Motolani Alake

<h1>In 2021, the world’s largest music streaming service, Spotify will improve its African operation. A Nigerian office is said to be at the forefront of those plans. Over the past 18 months, Spotify has been making its efforts clear in a bid to own the future of audio content - and video to a lesser extent.&nbsp;</h1>

During that period, it has invested heavily into podcasting with deals for/purchases of&nbsp;Gimlet, Parcast, The Joe Rogan Podcast&nbsp;and&nbsp;Anchor.&nbsp;It also recently purchased&nbsp;Megaphone,&nbsp;in a bid to enliven its SAI for podcasts. This year,&nbsp;Spotify&nbsp;has seen its users soar to 320 million across the world - 29% year-on-year growth.

Of that 320 million, 144 million are premium while 185 million are ad-supported. In Q3 2020, it also announced a Free Cash Flow of €103 million.

The entrance of Spotify will make it the 12th music streaming platform in Nigeria. Overall, it will make it the 15th music streaming/download platform that Nigerians use one way or another.

In Q4 2019, Spotify was rumoured to be gearing up for a Nigerian office, but COVID-19 disrupted that. Around the time those rumours started,&nbsp;MusicTime&nbsp;launched in Nigeria with&nbsp;Oye Akideinde&nbsp;as its CEO. Its service charges users per their session/activity on its app. Once they log out, their session ends and fees stop running.

Despite COVID,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/movies/youtube-music-and-youtube-premium-launch-in-nigeria/w9vdwv8">YouTube Music</a>, YouTube Main,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/tidal-partners-with-mtn-nigeria-for-streaming-service/e4y2f88">TIDAL</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/pulse-nigeria-speaks-with-adeyemi-adetunji-charlotte-bwana-and-jason-johnson-of/wywmh8v">Audiomack</a>, Soundcloud, Gbedu, Mino&nbsp;and&nbsp;UduX&nbsp;made their respective entrances and emergence known. In February 2020, YouTube Music announced a smooth app which charges N900 for single subscribers and N1400 for family plans monthly and respectively.

For its part,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/tidal-partners-with-mtn-nigeria-for-streaming-service/e4y2f88#:~:text=On%20September%202%2C%202020%2C%20TIDAL,short%20and%20long%2Dterm%20subscriptions.">TIDAL&nbsp;partnered with&nbsp;MTN</a>&nbsp;for plans as short as three days’ access, which costs N120, and a month’s Tidal access for N800. TIDAL subscriptions can also be bundled with MTN mobile data purchases – monthly access with data is N1,200.

Spotify will also compete with&nbsp;Apple Music, Boomplay&nbsp;and&nbsp;Deezer.&nbsp;Apple Music shares a similar premium subscription fee with YouTube Music. Both of those platforms don’t have ad-supported features for their monthly active users.

On the other hand,&nbsp;Boomplay&nbsp;is the largest music streaming platform in Nigeria. In the final quarter 2019,&nbsp;Motolani Alake&nbsp;- one-half of&nbsp;Listen Africa&nbsp;- chatted with&nbsp;Oladele Kadiri,&nbsp;the General Manager of&nbsp;Boomplay Nigeria&nbsp;and gathered that at the time, Boomplay had over a million users in Nigeria.

But since the turn of 2020, Boomplay has faced stiff competition from American streaming platform,&nbsp;Audiomack.&nbsp;

As of November 2020, Boomplay still holds the lead in terms of subscriber base, it currently has over 43 million tracks which shall grow to 45 million by the end of 2020. But then Audiomack is catching up fast as a more desirable brand with higher brand equity.

These days, both Audiomack and Boomplay offer ad-supported listening features for non-premium subscribers. Boomplay was already entrenched in the Nigerian market when Audiomack initially soared as a competition to&nbsp;Soundcloud.&nbsp;Its selling point was that it would pay artists from its ad placements on their songs.

This model is similar to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55016142">YouTube Partnership Programme [YPP]</a>&nbsp;which allows creators with at least 1,000 subscribers and over 4,000 hours worth of viewership in a year to register to get paid by YouTube, based on the value of their viewership.

But unlike YPP, Audiomack doesn’t require any extra-special registration. In the same way it attracted the niche/underground artist crowd in the US with&nbsp;Chance The Rapper’s&nbsp;Acid Rap&nbsp;debuting on its platform, it attracted the niche/underground artist crowd to its platform with promise of earnings.

