Overview
Every April 26, the world marks World Intellectual Property Day. In 2025, WIPO chose music as its theme because behind every song that moves us is a web of rights, contributors, and agreements that determine who owns it, who profits from it, and who controls how it travels from the studio to the world.
This compendium brings together five articles that speak to the legal realities of the music business. It examines how ownership works, why publishing and master recording rights are treated as two different assets, what happens when music is licensed or distributed, and how sampling raises questions of originality, consent, and liability under Nigerian law.
