THE PROBLEM WITH THE NIGERIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY ( AND WHY IT HASN'T GROWN IN THE LAST 5 YEARS)

Limited Sources of income

It has always been about the live performance. If you hang around Nigerian musicians, you often hear them say things like “I can’t wait to start getting paid shows”, they never identify any other means of making money. Artists in Nigeria don’t even make money from royalties. They either don’t know that they can get paid for having their videos played or they don’t know how to go about it. Even in the height of the CD era, artist earnings from live performance was mostly or all they had to look forward to.

No New Faces Or Voices

we don’t get introduced to new acts as much as we should. The industry is being “monopolized” by the already established artists. With Nigeria having websites and TV stations that promote the entertainment world more than before, one would expect that the internet would be a leveling force, because you don’t have to be promoted by a major company to find your audience, but that is not the case Or it might be that people are all pretty much the same — and they all want to hear Ice Prince.

Poor Money Habits

Most Nigerian artists don’t diversify when spending or investing. They mostly have that earn to spend tendency. That is why most artists are paid one year and in the next year they are broke and have no money to even shoot a proper video, and those who are not yet popular depend too much on their parent’s money as startup money for them to actually be successful.

A Wrong Mind Set

Most artists in Nigeria don’t improve with time, actually they more like depreciate musically. The recurrent production of horrible music from popular artists is the only proof I need to back up this opinion. How many times have you seen a popular artist’s name associated with a song and in excitement click on the download link only to be insulted by the verses that follow. Their nonchalance and lack of effort when making “music” is just insulting to Nigerians. I think they start to believe that they don’t need to put in effort anymore now that they are known. And for some strange reason the new acts seem to believe that the rubbish we are appalled by is the new standard for music production in Nigeria, so they produce their own “insulting” sound tracks thinking ‘this is what Nigerians like, surly this song will get airplay’. Hence, the cycle of rubbishy music continues. At the end of the day, there is no improvement in the music industry.