nommoBeta
Legal

Terms for creators

This is a plain-English summary of how nommo works for creators, not a substitute for your own legal advice.

Last updated 26 October 2026

What's changed (16 versions)
  1. 26 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Exclusivity: nommo is where it lives" and "Teaching and hosting live".
  2. 25 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Payouts".
  3. 23 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Payouts".
  4. 19 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Teaching and hosting live".
  5. 12 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Donating a work to the nommo Institute", "Words, subtitles and transcripts" and "nommo is in beta".
  6. 10 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Teaching and hosting live".
  7. 10 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Exclusivity: nommo is where it lives".
  8. 9 October 2026
    Added "Sets", "Words, subtitles and transcripts" and "Replacing the file of a work". Updated the wording of "Tax".
  9. 7 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Referrals".
  10. 6 October 2026
    Added "Tax" and "nommo is in beta". Updated the wording of "Donating a work to the nommo Institute".
  11. 6 October 2026
    Added "Referrals".
  12. 4 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Donating a work to the nommo Institute".
  13. 2 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Donating a work to the nommo Institute".
  14. 2 October 2026
    Updated the wording of "Teaching and hosting live".
  15. 2 October 2026
    Added "Teaching and hosting live".
  16. 28 September 2026
    Added section 17, "Signing copies and signed editions". Added a last-updated date and this record of changes.

1. What you can sell

You may only upload work you own outright or have full rights to sell, your own compositions, recordings, writing, art, photography, film or video. If a work contains someone else's contribution (a co-writer, a sample, licensed footage, a session musician), you're confirming you've actually cleared it before it goes on nommo. Uploading work you don't have the rights to is a violation of these terms and may result in removal and account termination.

2. Exclusivity: nommo is where it lives

A work you list on nommo must be listed on nommo only. This is not a bureaucratic formality, it is the foundation of the whole model. Value comes from where a thing can be found: when a work is available everywhere, it is scarce nowhere, and scarcity is what gives a collector's purchase real meaning. By publishing a work on nommo you are committing that the same work, in the same or substantially similar form, will not be concurrently listed for sale, streaming, or free distribution on any other platform (including your own site, another marketplace, or a streaming service) for as long as it remains on nommo. If you'd like to sell a work elsewhere too, remove it from nommo first. You confirm this each time you publish, and every work's page tells collectors that you have. Violating exclusivity is a material breach of these terms, and by publishing on nommo you agree to what follows. First, nommo will tell you what it has found and give you a short time to put it right, by taking the work down elsewhere or taking it off nommo. If it is not put right, the work is withdrawn from nommo: it can no longer be found, bought or resold here, and stays only with those who already own it, who are told why it was withdrawn. Each collector who paid for it may then choose. They may keep the work, in which case nommo returns to them part of its own fee on that sale. Or they may give the work back, in which case nommo returns to them the whole of its own fee on that sale. nommo never returns more than it earned: your share of each sale was paid straight to you when the sale was made, and nommo holds none of it. So if a collector gives the work back, you owe that collector your share of that sale, and you agree to repay it. You also owe nommo whatever it has returned to collectors because of your breach. nommo may ask you for both, pass on to the collectors whatever it recovers for them, and pursue what is owed by any lawful means. nommo will not hold back or delay your earnings from any sale to cover this. A breach counts against you once nommo has upheld it, even if you put it right. A second upheld breach strikes you off nommo automatically: your works are taken off sale, your profile is no longer shown, and you may no longer upload or sell here. People who own your work keep it. Anyone may tell nommo that a work is to be found elsewhere, and nommo will look into every such report. Short previews, your own announcements, and a physical edition such as a record or a printed book sold through nommo do not break exclusivity. Nor does radio or television airing your work under a broadcast licence granted through nommo (section 7), or a short advert made from it, such as a radio spot from your Marketing kit: a broadcast is heard once, at the station's time, and cannot be kept or played again on demand, and it sends listeners to the one place your work lives. A station's own online catch-up or on-demand library is not covered, unless the licence it holds says so.

