On 3 June, five of the seven songs on Qing Madi’s EP Barely Legal disappeared from Spotify. “Lady,” “10 Over 10,” “1 or 2,” “Jowo” and “Adding Up” were there in the morning and gone by the evening. She was 19. The record was a month old.
It was not the first time. In April, “Pepper Me,” her song with Zinoleesky, had also come down before being restored after a challenge. By June the pattern was clear enough that she went on Instagram and TikTok Live to say so. “I may be young but I’m not dumb,” she wrote. “I wrote my songs. By myself!!!!” She also drew a line back nearly a decade: “The first artist you signed Cynthia Morgan cried. And now you’re doing it to a literal teenager.”
The takedowns come out of a contract fight with JTON Music, the label founded by Joy Tongo that signed her in late 2022, after “See Finish” went viral. She was 16, so her mother signed as guardian. The next three years went well by any measure. “Ole” and “American Love” have each passed 100 million Spotify streams, a figure JTON itself cites. Apple Music named her to its Rising Class of 2024. She won Songwriter of the Year at The Headies.
Then, early this year, she left for her own imprint, KFMD. JTON sued for breach, seeking recoupment of what it had invested, in a claim reported at between $1 million and $2 million. A Lagos court granted part of its application for an interlocutory injunction, pending trial. Her camp says the agreements were infancy contracts, signed by a minor and lawfully repudiated at 18, and that she remains free to release and perform under her own name while the case runs. JTON says the agreements stand, denies the forgery and theft allegations, and says the takedowns rest on a valid order until a judge decides otherwise.
🚨 Qing Madi's camp fires back at JTON Music. KFMD Label is disputing JTON's interpretation of the recent court ruling. KFMD insists Qing Madi lawfully ended her relationship with the company and she remains free to release music and perform under her own name while the case continues.
— 𝟎𝑒𝒋𝒐𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒃𝒐𝒚 (@OneJoblessBoy) June 5, 2026
No full judgment has been published. No hearing date has been disclosed. Spotify has not commented. In July, Culture Custodian obtained the court documents and reported that the filings, which cover contracts signed when she was a minor, royalty disputes and audit requests, tell a different story from the one that played out online.
We got the court documents from the Qing Madi-JTON dispute. From contracts signed when she was a minor to court filings, royalty disputes and audit requests, the records tell a very different story from the one that played out online.
— Culture Custodian (@takingCustody) July 2, 2026
That gap, between an order granted in weeks and a trial that has still not happened eighteen months on, is the actual subject here. And it is not unique to her.
Kizz Daniel left G-Worldwide in 2017 and came out spelling his name differently, because the old one was tied up in the fight. Shallipopi, T.I Blaze and Seyi Vibez have all contested a ten-year distribution deal with Dapper Music, over a signature one of them disputes, after their catalogue was licensed onward to Virgin Music. T.I Blaze has claimed more than ₦1.2 billion is unaccounted for; Shallipopi has claimed more than $1 million. Dapper denies wrongdoing. Burna Boy’s masters moved to his own company in 2024 and were immediately challenged by Aristokrat’s 960 Music, which claims a 40 per cent stake, in suits running in both Lagos and Port Harcourt. Praiz signed to X3M in 2010, left in 2020, and in February a court appointed a provisional liquidator over traceable assets. In 2020, Jude Okoye answered Cynthia Morgan by publishing her Northside contract in full. Going back further, Wizkid’s EME deal reportedly took around 25 per cent of turnover from music and performances.
Eleven disputes of this kind have surfaced in nine years. Read together, they are not really arguments about who is right. They are arguments about who can afford to wait.
A Nigerian recording contract of the kind now being litigated tends to do three things at once. It is signed early, often by someone too young to have a lawyer of their own and sometimes too young to sign at all. It assigns more than the recordings, reaching the stage name, the catalogue, and whatever is made next. And it runs long, measured in albums or in a decade rather than in anything the artist controls.
None of that is unusual by itself. What has changed is enforcement. A label that wants to stop an artist no longer has to prove its case first. It applies for an interlocutory order, which is a holding position until trial, and in the meantime it can ask a streaming platform to pull the music. The order takes weeks. The trial takes years. The takedown takes an afternoon.
Streaming is also where almost everything an artist earns now lives, which is what makes the lever work. When the songs come down they stop earning, stop building the listener numbers that decide festival bookings and brand deals, and stop existing for anyone discovering the artist that week. Afrobeats is booming, and Nigerian artists’ Spotify earnings still grew only 3.45 per cent in 2025. The cushion for a year offline is not there.
Run the arithmetic on the before and after. Two songs past 100 million streams each, a Headies win, an Apple Music cohort place, then five of seven tracks off the shelves a month after release, at 19. A label can lose at trial in 2029 and still have won. The artist cannot. A career has a peak, that peak is short, and it does not pause while a docket moves.
So what would actually change it. Not the Copyright Act 2022, which modernised a great deal but says nothing about how long a living artist can be bound by an assignment. Not the courts alone, at the speed they move. Three things are within reach.
The first is notice. Platforms currently honour an interlocutory order without any waiting period, so the music vanishes before the artist’s lawyers have read the papers. A fixed notice window before a takedown takes effect would not decide any case; it would only stop one side winning by surprise.
The second is escrow. Where the fight is about money, the money can be held rather than the catalogue frozen. Revenue from disputed recordings sits with a third party until judgment. The label is protected, the songs stay up, and the thing that cannot be recovered is not destroyed in the meantime.
The third is a floor under young signings. Nigerian law already treats a contract made by a minor as voidable, but it takes a court years to say so in any individual case, which is exactly the delay that does the damage. A standard-form minimum, independent legal advice before a minor signs, a term limit, a mandatory audit right, is the kind of thing an industry body could set without waiting for the National Assembly. The associations have not done it.
Until one of those changes, the shape of the next dispute is already known. It will involve someone signed at sixteen, an order granted before anyone has argued the merits, and a catalogue taken down in an afternoon. The only variable is whose.
