Problem facing nigeria music industry
First I have to start by acknowledging the fact that music industry is growing to finally become an industry, before now, it was just a sector.
When you think of the music industry in Nigeria, where a lot of music are released daily, you would give thumbs up to the artistes who are really going through a lot to put together those good music. Some artistes spend sleepless nights in the studio to create musical hits, and they really deserve credit for that. But when it comes to tracking the sales (I’m not talking about piracy now which is also a major problem) but I mean monitoring the music sales, it is yet to be put into practice.
For example, you find in a lot of home movies, the producers or makers of the movies make use of some music contents and they don’t pay for them unlike in some American and European countries where this is being taking care of.
Many employ music even in adverts (companies making use of it’s contents in their jingles). But with introduction of smart applications, tracking of our music will be a reality.
Also we have to look at the money issues. Money seems to have a louder voice in the industry than good music and the talent of the artiste. In the system, everyone’s trying to get rich. Don’t get it wrong, I’m not saying that making money is not necessary or money is not part of it, but the money thing has drastically taking over the scene and leaving very little for good music or hunger to do it right. Nowadays people no longer care about making good music but focus more on their financial stability. I will say money has become the ultimate arbiter. In our present world the richest artistes are the best artistes. You see more people deliberating on who’s the richest than who’s the better or best artistes, so the millionaires are in high demand and are more often talked about than the talented. This puts them at an advantage when it comes to judgement. Sure, when someone sells a lot of tracks you can’t say a negative thing about them, but something can actually be successful and still sucks. I think if your purpose is on how to make money, then you shouldn’t be in the music industry.
Also, the issue of financing generally. This time not as an interest or goal but as a medium to achieving your goal and success as an artiste. You get to see so many talents waste in the streets due to lack of finance to probably get a good production or airplay. You see a producer like Sarzbeatz for example who takes as much as 300 thousand naira for a track. Now his services can only be rendered to the already made and successful artistes or the rich kids in the industry who can afford such huge amount, leaving very little opportunity for the poor talents who can only afford 10 thousand naira or even lower for what I call a street production and the good songs they make end up in their rooms and mobile phones, the studio the song was recorded, probably their family and friends play them too. Due to the lack of finance this upcoming artistes get limited or no airplay, like we see in our present world, the media (Tv stations, Radio stations etc.) only talk about and play the songs by star artistes or you pay for those services as an upcoming artistes.
Also, when you take a look at most Nigerian music artistes, you will agree with me that they lack originality. You see so many artistes sounding similar, making use of similar beats and at times you get to hear same lyrics from two different artistes. Most of them no longer work hard to make good songs unlike in the past. This at times happen as a result of these artistes going to the studio, pay money to the producers, go into the boot and voice their songs and the producers don’t tell them what’s wrong or right with their songs in other not to loose them as customers. Most artistes don’t even understand music theoretically before going into it. Some of them actually started a career in music due to financial challenges and hardship. Really we miss the days of Sir Victor Uwaifo, Majek Fashek, Onyeka Owenu, Fela Kuti etc. when there was real value for music with so much originality.
Noisy tunes. These days there are little or no meaning in most of the songs we hear (especially the dance tracks), though some of the beats are good and danceable but very noisy. These songs have little or no massage to pass to the listeners. Don’t get it wrong, not like am against dance tracks, but one can still make a dance track reasonable by making use of good lyrics and making sure the song passes a massage across to the listeners. Some producers will also share the blame of this as you see many producers actually know little or nothing about music. Tell me how a producer who doesn’t know how to play any musical instrument will organise a good song.
Without learning production, most of this producers open up a studio maybe because the finance is there and they start making songs. Bad mixing could also attribute to this as not all producers are good in mixing and mastering a song, but all good producers should be able to mix and put together a good tune for listening pleasure.
Then, finally I will look at the negative role technology and digitalization of music production have played in the music industry. I bet about 80% of the artistes in the Nigerian music industry can’t boast of a live stage performance without their songs being played at the background. They get the miracles done by the producer in the studio through application of special effects to the voices and when they are asked to perform this songs they find it difficult to do so on stage without the aid of the song, Among the few that can perform without the song being played are those who can’t produce same excellent performances like you hear in the songs, you get to hear a different voice from that of the one in the recorded song, because live there on stage there won’t be any sort of special auto tune effect to help them out. Most of these artistes can’t even play a musical instrument, so how then does the inspiration come?, A question to be answered by the artistes.
As an artiste I advise you learn and understand at least a musical instrument.