3. Responsible use of AI

nommo is not against AI. Plenty of great independent work today involves it somewhere in the process. What we ask is honesty: when you upload, you'll tell us whether AI was not involved, used as a tool (editing, mastering, upscaling, etc.), or primarily generated the work. Misrepresenting AI-generated work as fully human-made is a violation of these terms. Work flagged as AI-generated without an adequate disclosure is held from the public shelf pending a quick review, this isn't a judgment on the work itself, just a check that collectors know what they're buying. This cuts both ways: nommo does not use the creative work you upload, or your fans' data, to train AI models, ours or any third party's. Your catalog is not a training set.

4. Registering the right category

When you upload, we'll ask you to pick a rights category (music/sound recording, literary work, visual art, audiovisual work, or other) and we'll show you plain-English guidance on what that means for protecting your work, for example, registering a song with a copyright office and joining a PRO, or registering a finished film as an audiovisual work rather than just its script. This guidance is provided to help you protect your own economic interests as an independent artist. It is not legal advice, and nommo is not a law firm; for anything high-value, talk to your local copyright office or an intellectual property attorney.

5. Quality, age-rating and content standards

Uploads go through a light, fast QA check, not a gatekeeper. Work is published immediately unless it's flagged (most commonly for an AI disclosure issue) or otherwise found to violate these terms, in which case it's held or removed and you'll be notified why. We don't allow illegal content, content that infringes someone else's rights, or content that violates our child-safety and hate-speech policies, regardless of format. nommo is not, and will never become, a platform for hardcore or sexually explicit adult content; it is not a substitute for dedicated adult platforms or messaging apps built for that purpose. Every work must be appropriately age-rated and labeled for its actual content, and creators are responsible for rating their own work honestly at upload.

6. What collectors get when they buy

"Buy once, own forever" means the collector gets a personal license to keep and enjoy the specific work they bought, permanently, without a subscription. Unless you explicitly grant more (for example, a commercial license sold separately), you retain the underlying copyright and any rights beyond personal enjoyment, collectors are not buying the right to resell, redistribute, broadcast, or commercially exploit your work.

7. Broadcast licensing

This is the "explicitly grant more" mentioned above. From your dashboard you can opt a specific work into broadcast licensing, a permission for a verified DJ, radio station, or TV station to publicly perform that work, entirely separate from a collector's purchase. It's off by default, work is only licensable if you turn it on, and it never affects that work's edition size, resale eligibility, or ownership history, a broadcast license is not a Purchase and doesn't create one. Self-serve licenses (you set a flat price, a verified broadcaster pays it directly) carry nommo's standard 30% platform fee, the same rate and the same costs as an ordinary sale. A bespoke, negotiated license carries either the standard 30% (when nommo is the one who found and brought in the broadcaster) or a lower 15% facilitation fee (when the broadcaster or you brought the deal to nommo directly), depending on who actually sourced it. Either way, the fee is shown up front before anything is confirmed. Verifying a broadcaster is a real, human review, not an automated identity check, we look at every application ourselves.

8. Lending and gifting

Collectors who buy your work can lend it temporarily (their access pauses while it's out on loan, and it returns to them automatically when the loan ends) or gift it permanently to someone else on nommo. No file ever changes hands in either case, it's a transfer of access on nommo's systems. nommo is not a party to disputes between a lender and a recipient.

9. Payouts

You keep 70% of every sale; nommo keeps 30% to run the platform. Your 70% is of the whole price: the payment processor's transaction fee, a standard charge that any processor takes to move money securely, is paid by the buyer on top of the price, and never comes out of your share. Payouts are made in Nigerian Naira. Prices on nommo are shown in US dollars; each sale is charged in Naira at the day's rate, and your share is paid in Naira to the bank account you connect. You may connect an account in your own name or in the name of your registered business (a business name or company registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, or its equivalent where you are); your share is paid to whichever account you connect. Which to use is your decision: nommo does not give financial, legal or tax advice. Payouts route directly to your connected payout account, card payouts or Paystack depending on what's available in your region and what's active at the time (card payouts are currently paused platform-wide for an account review, so Paystack is the live rail). nommo moved its bank payouts from Flutterwave to Paystack on 20 October 2026; if you connected your bank account before then, you'll need to connect it once more, and your work can't be bought until you do. Either way you'll need to complete that processor's own onboarding (identity verification, bank details) before you can receive funds. nommo does not hold your payout in a delayed queue; your processor's standard payout timing applies.

