Using singer's 'Oni Reason' as a case study, here's why Nigerian artists buy Youtube views

Tillaman bought views for his ‘Oni Reason’ video on Youtube. And he hates to admit it. He is just like a lot of other Nigerian musicians who buy Youtube views. They heavily invest time and money into buying views.

In 2013, DJ Xclusive was outed by NET for his decision to throw some cash to boost his video by a couple of thousand views for his song ‘Pangolo’. Even recently, Mayorkun’s ‘Eleko’ video was embroiled in controversy after it was alleged by Pulse Editor-In-Chief, Osagie Alonge that he juiced his video to a million views in 10 days.

Well, the response from Davido and his camp was filled with indignation. And attacks on Alonge.

For Nigerians who buy views it is embarrassing to them when it becomes public knowledge, because it casts them in a dubious and desperate light. It also shows that they don’t have the amount of influence and fan base that they project, and hence go the extra length to appear cool.

A lot of websites sell YouTube views. These websites often control zombie-nets, which are virus-infected computers located all around the world. Some of these zombie-nets control up to 1,000,000 computers. After you pay those websites, they will queue your video up in all these computers and your video’s views will rise quickly to the amount you paid for.

Besides it being completely unethical and deceptive, it’s also quite obvious to spot when someone bought views.

An accepted count of the views/likes/comments on standard videos and on average an artist has 100,000 views, they usually have about 1,500 likes and 300 comments. This means 1 in 66 people likes the video after watching it, and 1 in 333 people comment on it. These are the metrics you should think of, and they don’t differ that much from non-music videos either.

But music videos who buy views get less. And a very great example is Tillaman’s ‘Oni Reason’ video featuring Davido. The video was released on April 9 2016, and at the moment, it has an impressive 585, 347 views. Not bad for an artist without so much of an influence or relevance in Nigerian music.

But when you go into the stats that back up such a lofty figure, you would begin to see the discrepancy in the numbers.

See below the cumulative graph of his views for 'Oni Reason'.

Cumulative graph for Tillaman's 'Oni Reason' video which shows a fake spike on the time watched.

Daily Views graph for Tillaman's 'Oni Reason' video which shows a fake spike on the time watched.

The sharp spikes on the graph clearly show that the video was juiced, using a robot at a single time.

Compare the above with the statistics for Kiss Daniel's 'Mama' video which shows how organic views ought are statistically represented.

Cumulative graph for Kiss Daniel's 'Mama' video which shows a organic spikes on the time watched.

Daily graph for Kiss Daniel's 'Mama' video which shows a organic spikes on the time watched.

The other statistic show worse. ‘Oni Reason’ video has very low 24 comments, which means that for every 25,000 people, only one person commented on it. And of these 24 people, only 3 are Nigerian. This means that in over 500k people who viewed it, only 3 Nigerians found it worthy enough of a comment. The remaining 21 people are Russians and Asians who type in Arabic.

Asalam Alaikum.

Tillaman bought over 500k views for Óni Reason’ video. The pointers are there, it is fact.

But why do Nigerian artists buy views?

Many artists end up buying fake because they think it will increase the likelihood that they will rank higher and be seen by more people. While it IS true that having higher numbers will weigh your content stronger in search results making it more likely to be seen, there are two ways this will even more likely have the opposite effect.

But fake views do worse. They destroy your ability to analyse your fan base. They feed your ego, but do not convert to subscriptions, and if they are discovered, they damage your reputation. And what’s worse? If Youtube discovers that your vews are bought, it can cause detrimental damage to the overall visibility of the video.

The best strategy is to build organically, analyse your fans, and work around making better content to attract more views.