Last week marked the 13th year since legendary highlife pioneer, Oliver de Coque (born Oliver Sunday Akanite), passed away. A beautiful illustration by Ohab Tochukwu (Ohab TBJ), a Lagos-based artist, was used as a Google doodle to commemorate this anniversary. And the cogs started spinning in my head.
Oliver de Coque is widely praised for his ability to use his lyrics as apt social commentary, but his technical skill, although lauded, still needs to be emphasised.
From a musician’s perspective, many people may not realise how technically sound he was. The teenage Oliver de Coque was hired immediately after a performance by a band he had convinced to allow him to stand in as guitarist. It is one thing to make a catchy tune, a distinct riff or an infectious melody, but the virtuoso-like skill that this man possessed is felt when you take a deeper look at his musical composition, the layers of instruments, the pacing and time signatures.
His feel for rhythm and timing elicited a primal call to move to gyrate, a definite trait of the highlife genre, and this blueprint is what many contemporary artists borrow today. Oliver de Coque crawled so others could walk.
Oliver de Coque, while well known amongst West African locals, particularly those of Igbo descent, was never quite the global superstar. In spite of this, his extensive music catalogue could be worth a fortune in today’s evolving economy.
How do you value a music catalogue?
It is a rather complex venture to calculate the worth of an artist’s posthumous intellectual property, but it begins with the publishing catalogue. This catalogue represents 100 percent of the copyright interest that the artist owns. This would include, where applicable, writer’s share, publisher’s share and performance rights or royalties. On occasion, if the artist or songwriter is also a producer and has received a master royalty, then producer royalties may also be included in the deal. But there is a marketplace for mechanical royalties, strictly streaming income, etc.
Ownership of the catalogue will allow controllers of his estate to receive a large chunk of the revenue stemming from its use. This will include revenue from streaming platforms, album sales, radio play, caller-tune play every time his music is used as a score in a movie, every time his music is sampled by another artist, etc. All this will accrue passively and for several decades following the artist’s death. For your global superstar, the likes of Beyonce, this figure would run into the millions.
For context, Spotify generally pays between $. 003 and $. 005 per stream, meaning you’ll need about 250 streams to make a dollar. So an artist of Oliver de Coque’s popularity could earn a few thousand dollars passively, all things considered. This is from just one platform.
In 1985, Michael Jackson wanted to explore the untapped value of music publishing, so he purchased the publishing rights to 251 Beatles songs, along with 40,000 other copyrights owned by ATV Music, for $47 million. In 1995, Jackson went on to sell 50 percent of the company for $100 million and in 2016, his estate sold the other half for $750 million. This works to a whopping 1,600 percent return.
What would his music catalogue be worth now?
Oliver de Coque was from a time when artists generated most of their revenue through live performances. As a result, his catalogue was not positioned to maximise its revenue generation potential. A lot of his music, which spans 73 albums, remains missing from major streaming platforms, and the public relations following his death has been entirely based on his status as an icon.
We see a more active management approach with his slightly older contemporary, Fela Kuti. The present-day reverence and popularisation of Fela Kuti are fully merited, but one cannot help but marvel at the significance of the PR and management of his catalogue in the decades following his death and its effect on his current relevance and the financial impact this has had on Fela’s estate. In a battle of talent and music catalogue, you’d be splitting hairs trying to compare Fela and Oliver de Coque, yet one sells out 10,000-seater halls for musical theatre renditions of his life and times.
Accurately calculating the value of a posthumous catalogue involves assessing financial models and basic economic principles tied to various domestic and global economic factors, including the posthumous PR and the growing worldwide streaming industry.
Recently, streaming and the data generated from streams have made it easier to calculate the worth of a catalogue and project future earnings. Locally, Spotify just announced its operations in Nigeria and even the most rigid of technophobes has started to make the jump to music streaming platforms. All this is to say that now is the best time to capitalise on this transition as there certainly is a pretty penny available for the effort, and as a collateral benefit, maybe we could see a cultural resurgence of the late great Oliver de Coque.
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