CRÉATION AFRICA: Turning SA’s music hits into successful businesses and generational wealth

What changed

Ninel Musson, co-founder of Vth Season, now leads Music Business Lab, a practical training programme for South Africa’s independent music industry. Its courses cover publishing, copyright, royalties, contracts and operations, with more than 100 independent music publishers already graduated and a fourth publishing cohort approaching.

Why it matters

The programme is aimed at the part of the music business that listeners rarely see: who owns a song, who registers it, who collects its royalties and whether the people who created it can build a lasting business around it.

That matters because Musson’s central argument is bigger than artist development. South African music already travels widely. The harder task is turning that cultural reach into assets Africans own, businesses that survive, and jobs that extend beyond the next release.

Music Business Lab grew from Musson’s experience at Vth Season, whose artists included AKA, Tresor and Ami Faku. She says the agency had to learn commercial systems while local industry infrastructure was still catching up. Now those hard-won lessons are being turned into coursework linked to the University of Pretoria.

The teaching is deliberately practical. Working professionals, including a senior publishing executive from Warner Music Group and representatives of Downtown Music Publishing, have taught students using real contracts, mistakes and African case studies.

That gives the programme a clear test: whether graduates can improve their systems or increase revenue immediately. Musson’s wider ambition is for music to move from being treated as promising cultural influence to being recognised as a valuable economic asset. The training is one route toward that goal, but its long-term effect will depend on whether better skills translate into stronger businesses and greater ownership.