• Friday, March 29, 2024
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‘The corporates chase business aspect of music, artistes mind content’

Chidi Okeke , during the interview 2

From being behind the scene in music production, record label/artiste management, Chidi Okeke, MC/CEO, Mcomm Solutions and Services, and an entertainment entrepreneur, is now using technology to drive music development in Africa. In this interview with Obinna Emelike, he shades light on the issues in the music industry, solutions, trends, among others.

What do you think is driving many into music today?

We are all Nigerians. By the time you finish school and think of what to do, and think of the car that DBanj drives, you will start thinking that you can also sing and make money like Dbanj. There are so many songs that when I listen to them I ask why is the singer is the music business because they don’t make any sense. What is driving them is the amount of money they can make. You don’t have idea of the numbers of “artistes” that exist in Nigeria; everybody wants to sing. I went somewhere and the security guy was telling me how he made songs, and a tailor also told me that he has songs. The thing that is driving them is when they see the big life that these other guys in the music industry are living and when they see what is going on, people want to get into the music industry.

When you announce an audition for a music competition, thousands of people will apply because they want to get into the industry, but not all will make it. Again, I am happy that the likes of Priaz and Bez have tried to keep what they are doing, though it is not easy. Now, they are trying to focus on other areas or countries that appreciate the kind of music they are making. But the truth is that we can use technology to solve the problem, to get their music to the right people that will appreciate it. The likes of Asa left here for France and she became a star over there. Any time I hear the story of their tours, I marvel and the crowd is all white people that appreciate their talents.

But there are people who appreciate Asa music in Nigeria. We need to use technology to find them. She has not been able to make as much locally in Nigeria, but she is very big outside. We need to push people that can really set a path for the industry. There are lots of things I wish we can correct now. Sometimes you stumble on it by luck and if you are lucky someone picks it up. I have read report on how Spotify blew someone, The Weekend made over $77 million in one year because they got pushed by a platform.

Why I was talking about the Asa part is that when I watched how she prepares for her concerts, the amount of dedication, planning and attention to detail, I discovered she cares about what people are going to see about the concert and not just the money you pay for a table. She is concerned about giving you something that shows what she has inside her. When I watch the concerts of the likes of Beyoncé, I ask, when are we going to get here, when are we going to know that it is not about jumping on the stage, but about what you are going to put out.

It is not going to change if the people keep seeing that these artistes are making money and how they make the money, and flying private jets.  Now, if they are making money, there is nothing you will tell these guys to do differently, so what do we do?

Is the music money still flowing like before in the industry?     

Like I said, the era of 2016/2017 revenues were being generated, guys were performing, they were now making money from digital,  everybody now wants to open a record label. Someone will come to me and because he has money, he will tell me Chidi please help me I want to open a record label, all because the wants to be in control of an artiste and of the people that can validate the money he has.

But by the middle of 2017 and early 2018, the revenues even disappeared. Issues with regulations, NCC, MTN fine, and 9Mobile issue cut the revenue. Caller Tunes by MTN has gone from N1 billion a month to something very ridiculous. Two months ago, I heard that they did just over N50,000. The number of people that have even lost their jobs in the industry is unbelievable, but people don’t know, but are moving on.

But what the artistes did, especially the very smart ones among them, was to immediately switch on to international platforms. Remember that exchange of dollar to Naira has gone up from 160 to 400 and back to 360. So, any money they get paid internationally is a lot of money.

I remember about a year and half ago Tekno was collecting N4 million or even N3 million here. But when we get a show even in a small club in South Africa, they are willing to pay him $30, 000-$40,000. Same thing for Runtown, he was collecting N2 million here and started collecting $50,000 in South Africa. If you change that money to Naira, as an artiste, where will you want to focus?

Mr. Eazi knew that he cannot push from Nigeria, so he went to Ghana and blew from there. Yet, he does not do much in Nigeria from his base in Ghana, now he has gone to the UK. It tells you that people are chasing where the money is because they need to survive.

A lot of people blame the money chase and poor output on lack of structure, do you agree?

In other countries like America, it is the corporates that set up the structures. They understood that the artistes need money, so, they set up different structures. It is not the artiste that set up Sonny Music, Spotify, Apple Music among others. The corporates control the industry by setting up platforms and avenues to feed those artistes that are creating the contents.

To answer your question, an artiste is not meant to chase the business aspect of music; the corporates do that, while the artiste focus on the creative side of the business, that is content creation.

The artistes should have business managers, and all that. Allow the mangers to make sure that you have enough money to feed your lifestyle. In Nigeria, it is the artiste that hires the manager and when the manager does not tell him what he wants to hear, he fires him.