10. Resale royalties

When a collector resells a work they bought (see Heirloom in the Terms for collectors), you earn a 10% royalty on that resale, automatically, for as long as the work keeps changing hands on nommo, no action needed on your part. This only applies to resales that happen on nommo itself: it's how nommo splits proceeds on its own marketplace, not a legal claim over what a collector does with a copy outside nommo. A newly-acquired work has a holding period before its owner can resell it (currently 256 days), so resale is a deliberate, occasional event, not a way to flip a purchase for a quick markup.

11. Copyright notices

If someone believes a work you've uploaded infringes their copyright, they can file a notice through our copyright notice form. We'll review it and may remove or restrict access to the work while we do. If you believe a notice filed against your own work is mistaken or made in bad faith, contact us and explain why, we look at both sides before taking permanent action.

12. Donating a work to the nommo Institute

You can nominate a published work to be donated to the nommo Institute for Creative Futures, from your dashboard. This is a genuine, one-way transfer of ownership, the same idea as donating a piece to a museum, not a cosmetic label: once approved, ownership of the work vests in the Institute, permanently, every future sale's proceeds go to the Institute rather than to you, and you can no longer edit, price, or take the work down yourself. You keep permanent credit as the work's original creator. Nothing changes for a collector who already owns a copy. If the work carries an active revenue split with any collaborator, every one of them must agree before the donation can be reviewed at all, you can't give away a split that isn't only yours to give. A donation can't be undone once approved. Today neither nommo nor the Institute is a company: nommo is in beta and is operated by nommo Creative Lab, a registered business, and the Institute is to be registered in its own right once the beta is over (see the Continuity policy, and the section on beta below). So for now this transfers ownership within nommo, not to an independent body; that separation is the direction we're building toward.

13. Removal and termination

We may remove a work or suspend an account for violating these terms, most often, an unresolved rights issue, a broken exclusivity commitment, or a misrepresented AI disclosure. Where possible we'll tell you why and give you a chance to fix it. Purchases already completed before a removal are not automatically refunded to collectors unless the removal was due to your own violation of these terms.

14. No warranty on the platform

nommo is provided "as is." We work to keep the shelf running and your payouts flowing, but we don't guarantee uninterrupted availability, and we're not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from platform downtime.

15. How your manuscript becomes a book

The reader doesn't print your manuscript, it reflows it. Every reader sees pages sized to their own screen, font size, and line spacing, so "page 47" means something different to two different people reading the same book, and neither of those page numbers will match the page numbers in your original manuscript file. Format with that in mind: use real headings and paragraph breaks to structure your book rather than manual page breaks or blank lines meant to force a new page, and don't design around a specific line landing at the top or bottom of a page, it won't, not for every reader. Chapter breaks are the one division the reader always honors exactly as you set them; everything inside a chapter reflows. This isn't a limitation we're apologizing for, it's the same trade every serious e-reader (Kindle, Apple Books) makes in exchange for text that's actually comfortable to read on whatever device someone opens it on, and we'd rather tell you that before you publish than have you discover it after.

16. What we do with your manuscript file

Your manuscript is used for one thing: rendering the book you uploaded, on the reader, for people who've bought it or are previewing it. It is not used to train AI models, ours or anyone else's (see above), and we don't repurpose it for anything beyond showing it back to the people you've chosen to show it to.

17. Signing copies and signed editions

You can sign any collector's copy of your own work from your signing desk, as a gift, whenever you like. You can also offer a signed edition: a limited number of copies, at a price you set above the ordinary copy, that you sign by hand for each person who buys one. Once the first signed copy sells, the number and price are locked, so nobody's signed copy ever becomes less rare than it was when they bought it; you can still pause or close sales at any time. Selling a signed copy is a promise to sign it yourself within a reasonable time. Every autograph must be drawn by you, by hand, for that one copy: reusing a signature, generating one with software or AI, or having someone else sign for you is a violation of these terms. Once saved, an autograph becomes part of that copy's permanent history and can't be edited or removed, and it stays with the copy if it's gifted or resold. Signed copies follow the same 70/30 split as any other sale.