First I have to start by acknowledging the fact that music industry is growing to finally become an industry, before now, it was just a sector.
When you think of the music industry in Nigeria, where a lot of music are released daily, you would give thumbs up to the artistes who are really going through a lot to put together those good music. Some artistes spend sleepless nights in the studio to create musical hits, and they really deserve credit for that. But when it comes to tracking the sales (I’m not talking about piracy now which is also a major problem) but I mean monitoring the music sales, it is yet to be put into practice.
For example, you find in a lot of home movies, the producers or makers of the movies make use of some music contents and they don’t pay for them unlike in some American and European countries where this is being taking care of.
Many employ music even in adverts (companies making use of it’s contents in their jingles). But with introduction of smart applications, tracking of our music will be a reality.
Also we have to look at the money issues. Money seems to have a louder voice in the industry than good music and the talent of the artiste. In the system, everyone’s trying to get rich. Don’t get it wrong, I’m not saying that making money is not necessary or money is not part of it, but the money thing has drastically taking over the scene and leaving very little for good music or hunger to do it right. Nowadays people no longer care about making good music but focus more on their financial stability. I will say money has become the ultimate arbiter. In our present world the richest artistes are the best artistes. You see more people deliberating on who’s the richest than who’s the better or best artistes, so the millionaires are in high demand and are more often talked about than the talented. This puts them at an advantage when it comes to judgement. Sure, when someone sells a lot of tracks you can’t say a negative thing about them, but something can actually be successful and still sucks. I think if your purpose is on how to make money, then you shouldn’t be in the music industry.
Also, the issue of financing generally. This time not as an interest or goal but as a medium to achieving your goal and success as an artiste. You get to see so many talents waste in the streets due to lack of finance to probably get a good production or airplay. You see a producer like Sarzbeatz for example who takes as much as 300 thousand naira for a track. Now his services can only be rendered to the already made and successful artistes or the rich kids in the industry who can afford such huge amount, leaving very little opportunity for the poor talents who can only afford 10 thousand naira or even lower for what I call a street production and the good songs they make end up in their rooms and mobile phones, the studio the song was recorded, probably their family and friends play them too. Due to the lack of finance this upcoming artistes get limited or no airplay, like we see in our present world, the media (Tv stations, Radio stations etc.) only talk about and play the songs by star artistes or you pay for those services as an upcoming artistes.
Also, when you take a look at most Nigerian music artistes, you will agree with me that they lack originality. You see so many artistes sounding similar, making use of similar beats and at times you get to hear same lyrics from two different artistes. Most of them no longer work hard to make good songs unlike in the past. This at times happen as a result of these artistes going to the studio, pay money to the producers, go into the boot and voice their songs and the producers don’t tell them what’s wrong or right with their songs in other not to loose them as customers. Most artistes don’t even understand music theoretically before going into it. Some of them actually started a career in music due to financial challenges and hardship. Really we miss the days of Sir Victor Uwaifo, Majek Fashek, Onyeka Owenu, Fela Kuti etc. when there was real value for music with so much originality.
Noisy tunes. These days there are little or no meaning in most of the songs we hear (especially the dance tracks), though some of the beats are good and danceable but very noisy. These songs have little or no massage to pass to the listeners. Don’t get it wrong, not like am against dance tracks, but one can still make a dance track reasonable by making use of good lyrics and making sure the song passes a massage across to the listeners. Some producers will also share the blame of this as you see many producers actually know little or nothing about music. Tell me how a producer who doesn’t know how to play any musical instrument will organise a good song.
Without learning production, most of this producers open up a studio maybe because the finance is there and they start making songs. Bad mixing could also attribute to this as not all producers are good in mixing and mastering a song, but all good producers should be able to mix and put together a good tune for listening pleasure.
Then, finally I will look at the negative role technology and digitalization of music production have played in the music industry. I bet about 80% of the artistes in the Nigerian music industry can’t boast of a live stage performance without their songs being played at the background. They get the miracles done by the producer in the studio through application of special effects to the voices and when they are asked to perform this songs they find it difficult to do so on stage without the aid of the song, Among the few that can perform without the song being played are those who can’t produce same excellent performances like you hear in the songs, you get to hear a different voice from that of the one in the recorded song, because live there on stage there won’t be any sort of special auto tune effect to help them out. Most of these artistes can’t even play a musical instrument, so how then does the inspiration come?, A question to be answered by the artistes.
As an artiste I advise you learn and understand at least a musical instrument.
