The Music Industry
Some days ago, I was having a discussion with one of my clients and I promised to write down a couple of points regarding our discussion – The Nigerian Music Industry. The topic is worrying and needs immediate attention. It’s so broad and profound that one can write a four-hundred-page book from it. Nevertheless, I’d start from somewhere and make it up to a series.
Let me start with a brief introduction of myself, I am Ninalowo Boladale a graduate of mass communication, I have been heavily involved in the music industry for a while now. I have seen so many come into the industry and succeed and I have seen my fair share of failures!
I took my time to analyse the Nigeria Music Industry and from my findings, I can infer that 70% of those in the industry live fake lives. Most people that portray themselves as Public Relations personnel don’t even know what PR means. Some individuals with no education whatsoever in PR can just decide to start a blog and plagiarise content from other sources and automatically tag themselves PR personnel or hype men.
Moreover, artistes and record labels are always glad to make use of these sub-par “PROs” as agents of promotion. At the end of the day, they dine and wine with the artiste take pictures and this is all they have to show for their hustle. All these break my heart and I pray professionalism is embraced in the field just like other disciplines.
Some years back, when I started the music business officially, I discovered a talented lady who happened to be a very close friend. First thing I did was to actually enrol her in music school where she learnt how to play the keyboard, sight read and had some proper vocal lessons. Eventually, she left but in the course of the struggle I decided to acquire more knowledge by acquiring a certificate in presentation from the Federal Radio Cooperation of Nigeria and training under ace managers like Sunday Are.
My time and perseverance was not I vain as I acquired lots of knowledge and connections especially through Sunday Are’s office. I later came in contact with a veteran and talented act in the industry whose project exposed me to some spotlight, people got to know me as king of the streets after Danku whom I have always respected. This project got me traction and respect in a notable record label in Nigeria (Assistant General Manager). Towards the end of 2016 I did another project for the label which went viral.
THE NIGERIAN ENTERTAINMENT STRUCTURE
Every discipline has a structure, the same cannot be said about the Nigerian Music Industry, especially the record labels. Most record labels in Nigeria are not well structured which has affected the entire industry adversely. I see the record label as the foundation of the industry development because they are the sponsor and even when the artiste is the one sponsoring himself /herself they are running a record label.
This makes me remember the very first time I stepped into MAVIN’S House at Lekki, I saw a very working structure and I knew that Korede Bello and Reekado Banks were going to be great! I told my boss then, Sunday Are, that I was impressed with what I saw.
In same manner, I have seen other record labels comprising of in-experienced personnel that are not even ready to learn from professionals just because the owner of their label is rich and influential, while some artistes that do not even have a label are thriving just because they understand the game.
OFFICES
However, the undefined structure has given room for non-identification of different offices. Everybody is now an artiste manager, a promoter, a public relations officer, Road Manager, Social media influencer and all. But the understanding of these disciplines will make things work smoothly.
MUSIC FLOW
Music is a very strong tool of change, communication and orientation. Music as a message needs to be gotten across to the decoder just like in the communication model where message comes from the encoder goes through a channel and finally gets to the decoder who decodes and sends feedback.
People often asked the question of how songs travel wide within a short period of time, though some songs take longer to “blow” as we call it. Going by trend there are several channels available for music promotion these will be mentioned below. However, they all have their strengths and weaknesses but we won’t go into those details.
- Radio
- Television
- Clubs
- Music vendors
- Internet
- Streets (alaba promoters)
- Schools
All the channels above are agents of music promotion but their best use yields maximum results.
PLAYERS
The major players in the industry are the sponsors, whom we all refer to as record label owners. Most of these people love music and really want to see the industry grow while some just want to assist and develop that young talented dude hustling to get there. Without money, every other sector of the game is void.
Another strong hold is the talent(artiste) even if there is money and no songs to push across then the money is as good as useless. You would wonder why I put the sponsors first and still say when there is no talent money is dormant? Yes, this is because talents are easy to find and nurtured but sponsors are difficult to find. People who worked hard to make money would spend judiciously.
Not deviating from the artistes’ part, most artistes in the industry do not understand what music is, I came across a so-called artiste and asked him what he understands by the term music but the response weighed me down he said “Music Is Music”, That is why I have categorized the acts as follows Musician and Artistes.
The digital and analogue production and performances differentiates these two categories of acts, deep music knowledge would have helped in a lot of ways both on the artists and listeners’ parts. Imagine an act that does not know his/her key in terms of vocal range and does not even know when he/she is off key while performing.
Moving from the acts there are other players in the music structure that aid the success of a structured record label these are as follows
1 manager
2 assistant general manager
3 brand manager
4 public relations officer
5 promoter
6 producers
7 information communication technology personnel
8 road managers
9 sound engineers
All these players have vital roles to play in the smooth running of a music organization.
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