Gilbert Bani, popularly known by his stage name A-Q, is a Nigerian rapper and entrepreneur working on building a database of earnings in the music industry in Africa. In this interview with SEYI JOHN SALAU, he disclosed what influenced ConnectHead, a platform he leverages for African data for the music industry. Excerpts:
What is the idea behind ConnecrHead?
One December two years ago, I was surfing the internet for data on the revenue and expenditure patterns of Nigerian music. What I found out however, was just the revenue generated according to a report which pegged earnings at $38 million, but what I couldn’t find out, however, was the amount of money that went into the music-making process. The lack of that data was what planted the seed for ConnectHead. With this idea, I wanted to have a close approximation of what was spent on the music-making process from beats for all the albums released in Nigeria, all the cost for the videos made, promotion for singles and all that data. You quickly realise that there’s no place for any of this data because platforms like Spotify and Apple Music don’t put out that detail. All they do is share that certain albums have a number of streams but there’s no idea how much was spent on it.
When I started thinking of ConnecrHead, my idea was to put all of the service providers in one place, and with that you can have an idea of what expenditure is. Of course, you can’t have all the big artists on in the beginning but you can know how much things cost to make better business decisions.
I understand the platform has evolved into a one-stop hub of Nigerian music; how true is that?
Yes, more than two years after conceiving the original ideas, The ConnectHead has evolved into a one-stop hub of Nigerian music that is providing solutions. Some of those changes have been led by users. We realised that often people didn’t register with emails that they could access in instant time but with the app, those instant responses were possible. However, we still intend to work on the web but we want to have the app function as well. We are also thinking of how as we’re selling beats we have to work on split sheets too to make it equitable. We also want to have a service where if an artist can’t pay, they can split the revenue with the producer if they’re open to that.
So, what is the other unique selling proposition (USP) of the ComnnectHead in the marketplace?
Some of the evolution with the ComnnectHead is also focused on finding ways to make the music business process more collaborative, removing the back-and-forth approach that often bogs down the creative process. We have recognized that there are some essential service providers that a musician or music stakeholders need. These are the producer, graphic artist, PR, managers, digital marketers, A&R, and sound engineer. If you have these people, you are a business and if you don’t have them, you lack some sort of structure.
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What is the benefit of the platform’s collaborative feature?
Working with the ConnectHead’s collaborative feature, musicians will be able to assemble teams of highly qualified individuals to work on their project. With data, we can tell who’s doing it at the top of their game and we can then put them together in a group to work on music together instead of going back and forth with the different facets of the process. There’s a level of success when there’s structure instead of just waiting for the music to be done than trying to work on promotions and all.
Tell us about the marketing strategy of the platform?
For now, marketing efforts for the ConnectHead is led by an incentive-based approach that rewards loyal users of the platform. I realised that we have to have a lot of incentives: for example, we just put out the Blaqbonez competition where he’s giving us five verses for up-and-coming artists who use the platform successfully. Right now, we have over three thousand active users and we plan to have more incentives like partnering with prolific service producers to offer their services. That’s the crux of what we want to do, we want to connect artists to what they need for a successful music career. We’re also supposed to have more masterclasses to teach people how to use the ConnectHead and let them know how it offers an advantage.
Finally, what does the platform offers to users across the continent?
The innovation that the ConnectHead promises is a boon for African music at large. It’s not just for Nigerian music; it’s for Africa as a whole. It is very important that we engage every side of the continent with our vision. It’s almost important because the app was built by a Nigerian living in Nigeria that understands what we need and how to approach that need, that’s something you can’t take away from us. It might not be the best tech project yet but we have plans on improving, advancing, and crossing over deliberately into other markets. We also need to educate our people about why they need these services and the benefits it provides them.
