Oye Akideinde: An entertainment capitalist [Inside by Pulse]

His wife attended University of Nigeria, Nsukka and was friends with Noble Igwe, then a PR professional. That was how Akideinde and Noble Igwe met.

At the time, Akideinde was Head of a Unit at First City Monument Bank but he had a blog where he used to write reviews. Noble who also wrote for Bella Naija at the time would reach out to Oye for album reviews for his artists, which he would then publish in newspapers. One thing led to another; Oye, Noble and Bimbo launched 360nobs.

“Music represents life, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like some form of music,” he says on why he kept on coming back to music.

Today, he is the CEO of MusicTime. This comes after his two-year stint as the West African Regional Director of Boomplay and Head of Business Development at Spinlet. Here is Oye Akideinde On Vol. 2 of Inside by Pulse Nigeria.

Oye on 360nobs and community

360nobs got press releases from Bella Naija and Linda Ikeji at its launch. NotJustOk Founder, Demola Ogundele and Akideinde were also friends. “There was no competition at the time, it was about building community,” Akideinde says. “When 360nobs crashed for the first time, Demola told me, “Welcome to be big leagues” [laughs].””

These values that Akideinde, now a foremost industry leader in Nigerian entertainment still moves with. Close to him is an array of young people for whom he unknowingly serves as mentor or benefactor.

How did 360nobs scale in a tight market?

Akideinde reminisces, “We operated a garage style business. We all had jobs, so we spent our own money on the business. At the time, I used to sleep for maybe two or three hours and that used to be funny to my wife who used to ask if I was married to my laptop or her. I still don’t sleep these days.

“After the site crashed, we started scaling up pretty quickly because people liked our brand. One thing that really helped us scale fast was fruitful brand partnerships.”

Oye on free music

“I think free music will always exist because most Nigerians cannot afford to pay for music. The model that free music operates with will just have to change - that’s what YouTube and Audiomack are thriving at currently. For example, Gen Z grew up on YouTube, a legalized medium for free music. How do we convince them that they have to pay?

“We have to keep trying though. A studio session starts from about N50,000 and the average video costs about N1.5 million. Artists spend money, they have to be able to recoup. Listeners shouldn’t go to pirate sites that don’t pay artists,” he says.

Oye at Spinlet

In 2011, Akideinde joined Spinlet after being poached by Eric Idaihi, to become the company’s new Head of Business Development. The company went on to become one of the early models for online premium music in Nigeria. While the company has since gone under, it does enjoy pioneer status.

To get its name out, It did some amazing partnerships with Coca Cola XL and Etisalat as well as Samsung and TECNO. The company’s name/logo was on Coke bottles and they also preloaded Samsung and TECNO phones with Spinlet apps.

That stint taught Oye that, “The music business is expensive. Now, you see a lot of aggregators but then, you had to talk to three aggregators to get 2Face’s album. We had challenges with payment and billing as well as catalogue.”

Oye on partnerships

When Oye left Spinlet for TECNO, he had grown the base from 150,000 to 1.3 million and according to him, that’s down to the partnership model he worked with at 360nobs.

“No man is an Island. You have to run collaborations, build teams and reach out. Worst case is they say no. But please, just ask,” he says.

Oye at Boomplay

While working at Spinlet, Akideinde pitched the idea of a music phone to TECNO, but it didn’t work out. Months later, Joe He, CEO of Transsnet hit Akindeide up that he needed to bring the music phone idea back and that he needed people on the team. Akideinde was helping with the people He wanted when he was offered an opportunity to lead the team.

TECNO followed the Apple model - hardware [phones] and iTunes/Apple Music. One attraction with TECNO was the opportunity to scale up faster in the user base than Spinlet did with the already established TECNO brand, which owns about 65% of the Android market in Africa.

The music phone became Boomplay.

Oye at MusicTime

MusicTime is a streaming platform that only charges per usage. You can learn about it HERE. For now, the platform is building on its innovations and it's taking things one step at a time.

Oye on the future of music, singles and playlists

Akideinde says that our world is a singles market because;

Singles are cheaper to make.
The world is going through a saturation of content that is aggregated by streaming platforms.
The generations that matter have a short attention span, so they don’t have the cool to play albums.

To him, the singles market is one of the reasons why EPs are now popular and why songs are shorter. He says, “In the old days, it was more expensive to put singles on vinyls than albums. With digital, it’s easier. The packaging is also out the window - artists can also mix and master at a faster rate because there is a software for everything.

“This singles market also means that if you release a song and its numbers remain static/start to dip after four weeks, then the song will probably not [enter].

“Playlists aren’t necessarily killing the artform or creativity, it’s just a way for artists to rise above the clutter. Playlists are just being propelled by our current reality - a singles market [smiles]. Even on playlists, you have a lot of good music. Instead of complaining, it’s better for artists to build networks that can include editors and curators.”

Oye on why artists need to be creative

Asides owning rights to their catalogue as necessary, Akideinde says that artists need to treat music like a career, record a lot, release a lot of catchy music with resonant titles and have a strategy. He says, “This singles market is why music is getting propelled solely by social media. Why’s an album not getting propelled by TikTok or Triller?

“For an artist, you need to treat music like a career. You can’t stay on one song in this world, keep putting music out. In this fast-paced world, if the music doesn’t hit in 30 seconds, it would probably never hit - not all your songs will hit, you need substitutes.

“Strategy is also important. I used to have an artist who promoted his music by handing out CDs to local shops in his neighborhood and it got so big that it filtered to the streets. Artists need to master the art of using their neighbourhoods. Artists need to also read and learn.

“Nigeria still has a data problem and people don’t want to waste data on terrible music. Artists can use messaging and payments platforms to build the community they need.”

Oye on how artists should monetize their music videos

Currently, Akideinde says that one of the problems artists have is that they’re wrongly monetizing their music videos. He says, “Most artists are currently losing ⅔ of potential revenue from videos. Artists should monetize their videos as a music video, not as a web item. It’s the only way your 10 million views will make sense.”

Akideinde feels like Nigeria is in a learning phase but he says that we can escalate by emulating successful models in other countries.

Oye on being employable

Having led some of Africa’s leading online music purchase businesses, Akideinde has employed a number of people and this conversation led to standing out as an employee. He says, “As a prospective employee, you just have to be different. People think I’m crazy because I build crazy teams [laughs].

“During the interview for Boomplay’s former Royalty Analyst, Aanu, I asked her, ‘13 x 14’ [laughs] and she started calculating with her hands - that blew me away. I’ve interviewed people with whom I only discussed music throughout. I just want to know people can do what they say they can do.

“If it’s a music service, you must love music. You must also be smart, fun, exciting and a little crazy [laughs]. I also value diction - you must know how to write basic emails. Degree is also unimportant - I’ve employed people with no degrees. When I did my Masters’ in the UK, you needed 15-year experience or a B.S - that taught me a lot.”

Oye’s vanity

Calm down, this is nothing damning. Oye is a collector of physical copies of albums [spanning over 20 years], vinyls comic books and paintings. In his house, there are several attractive paintings and artworks. When he was young, he used to paint and draw. Not anymore though…

While he grew up in the album era with the boombox, his physical album collection has started to gather dust. Now, he’s getting influenced by Gen Z and has become a playlist person.