Can spontaneous albums work in Nigeria?

On August 14, 2015, Naeto C put out a new album titled “Day 1” with no warning. Prior to this, the Super C’s last album drop was in 2011. We were watching, but we were expecting teasers and an announcement before being served.

A spontaneous album release in Nigeria! How bold of Mr C. The nature of the Nigerian music industry is ever changing with the digitization of music distribution, international collaborations, copyright enforcements and more, but the question is “can spontaneous albums work in Nigeria?”

Let’s look at the success story of Beyoncé. When she released her self-tiled album on December 13, 2013, with no notice or promotions, the chatter was roaring, non bey-lievers were made converts; the “Beyoncé” vibes were contagious.

The Queen B’s album made up of a 14-songs and 17-video collection sold 80,000 downloads within the first three hours of its release, it made a number one debut on the Billboard 500 chart and five of her songs made it to the top of the Billboard 100 chart.

U2 also made a similar move on September 9, 2014 by giving everyone with an Apple gadget their “Song of Innocence” album for free. Brilliant marketing strategy. Next person to pull a surprise move was Canadian recording artist Drake. On February 13, he released “If You're Reading This It's Too Late”.

His mixtape made it to number one of the Billboard 200 chart. It also sold 495,000 units within the first week of its release. By August 1, 2015, the album went platinum, selling 1 million copies in the United States and making history by being one of the best selling albums of the year.

Beyoncé, Drake and U2’s success can be attributed to the fact that they are established international artists.

Let’s come back home. Naeto C possibly made history with modern contemporary music by being the first artist to drop an album with no notice in Nigeria. Music websites in doing their jobs became marketers for the album, social media created the necessary buzz to promote the album after the release.

Yes there was a lot of talk around his release, but the chatter died down after two days and started again on August 17 when he released his ‘Day 1’ single.

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"It's fresh, it's dope, it's modern and it's totally unskippable", Tayo says.

Despite the fact that the tracks are great, we are yet to see any of them top the radio charts. Should we blame this on the insane mass consumption of music in our society?

In analysing if spontaneous albums can work, we have to ask: what was Naeto C’s agenda? Was he afraid of his music leaking? With Nigerian artist making almost nothing from physical album sales, was he looking to ensure he made money from album sales?

So many questions.

The artist’s genre of music on  “Day 1” is hip-hop. He makes no compromise on his third-studio album to satisfy the afrobeat cravings of the masses. Hip-hop remains a resolute movement in Nigeria in the sense that it doesn’t sell, Afrobeat does.

“Day 1” was initially made only available on MTN’s Music Plus app with each song costing N50. We are yet to gather how much Naeto C made from his album. But we must note that using just MTN stifled the circulation and accessibility of the album. On August 16, 2015, the album was eventually made available to the public.

From the examples of Beyoncé, Drake and U2, one thing they all had in common was the fact they released their albums first via iTunes. From using these international acts as case studies, elements that affect the reception of a surprise album include: the status of the musician, the demographics of the listener and the genre and quality of music.

In conclusion, surprise albums can only work if one is an established artist with a large social media following and active star to fan engagement. And if albums are launched on channels easily accessible to fans.