RELPI

Record Label Proprietors’ Initiative Ltd/Gte (ReLPI) is a non-profit trade association for Nigerian record companies, launched in Lagos on 11 August 2023. It represents owners of sound recordings, catalogues spanning the 1960s to the present, and acts as a collective voice on policy, IP enforcement and dealings with regulators and commercial music users. Its members include Mavin Records, Chocolate City, Davido Music Worldwide, Premier Records, and the Nigerian operations of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, alongside DMCE and Hypertek Digital.

ReLPI’s most consequential work to date has been legal. In early 2026, Nigeria’s Copyright Commission disbursed roughly N1.2 billion in private-copying-levy funds to the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN). ReLPI filed suit at the Federal High Court in Lagos seeking to freeze those funds, arguing that MCSN, which represents composers and publishers, is not entitled to levy payments due to owners of sound recordings under Section 89(3) of the Copyright Act. MCSN has disputed that reading, arguing sound-recording rights are shared 50-50 between producers and performers. The case remains before the court.

The dispute has made ReLPI, rather than any single label, the most visible advocate in Nigeria for the proposition that record companies and collecting societies for composers are not interchangeable when it comes to who gets paid.