18. Teaching and hosting live

You can teach a live class to the people who own one of your courses and, once nommo has approved your account for it, host live events such as a music show or an interview, free to members or ticketed. You can also premiere a work or release of your own: it plays for everyone in the room at the same moment, with you on camera beside it and in control of playback. A premiere is for the people who own the work unless you open it to every member, which plays the whole work, free, to anyone signed in while you are live, and needs the same approval as a live event. A premiere is not recorded. Approval is ours to give and to withdraw, and withdrawing it ends anything you have live at that moment. Everything in these terms applies to what you broadcast exactly as it does to what you upload: you need the rights to whatever you perform, play or show (a cover, a backing track, someone else's footage), the content standards in Section 5 apply live, and anyone who appears with you, a guest, an interviewee, a band, must have agreed both to appear and to be recorded. We may end a live session that breaks these terms. You can be live for up to 90 minutes a day across all your classes and events, and a room holds up to 200 people. A free event, one with no ticket or a premiere opened to every member, holds up to 50 people for up to 60 minutes, and you can hold two a month; ticketed events, classes for your courses and premieres for the people who own the work have no monthly limit. These limits may change. A free event may go out on other platforms at the same time. A ticketed event is on nommo and nowhere else, while it is live and afterwards, under the same promise and consequences as Section 2; and a recording you publish on nommo is a work under Section 2 like any other, so no replay of it may remain on another platform. Each session is recorded from your own camera and microphone, by the browser you host from, so keep that page open until you end the session. When it ends you set a price and the recording becomes a work of yours on nommo like any other, on the usual 70/30 split and under the same terms, Section 2 included, with everyone who joined live receiving it free. You can choose not to publish it. A ticket follows the same 70/30 split as any other sale (Section 9) and needs your payouts connected. Selling a ticket is a promise to hold the event at its stated time, and a ticket is paid for before that promise is kept. So ticket money is the one exception to being paid at the moment of sale: nommo holds your share of the tickets until the event has taken place, and pays it to your payout account within a few days of it ending (the number of days is shown where you host). If you cancel, or still haven't gone live 60 minutes after the stated time, which we treat as a cancellation, every buyer is refunded in full from the money held, and nothing is paid to you or owed by you for that event. nommo holds this money only for this purpose and only until the event has happened; it does not hold your share of any other sale. Repeated cancellations or no-shows can cost you your approval to host. Tickets are otherwise final for buyers, so we won't ask you to refund someone who simply didn't attend, and if an event is cut short by a fault on nommo's side we handle those buyers ourselves. Paid one-to-one sessions. Once nommo has approved you to go live, you can offer sessions: a lesson, a consultation, a reading, a studio hour, at a length and price you choose, at times you list. Someone books a time and pays for it. A session takes place on nommo Live, privately, just you and the person who booked, and it is never recorded. The rules for tickets apply to it: nommo holds the payment until the session has taken place and then pays you 70% of it; if you cancel, or have not gone live within 60 minutes of the time, the person who booked is refunded in full and you are owed nothing. They may also cancel up to 24 hours before the time and be refunded in full, and the time becomes free for someone else to book. After that, the session is final for them. Please list only times you can keep, and cancel as early as you can when you cannot.

19. Referrals

Every nommo account has its own referral link, found in your settings. If someone joins nommo through your link, you earn a reward the first time they buy something or, if they are a creator, the first time their work is bought, whichever comes first. The reward is 20% of nommo's own fee on that one transaction, which works out at about 6% of the price. It comes out of nommo's share and nowhere else: the buyer pays the same price as anyone, and the creator still keeps their full 70%. It is paid once for each person you bring, never again on what they do afterwards. Buying a work, a whole album or course, or merch counts. Resales, broadcast licences, sync placements and live event tickets do not. There is no reward for referring yourself, or where the person you referred is buying from you or selling to you. Rewards are recorded as owed when they are earned and paid out by nommo by hand, so there can be a wait; nommo may withhold a reward it has reason to think was earned by abuse, such as accounts made only to collect it. If you recommend nommo to someone through your link, tell them you may earn from it. That is plain good manners, and in many places it is also the law. As a creator this works both ways. You can earn by bringing collectors or other creators to nommo, and someone who brought you earns once, on your first sale. Either way your 70% is never reduced to pay for it.

