By ‘ Dayo Showemimo
Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), the nation’s sole copyright collective management organisation for musical works and sound recordings, has unveiled its processes, plans and approaches for the music industry in 2015.
Speaking on the society’s approach in 2015, COSON General Manager, Chinedu Chukwuji said: ‘January has been a month of management meetings at COSON. There have been several meetings with our Legal team, several with our Communications team and more meetings with our Licensing team. We still have meetings with our Finance and Administration teams. Each meeting has been a strategy session chaired by our chairman, Chief Tony Okoroji. The chairman has been emphatic about the level of results which would not be acceptable to the members of the society in 2015.’
In May 2015, COSON will be celebrating the fifth anniversary of its approval by the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as the nation’s sole collective management organisation for musical works and sound recordings.
According to Chukwuji, ‘Despite the initial challenges, COSON has grown to become Nigeria’s most powerful organization in the creative sector with a management style and structure that most blue chip organizations envy. We have distributed royalties every year since our approval. With reciprocal representation agreements covering about 130 collective management organizations across the world, we have spread our tentacles beyond what anyone could have imagined four and half years ago. Without one kobo received from the government, I am happy to say that COSON is financially and organizationally very stable. Every COSON member is important to the society; we observe every rule in the book and our internal democracy is second to
none.
