In March 2026, Billboard published its annual Global Power Players list, the census of executives shaping the international music business outside the United States. Two names from Nigeria made the cut: Don Jazzy, CEO of Mavin Records, and Tega Oghenejobo, the label’s President and COO since 2024. The recognition arrived without much ceremony in the Nigerian press. It deserved more.
The type of recognition matters here. Rema breaking a billion streams is one achievement. Don Jazzy and Tega appearing alongside counterparts from Universal, Sony, and Warner on the Billboard listing is a separate category entirely. Billboard is registering the infrastructure, not just the output.
The infrastructure gap is still acute. A March 2026 report by Creator Economy IQ found that three companies accounted for 68% of Nigeria’s total Spotify streaming volume in 2025. Empire led with 1.2 billion streams, roughly 32.9% of the market, driven largely by its distribution relationships with Nigerian labels including Dangbana Republik. UMG came second at around 21%, a figure boosted substantially by Rema and Ayra Starr, both routed through UMG’s parent infrastructure following Mavin’s 2024 acquisition. Sony rounded out the top at about 14%, with Tems and Shallipopi as its primary contributors.
Nigerian artists generated ₦58 billion, approximately $41.5 million, from Spotify streams in 2025. That’s real money. But 68% of the streaming activity generating it was mediated by foreign parent entities. The gap between Nigerian music’s cultural reach and who owns the commercial layer above it hasn’t shifted.
Mavin occupies an interesting position within that structure. When UMG confirmed a majority stake acquisition in February 2024, the deal was valued at somewhere between $150 million and $200 million, the largest transaction of its kind in African music. What made it notable, as this publication covered when it happened, was the arrangement: Don Jazzy and Tega retained operational control, running the label from Lagos with their own artist pipeline rather than being absorbed into an American subsidiary. The phrase that described the deal’s logic was African leadership under global distribution. It’s also why Mavin’s streams feed UMG’s Nigerian market share while the creative decisions remain local.
That’s the argument the Billboard listing makes in industrial terms. The skills now being recognised, developing talent and building a label that can operate at global scale from Lagos, are readable to the international industry as skills rather than cultural novelty. The Afrobeats era produced artists the world follows. The executive tier is only now getting comparable acknowledgment.
Royalty flows don’t restructure because two executives made a list. The concentration Creator Economy IQ documented, where multinational parent entities negotiate directly with DSPs and accumulate value at the top, holds regardless of how many Nigerians are inside those structures. Mavin’s UMG arrangement gives the label more leverage than an artist self-distributing through DistroKid. The terms still run through UMG.
Nigerian music keeps generating the audience, the cultural heat, and now demonstrably the executive talent. Who captures the value of that infrastructure remains a different question, and Billboard’s list doesn’t answer it. What it does is confirm which layer of the industry Nigeria needs to hold.