20. Tax

You are responsible for meeting your own tax obligations, whatever they are where you live and where you sell. That covers everything you earn through nommo: your share of sales, resale royalties, broadcast licences, sync placements, contributions from collectors, tickets to your live events and referral rewards. It includes declaring that income and registering for and accounting for any sales tax or VAT that applies to you. nommo does not work out, withhold or pay your taxes for you unless the law requires it to, and nothing on nommo is tax advice. If you work with collaborators on a split, each of you is responsible for your own share. To help you keep your own house in order, your dashboard gives you a statement of what you were paid through nommo each year, and lets you choose a share of it to set aside for tax. The statement is a record and the set-aside is a reminder: the rate is your own choice, nommo holds none of that money, and neither is a calculation of what you owe. If you are unsure what applies to you, ask a tax adviser or your tax authority. Where the law requires it, nommo may add tax to a price at checkout, and may have to give information about your earnings to a tax authority.

21. Sets

A set is several of your own works sold together at one price, in whatever forms they take. You choose what goes in a set and what it costs, and you put it on sale and take it off yourself. A collector who buys a set owns each work in it, on the same terms as if they had bought each one separately, and your share is worked out on the price of the set. Someone who already owns part of a set pays the difference between the price of the set and what they paid for the parts they hold, so they never pay twice for the same work. Limited editions, and works with a collaborator on a paid split, cannot be included in a set. Taking a set off sale, or changing it, takes nothing away from anyone who has already bought it.

22. Words, subtitles and transcripts

You can add words that sit under the player on a work, such as the notes to a course module, and you can add subtitles in as many languages as you have them. These are yours to write and to change without review, and you are responsible for them as you are for the work itself: they must be accurate, must be yours to publish, and must follow the same rules as everything else you put on nommo. Subtitles and transcripts are shown only to people who have the work. nommo does not write or translate subtitles on its own, and never sends your work to an outside service unless you ask. If you do ask, nommo can have a first draft of subtitles made from the sound of a work of yours that is already on nommo. That means sending that one file to a transcription service. You may ask for this yourself, using your own account with that service, in which case its charges and its terms are between you and it; or you may ask nommo to do it for you. Either way it is done only at your request, one file at a time, a record of your agreement is kept, and the service is asked to delete its copy once the words are back. If you connect your own account, nommo keeps its key sealed, uses it only for this, and removes it when you disconnect. The draft is yours to correct, and to keep or discard.

23. Replacing the file of a work

If the file behind a work needs putting right, you can ask to replace it: to fix a fault, to supply a better copy, to correct a mistake, or to bring a lesson up to date. A replacement must be the same work. A different work is a new upload. Every replacement is reviewed by nommo before it takes effect, and until it is approved the file already in place stays on sale and keeps playing. nommo aims to answer within the time shown on the request page. That is an aim and not a guarantee, and nommo is not liable for the time a review takes. The number of requests you can make in a given period is limited, the limits are shown on the request page, and a request that is declined or withdrawn still counts. nommo may decline a replacement, and will tell you why. When a replacement is approved, the people who own the work are told that its file has changed.

24. nommo is in beta

nommo is in beta: a working platform being tried with real creators and collectors ahead of its full launch. During beta, nommo is operated by nommo Creative Lab, a business registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria. nommo Creative Lab is the party you are dealing with when you use nommo, and wherever these terms say "nommo", "we" or "us", that is who is meant. It is a registered business, not yet a company. Once the beta is over a company will be formed to run nommo, and nommo Technologies and the nommo Institute will be registered in their own right. These terms will name each of them when it exists. Everything you do here during beta is real. What you buy is yours, what you earn is paid to you, and payments are taken through nommo's payment processor on nommo's behalf. When the company is formed, your account and everything in it carries over to it: your collection, your works, your earnings and these terms. You will not have to do anything, and we will tell you when it happens. Because this is a beta, features can change, and things can go wrong more often than they will later. We will tell you about anything that affects what you own or what you are owed.

25. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as nommo grows. Material changes will be posted here with an updated date; continued use of nommo after a change means you accept the update.

Also read the Terms for collectors, which apply to you too whenever you buy on nommo.