Kudos to all the trending artistes and those that maintain to strike a balance to survive, outside those names, the industry is worse off this year than ever.  Any institution that fails to encourage the upcoming or provide a platform for every good material to compete favorably is in a decaying state.  In a Nigerian music industry filled with trailer loads of talented and hardworking artistes, how come it’s hard(outside the exploit of the likes of @Richassani) to find one new talent/new material that blew up into A-lister status in 2017?

Forget the varying facts surrounding management or record labels, the reason for this abnormality is the obvious fact that these days, the price for new material from artistes to break through is astronomically high because the number of Nigerians (in the major music structures like music channels and radio stations among others) using massive payola as obstacles to deprive Nigerian artistes from succeeding is unbelievable.

Some OAPs handling the major music commentary belts have become celebrity superstars! That is good news but upcoming artistes should not be the ones put under pressure to pay for their exorbitant life styles. Music channel executives forming standards but hiding under the pretext of payola to deprive artistes from having their videos been aired, we know you. It’s a music business, we understand things will exchange hands but it must be considerate.

Forget the hype, outside the material from the obvious big name artistes; every other material from any artistes is subjected to unbelievable standards. How can you tell a new artiste that before their videos are aired they must have up to 100 thousand views on YouTube? If they have that, why will they need you? To have Nigerians in Nigerian companies depriving Nigerian artistes from growing, is that not lunatic? Back then, the likes of Channel O supported our music massively and gave us room to grow without bias. We now control things but we are using our powers to oppress others.  This industry is caving in, when the trending artistes today have done their bits, who will be left? Shout to the like of Industry Nite, The Basement Gig, Celeb Stopover and others who have created platforms for several folks to be heard without bias.

– Sesan Adeniji