Streaming – Nigerian Artistes Must Face This Reality For Survival

With the Covid-19 shutdown of live music performances, musicians that solely depend on income made from show performances, live appearances at club events, and endorsement tailored through showing to perform at live event activations are in the red. To be sincere, almost all Nigerian A-list artistes depend on performance fees as the only structure for survival. But until a reliable vaccine is developed, and distributed across the world and consumer confidence is back to the point where show promoters are ready to organize again, musicians need to fall back to income made on streaming for survival.

The question now is, which are the reputable music-related streaming services today? At the first thought of it, it’s easier to come up with the names of the major players like Apple Music. But concerning this story, I will start by listing some of the streaming platforms that have contact offices in the country, and then I will name the top dogs. For artistes, It’s important to know that having your music on streaming platforms has more advantages beyond the money that is the end goal. The popularity that comes with having your music on the playlist from any of those streaming sites or having your banners promoted is massive brand building – the visibility that comes from it will trickle down.

MusicTime – When MTN – the telecoms giant put their weight launching MusicTime as a streaming platform, we all know this will become one of the most dependable platforms for the industry. Headed by Oye Akideinde, through innovation, they have been able to give artistes, labels, content-providers, and creators an actual dependable way of getting paid for their works. MusicTime is the world’s first time-based music-streaming service. If any artiste intends to chase the 1billion streaming numbers achieved by Davido, MusicTime is a good start for you.

BoomPlay Music – From the onset, knowing that some of those in the top management positions at this company are known faces in the music industry circle, it’s not rocket science to why the company excelled. They got several musicians to truth them, and I believed they lived up to the billing by remitting the royalties when due to the artistes. With over 62 million users, the Boomplay music streaming service launched in Nigeria in 2015 is a known name.

AudioMack – With regards to this streaming platform, although the jury is still out with regards to payment to artistes, as of the moment, several musicians are using their services. In January 2019, it announced it had reached 1.5 daily active users across its mobile apps and site.

Audiomack is an on-demand streaming service. Offline playback is free to all users and not blocked by a paywall. Users and artists can upload their music to the service through its website, and Audiomack uses a combination of fingerprinting, DMCA take-down requests, and curation to police-unauthorized sharing.

Spotify – As one of the top players in the music streaming business, several musicians often plan their songs and album release to how early their songs can get to be on their playlist. With over 299million users and 50 million catalogs, so many artistes get paid using their services.

Apple Music – With Apple Music now having a branch in Nigeria, and considering their leading role in the streaming business, it’s just wise for most musicians to add their services to their promotional plans. With over 60 million catalogs, the user base is massive. Their service also includes the Internet radio station called Beat 1, which broadcasts live to over 160 countries 24 hours a day.

Soundcloud – According to reports from its users, Soundcloud is more than a music streaming service, it’s an open global community. It’s fair to say that most of the new generation Nigerian musicians – Afro-pop freshmen like Fireboy DML and Oxlade have all benefited using the Soundcloud streaming and music sharing services. Although I am not too sure if artistes make money from their services, one fact is sure – artistes use their services to share and get their music popularity.