Under Nigerian law, owners of copyright in music and sound recordings have the right to request payment in order to authorize the public performance of their works. In reality, no single copyright owner can monitor the thousands of uses of his work in far flung places, neither is it practically possible for each person to negotiate each use and to collect appropriate payments.  By coming together in COSON under a collective management arrangement, the individual strengths are pulled together to achieve what the individual cannot achieve.

MEMBERS can rely on COSON for efficient, transparent and accountable collection and distribution of the royalties they have earned through the use of their music by broadcasting stations, advertising agencies, hotels, nightclubs, restaurants, etc. In order to provide the highest level of service, COSON is deploying the substantial experience of members of its board and the cutting edge training of its personnel along with modern technology.

COSON will remain in the Nigerian Music Coalition, the nation’s most potent advocacy group for the protection of the legal rights in Nigeria of composers, authors, publishers, performers and owners of copyright in sound recordings. This watchdog role is critical in an environment that is still very suspicious of the intellectual property concept.

BULK MUSIC USERS such as broadcasting stations, airlines, hotels, nightclubs, advertising agencies, etc must ensure that they have appropriate authorization for the music repertoire they deploy. Failure to do this can lead to very expensive disputes and costly legal contests. No bulk user can afford the massive machinery necessary to identify the legal owner of every piece of music required for its operation, neither can any user afford the cost of negotiating the use of each piece of music belonging to persons from diverse parts of the world.  COSON therefore provides music users access to one of the world's most culturally valuable products:  a huge repertoire of copyright-protected music for public performance.

Music users will soon discover that COSON makes the process of obtaining the right licences straight forward and efficient, offering the opportunity for the works of music creators worldwide to have a positive impact on their businesses while sparing them expensive litigations and disputes.

A World Without Music
Imagine  a situation in which there is no music whatsoever on radio or television, no music in our night clubs, restaurants, or beer palours, no music in the gyms where we work out, no music in the aircraft as we sit through the many hours of long haul flights… Imagine that there is no music in every super market or shopping mall, no music in our offices as we work, none in the barbers shop or the hair dressers … what kind of world will that be?

COSON makes sure that we never have a world without music. By making it easy for those who need music to have access to it and ensuring that those who create the beautiful music we love to receive appropriate compensation for their ingenuity, COSON helps creativity to continue and the world is a better place. While we say, ‘Let the music play’, COSON also says, ‘Let the music pay!’

For more information on the activities of COSON, call the following numbers: 01-480-8869,
234-803-405-7072.