The Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN) on Tuesday unveiled an accounting, distribution and registration portal for entertainers in Nigeria to protect their intellectual property right.
PMAN President, Casmir Obi, while unveiling the portal called: “e-9ja entertainment” in Lagos, said the aim was to ensure the accurate baseline data of practitioners in the industry.
Obi said the project was done in partnership with a Technical Consultant, Lafrique Promedia Ltd.
He said that the Lagos State Film and Video Censors Board (LSFVCB) and Zenith Bank were supportive in achieving the feat.
He said the unveiling was a follow-up to the appointment of Lafrique Promedia Ltd. in October 2019, which provided a comprehensive technical advice and relevant support services to address the challenges facing the country’s creative industry.
According to him, Lafrique Promedia Ltd. will be responsible for effective distribution of music works in the country.
“The services will conduct comprehensive census, enumeration and database collation of practitioners as well as issuance of performing permit to Nigerian and non-Nigerian musicians.
“It will be responsible for negotiating convenient funding structure for music industry with the Committee of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), collecting foreign and local performance levy.
“It will also provide media and communication services, aggressive anti-piracy in collaboration with the Nigerian Copyright Commission,” Obi said.
He added that the data generated would facilitate decision making by government and the Organised Private Sector in the area of investment, funding, innovation, value addition, policy and advisory services for the Nigerian creative industry, among others.
The Chief Executive Officer of Lafrique Promedia Ltd., Mr Muhammed Raji said that the e-9ja platform was to track and guarantee returns for content owners in the country.
“As a content aggregator, the company monitors creative contents or works of multiple content owners and also help distribute their content through various distribution channels.
“Our role as a content aggregator is to act as intermediary between the content owners and the content user, receive and reformat creative content and code the content for identification purposes.
“Other parts we play is to store the creative content in a central depository, track and account for the delivery of creative content to various distribution channels and facilitate the settlement of account directly to the content owner across all platforms electronically,” he said.