But over there, it is the corporates that set it up and give the artiste a manager. Chris Brown had no say, Bu, his manager, who is also Akon’s junior brother, does that. After a while, the record label changed Bu and put someone else to manage Chris Brown. But with all his craziness, Chris Brown only focused on creating music, if he needs money, the company will give him advance, and take it off from the revenue that he makes.

But I keep wondering when, not necessarily  government, but the corporates here will understand that excuses that the industry is not structured, artistes are misbehaving and all that, no longer hold  water because that is how artistes behave everywhere in the world. You have to seize the opportunity and look at them differently.

Even when you consider that when you sign contract with artistes they don’t keep to it, that is how it started then, but we as entrepreneurs don’t realize that as the guy progresses, you should also give him breathing space. I will give you an example with Jay Z and Kanye West. Kanye West was Jay Z’s boy, he was signed under Jay Z. There was a tour we attended when he was trying to sign Dbanj, it was then I understood that the tour was Kanye’s pay off. Jay Z was allowing him to create his own label and sing his own music label direct to them because Kanye West cannot continue making money off him for so long.

You should know when to let the guy go, or review the contract. I keep watching all the problems that happen in the music industry here. I remember when Banky W and Wizkid started. I called Wizkid to my office and I told him that you can’t do this, I was pleased that he listened though he was very upset with the situation then. I also liked the maturity that Banky W had.  He let Wizkid go without issues.

Even in terms of structure,  it seems we are expecting so much from these guys, what kind of education do most of them have, we expect too much from them,  you expect  them to set up companies, have lawyers, road managers, business managers, and others, it is not possible. The reason Dbanj and his team made truck load of money then was because of the many skilled people that work on Dbanj’s project then. Think about the team you never get to see. You see Mo Hits, but never knew what was behind them; is it the lawyers, me and Femi. People never knew that in one quarter, we have already cashed in N250 million. We wrote proposals to different places, Ghana, Gabon, and Dbanj will go and perform, but people never knew what was behind it. This is where structure has worked, it is not the artiste that did that, but the artistes recognized that this is my talent, I can go out and perform but was smart enough to know that all these paper work, I cannot do them and let me allow people who know how to do them to work.

In all these, what is your focus now?

My focus on how I am taking this is that we are following where the money is because that is where these guys are. In Africa what we have that we can put forward is the numbers, I am talking about Nigeria now. Our numbers are meant to be our strength to kill any competition that is going to come out. The can do spirit, which the British Consul wrote in their report, discovered something unique about us Nigerians, the report discovered that most stakeholders in the music industry have not gone to learn the business of this music, so how are they able to generate the huge revenues.

I was reading the report a few days ago and the writer said he found out that there is a spirit inside them that whether they know how to do it or not, they are just going to try to do it.

 But to be honest, that can only take us to a certain limit; if we leave it the way it is now, others countries might take over.  I am scared of countries like Kenya and South Africa because when you look at the quality behind, performance wise and content generation, which are now backed by technology, and if you give them a little time, they will overtake us. Right now, Nigeria is on top, when it comes to music, if we go to Kenya and create a Nigerian concept there, it will sell out even when there is a Kenyan show at the same time. If you turn it around and there is a Kenyan concert in Nigeria when a Wizkid is having a concert, everybody will be at Wizkid’s concert.

What is the solution to the skills gap and competition?

The pace at which technology is going now, if I feel that something will happen in the next three-five years, it means it may happen next year. So, there is a gap, and it is about skill-set. Right now, nobody is thinking of getting education on how to hold microphone or songwriting, nobody believes that. Even the established artistes, when you ask them to send their guys on training such as online marketing, they don’t believe that.

Even in South Africa, the artistes have vocal trainers, but the Nigerian artiste is too confident that he will shot down venues without all these checks, and trainings, they don’t even believe in rehearsing even for their own shows and sometimes don’t do the sound checks.

It is usually shocking when music labels open up on their fears and challenges. For instance, because Wizkid is trying to fit in internationally, his managers take his songs to the UK to mix and master it. Normally, they should be able to send the songs to the sound engineers there, but those guys don’t understand their sounds. So, I said, if we set up the equipment here and they pay about £800 per song, but Wizkid’s sound engineer said the problem is that we don’t know how to use the equipment here. So, what they did was to go to the UK, whizkid paid for his sound manager to seat with the UK sound engineers.

Now there are a lot of softwares that do a lot of things. Also, many don’t know how to use the softwares yet some of them shun training; they feel that it is embarrassing, how can you say I should go to school, why.

Even without training, there are lots of people who don’t understand what it means to go into a music business, they don’t even understand the legal aspect of it. The situation on ground is often a litigation lawyer whose work has nothing to do with intellectual property but wants to be the artiste’s lawyer or switch to entertainment law and at the end of the day they get into different sorts of agreements that when they get into the trouble later on you start wondering who did this.