As a music artiste, there are two main ways to ‘blow’. The first path is by taking the stairs: growing an organic fanbase, accumulating more fans with each release and pushing through primarily on the quality of your music. This process usually takes years. The growth is gradual and you get to keep most of what you make, having spent little or nothing on paid advertising.
The second path is by using the money elevator: pay for streams, acquire a fanbase using paid advertising on social media. This gives immediate results and can happen almost overnight. The money spent is viewed as an investment. And this brings me to the tricky part of music business.
Music business is a gamble. You are spending tens of millions of naira or thousands of dollars with no guarantee that the investment will return money. Don Jazzy once said that it takes at least N100m to ‘break’ an artiste - make them go mainstream. The crazy thing is that the label may spend all these and the artiste fit no blow.
This brings me to the third option - a hybrid of both organic and paid. This is what a lot of your superstars did. And this favours an artiste with a solid talent. Here, a label or any other source is funding is used to push the artiste’s work to a wider audience.
The more resources you deploy, the faster your ‘blowing’.
Davido did this with his father’s money when he came into the industry. Others have done with the full funding and backing of a label. Rema and Ayra Starr has MAVINS. Asake has YBNL and Empire. Tyla has Epic Records. Shallipopi and Seyi Vibez had Dapper.
In my own opinion, Dapper did a fantastic job breaking Shallipopi into stardom in 2023. At the beginning of the year he was unknown. By the ending of the year, he was everywhere. This must have costed a ton of money. They executed perfectly and launched him from upcoming to a B-list artiste in one calendar year.
I listened to one of Shallipopi’s interviews where he compared music money to ‘ritual money’. According to him, “it can never finish and if any of my family members ask me for money, I give them freely because I know there is more…” My jaw dropped at the sheer ignorance on how a record advance works.
Is Dapper Father Christmas? If he spent N100m on you, how does he recover it?
N100m in May 2023 was about $220,000.
Most A-List videographers now charge in dollars. Anywhere between $10,000 and $50,000. Shallipopi has 12 music videos and 2 video-like visualizers. Streaming farms? Money. Influencer posts? Money. Big artiste features? Money. PR and press? Money.
A lot of persons do not know that a record advance is a loan that has to be recouped. Many artiste treat it as free money and this is the beginning of their problems.
Every single dime the label has spent on you have to be recouped before you see any share of your royalties. This is industry standard and written into the contract.
Again, if you leave a label, most times, they will keep earning from the records you produced while you were still with them. Banky W still gets paid from Wizkid’s first and second albums. Olamide still gets paid from AG Baby’s debut album.
That said, I believe Dapper needs to educate his artistes on how these things work and be more transparent. Show them how much they are earnings or have earned. Give them what is due them if you have recouped your advances.
Nigerian artistes also need to learn to honour contracts. You cannot be grovelling and taking deals blindly and collecting investment when you are a nobody and begin to carry shoulder or start screaming “I was a minor” when you feel you have arrived. Agreement is agreement. Get a lawyer to look through your contract and interpret all the clauses to you before you sign.
Nobody is putting a gun to your head. Know what you are getting yourself into. And when you have signed a contract, have the decency to honour it like a man without coming on social media to throw tantrums.
Again, no one forced you.
One artiste that I see taking the stairs and building an organic fanbase is Llona. He and his team are very intentional. After dropping what is arguably the best album in 2024, he is growing his fanbase gradually and seems to be spending money on the right things. His videos are not outlandish. His numbers are real and his core fanbase is solid.
Johnny Drille is another artiste that took the stairs and have build an organic following. Even with the funding from MAVINS, he is still very intentional about growing his fanbase.
The prime example of an artiste who took the stairs until he was helped by an act of God was Burna boy. From his Aristokrat Records-backed debut project in 2013, the talent was evident and he grew his craft with the support of his Mom/manager. 2018 ‘Ye’, the mix-up with Kanye West’s teased album exposed his songs to new audiences and launched him into the stratosphere.
Kizz Daniel is also making bank even without pulling the numbers of some of your faves. He has his audience that are loyal to his sound.
Olamide, Phyno and Flavour all took the stairs.
Take the stairs. If you are offered an elevator along the way, feel free to take it. But know that it comes at a cost. Most times, the cost is worth it. Yes, you may get a smaller percentage of the pie.
30% of $1m is $300,000.
100% of $1,000 is $1,000.
Again, ensure you are developing your craft and building your fanbase organically. It helps you in the long run.
If you are wholly reliant on buying streams, these vanity metrics may give you the impression that you are bigger than you really are.
Granted, you may be able to leverage the perception of being a big artiste - which may be different from the reality - to land brand deals and do tours.
But know that this is not always the case.
You know you are all that when you are making the real money from music, irrespective of what you numbers are saying.
Because in music, numbers can lie.
The only number that matters is what enters your bank account at the end of all your buga. 🙏🏽❤️
©️Kelvin Alaneme, 2024.
#MusicBusiness
#Afrobeats
#AlaAfrica
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