This is a work-for-hire arrangement. You are paid for the beat or the session, and the relationship ends there. Accepting a flat fee means waiving all rights to later income from that work. It is common in Nigeria, and it is not always a scam. It only makes sense when the fee is close to the real value the song will earn over its life. Most hits are not predictable, which is why the flat fee is risky for the producer.

2. The lease or the exclusive sale. A non-exclusive lease gives the buyer a licence for a set period, and the producer can sell the same beat again. An exclusive sale transfers ownership to one buyer and removes the beat from the market. There are cases where beats were sold "exclusively" to more than one person, which led to copyright fights. Whatever the deal is, write it down.

3. The backend. The producer takes a smaller upfront fee and a percentage of royalties later. The rule of thumb is simple: the lower the upfront fee, the higher the backend should be.

Here is the position this article takes. A recording artiste and their label are the people carrying the financial risk and the marketing bill. A fair deal pays the producer properly for the sound, but it does not hand them the master in exchange for one beat. A sensible starting point looks like this:

A fair fee for the work, paid on time.

A modest backend on the master, with the percentage and the calculation method written out.

A writing credit and publishing share only and only if the producer actually wrote melody or lyrics.

A clear recoupment rule, so the label gets its investment back before the backend kicks in.

A common Nigerian range for producers is 3 to 5 percent, but the figure is used loosely, sometimes for mechanical rights and sometimes for masters. Check which one your deal means before you sign. A producer who wants 50 percent of the masters after a small beat fee is asking the label to fund the risk and keep none of the upside. That is not partnership; that is daylight robbery.

The split sheet is your shield

A split sheet takes under an hour to prepare and can save years of conflict. In Nigeria, it is not a legal requirement for every collaboration, but it is the industry standard. Many labels and distributors will not release a track without one, and courts tend to rely on written agreements when a dispute reaches them.

A proper split sheet should include:

The song title, plus any alternate titles.

The full legal name of every contributor, spelled correctly.

Each person's role: writer, producer, performer, background vocalist, arranger.

Each person's percentage of the master, and their percentage of the publishing. Keep these as separate lines.

Each contributor's collecting society, such as MCSN, ASCAP, BMI or PRS, and their IPI number where they have one.

Contact details and the date.

Signatures from everyone, before the song is released.

Two things matter most. First, master and publishing splits can differ, and writing a single number that means different things to different people is how fights start. Second, sign before the first stream, not after the first viral clip. Once a song is popular, everybody remembers their contribution as bigger than it was.

A worked example, using a common model: performance income is often split 50/50 between the publisher and the writers. If a producer only made the beat, a 10 percent share of the writers' half works out to 5 percent of total performance income. If they also co-wrote the melody, that number goes up. Treat the model as a starting point, not as a law.

Deal types, side by side

Green Indie breaks publishing into four structures. Knowing them is the fastest way to avoid a bad contract.

Green Indie's own example makes the point. Take $10,000 of publishing income. Under administration at 15 percent, the writer keeps $8,500 and still owns every song. Under co-publishing, the writer keeps $7,500 and gives away half the copyright. Under full publishing, the writer keeps $5,000 and owns nothing.

The real comparison is not 15 percent against 25 percent. It is a fee on money that actually gets collected against a permanent slice of the song. Money that was never registered does not pay anyone.

Advances deserve a warning label. An advance is a loan against your own future royalties. Until your share pays it back, you see nothing more. Watch for cross-collateralisation, a clause that pools all your songs together for recoupment. If that clause exists, one hit cannot pay you while another track is still in the red.

For recording artistes and labels, the same logic applies to masters deals. Keep the masters where you can. Ask for reversion rights, which bring rights back after a set period. Make sure the label's recoupment is clear and capped, and that the artiste's share is calculated the same way every quarter.

Red flags before you sign

Copyright assignment language inside a deal sold to you as "admin."

No reversion clause in a full publishing deal.

A commission rate that points to a pricing schedule you have never been shown.

Vague delivery rules, such as "a reasonable number of songs per year."

Cross-collateralisation across several agreements.

An advance well below market for your level.

Pressure to sign before a lawyer reads the contract.

A publisher who cannot name a single placement they have secured.

Abeg, read everything. If the person across the table says "we go sort am later," ask them to put am for paper. Anybody wey no fit write down wetin dem dey promise no dey ready to keep am.

Where Green Indie fits Green Indie describes itself as Africa's first direct-to-fan music platform. Three of its services are relevant to this conversation.

Direct sales. Artistes sell singles, EPs, albums and bundles straight to fans at their own price. The site says artistes get paid the moment a fan pays, not after a three- to six-month wait. Fans can pay with Opay, Palmpay, MTN MoMo, bank transfer or card. Green Indie also says 100 percent of what a fan pays reaches the artiste, rather than a distributor. For an artiste who has been waiting on statements, that cash timing is the real selling point.

Publishing administration. This is where the split discussion gets practical. Green Indie's publishing administration works on a 15 percent fee of royalties it recovers. It promises automatic ISRC, UPC, and MCSN registration on every upload, international registration with PROs such as ASCAP, PRS, and SOCAN for diaspora markets, and royalty recovery that audits what is owed against what has arrived. The site currently lists this service under "coming soon" with a waitlist, so confirm its status before you plan around it.

Sync licensing. Green Indie is building a way to pitch music for film, TV, games and ads. The site quotes sync fees from ₦250,000 to over ₦7.5 million, and says the artiste approves every deal. Like publishing, it is listed as coming soon.

Indie Star Search 2026. The competition offers ₦4 million in cash and a brand ambassador deal. Registration closes on Saturday, 31 October 2026, so there is about a week left. Read the entry rules first. The platform's own article on the contest says the small print is where most people trip.

The studio creates the song; the paperwork gets it paid

Go back to that 2 a.m. session. The song is not the problem. The problem is that nobody wrote down who did what, nobody agreed on the percentages, and nobody registered the work. Every one of those gaps costs money later, and the people who pay for it are usually the ones with the least power in the room.

So sign the split sheet before the session ends. Register every writer and every master with the right bodies. Keep your masters if you can. Take the admin deal before the full publishing deal. Ask for reversion. And remember that music money does not wait for the loudest person in the room. It waits for the person who signed well.