A Lagos court this week approved substituted service against Aristokrat Records and founder Piriye Isokrari, who’ve now missed multiple dates in 960 Music’s lawsuit over Burna Boy’s early masters. 960 Music holds 40% equity in Aristokrat and alleges the label moved recordings from L.I.F.E (2013) and Redemption (2016) to Spaceship Music in mid-2024 without board approval. Hearings run across a civil suit in Port Harcourt and criminal proceedings in Lagos, next dated June 10, 2026. Warner Music Group, global distributor for Spaceship Music, hasn’t acknowledged Creative Legal’s demand to halt commercial use of the disputed catalogue.
What Does a Catalogue Dispute Actually Do for Nigerian Music Rights?
It raises the question early-career deals always defer: who profits when old songs earn serious money? Tracks like “Like to Party” and “Tonight” are streaming and sync assets worth multiples of anything a 2013 contract could have priced. 960 Music is seeking nullification of the transfer and a refund of proceeds, and whatever the courts decide sets terms for every underexamined label deal in Nigerian music archives. The legal question is whether board approval was required before moving a major asset, but the commercial reality is already clear enough. Catalogues that can change hands without a 40% shareholder’s knowledge reveal ownership in Nigerian music as always provisional.
What We Think
Nigeria keeps producing artists whose early work turns out to be gold long after the deal framing it was signed on much weaker terms, the gaps surfacing only when real money arrives. Warner’s silence is a familiar posture, and as we argued this week, the infrastructure turning Lagos records into São Paulo streams is mostly owned outside Lagos, and this case shows that gap from inside a Federal High Court. When the dispute first surfaced, it looked like a shareholders’ spat, and it’s since become a test of whether Nigerian IP law can settle ownership questions before the financialisation of Afrobeats moves entirely out of reach.