<a href="https://listenafrica.substack.com/p/why-does-audiomack-have-more-streams">Even with the low rate of the pay</a>, artists jumped on the bandwagon and so did Nigerian music lovers as the era of music blogs finally slowed down. At different points in 2020, Audiomack became the most downloaded music app on&nbsp;Apple App Store&nbsp;and&nbsp;Google Playstore.&nbsp;

Anytime Nigerian artists would celebrate their streams, around 70% of those streams would come from Audiomack.

On November 20, 2020, it was announced that Nigerian artist,&nbsp;Bella Shmurda&nbsp;announced that his 2020 EP,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/bella-shmurda-high-tension-ep-review/gehz0rf">High Tension</a>&nbsp;had hit 49 million streams on Audiomack. These days, Audiomack has also launched a premium feature which costs around $1.38.

Boomplay’s major edge is that it's pre-installed on Transsion phones -&nbsp;TECNO, Infinix&nbsp;and&nbsp;itel.&nbsp;These products are by far the most used phone brands in Africa. In 2019, Transsion was named as one of the top 10 most desirable brands in Africa - behind&nbsp;MTN&nbsp;and&nbsp;DSTV.&nbsp;

In 2019, Boomplay’s campus tour saw its subscriber-base rise even further. Dele Kadiri told Alake that their stint at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria saw some students subscribe for three months on the spot.

On its part, Boomplay charges N500 for its premium plan. Nonetheless, the growth of streaming has been slow due to the fact the following factors;

<ol><li>Ignorance of the presence of streaming services to even those who can afford them.&nbsp;</li><li>Nigeria is a highly mobilized country, but internet subscription costs a lot in a country where its largest percentage of citizens are reported to live under $1-a-day. The idea that you have to pay for the internet and then pay for streaming is something most Nigerians can’t afford.&nbsp;</li><li>Even those who can afford those two things will shy away from them due to the presence of illegal download sites or music blogs.&nbsp;</li></ol>

Music blogs peaked in Nigeria in the late 200s, but they are illegal. They obtain music illegally, offer free download to listeners, make money off ads and then consume all the proceeds by themselves without remitting anything back to artists.

ALSO READ:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/here-is-how-the-rise-and-fall-of-music-blogs-could-birth-the-slow-rise-of-nigerian/75g5bp8">Here is how Nigerian music blogs can survive their inevitable journey into obscurity</a>

Conversely, a lot of Nigerian artists still&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/comment-on-the-complicated-issue-of-selling-music-and-music-blogs-in-nigeria/99trm1h">willingly offer their music to sites like&nbsp;Naijaloaded</a>&nbsp;because they need exposure. This is because most Nigerian artists make most of their income off live performances and endorsements.&nbsp;

In the earliest days, this was the purpose that music blogs served. They offered exposure, documentation of releases and then played an important role in linking Lagos with London as part of the ‘Afrobeats to the world’ movement. Till this day, a lot of Nigerian artists can’t detach from the role of music blogs.

In part, this is because the larger part of Nigeria’s music listeners still access music through these music blogs. In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/martin-nielsen-tells-pulse-about-mdundo-music-downloads-music-streaming-why-africa/bb5fwr8">chat with&nbsp;Martin Nielsen,&nbsp;the CEO of&nbsp;Mdundo,</a>&nbsp;it was revealed that around 60-70 million Nigerians have downloaded music from these blogs.

But recently, that music blog era has slowed down. Two giant music blogs,&nbsp;Notjustok&nbsp;and&nbsp;Tooxclusive&nbsp;have evolved. The&nbsp;Demola Ogundele-led Notjustok now has a distribution service and a budding streaming platform,&nbsp;Mino.&nbsp;

Tooxclusive has also stopped hosting raw illegal files on its website. Instead, it posts Audiomack links of songs. On the template of a music blog,&nbsp;Martin Nielsen&nbsp;and his partner have created a music download service called&nbsp;Mdundo. In Q3 2020, it raised over $6 million in an IPO and now trades on NASDAQ.

Instead of obtaining music illegally, it deals with the big three record labels and obtains music legally. For trackable revenue, it then inserts ads into the opening 15 seconds of every song via an automated service and splits revenue with artists 50/50. Already, it’s available in 15 countries and has over 3.5 million users.

Artists also have a dashboard where they can track their music downloads.

While some of these platforms are not exactly available in Nigeria, Nigerians put their music on&nbsp;Bandcamp&nbsp;- which aids music sales and ease of interfacing between artist and fans,&nbsp;Pandora&nbsp;and the rebranded&nbsp;Napster&nbsp;- which is rumoured to pay around $12,000 for every one million streams.

Bandcamp occupies a similar niche to&nbsp;Selar,&nbsp;a platform that allows artists to easily sell their music. In 2019,&nbsp;<a href="https://thenativemag.com/music/selar/">Dennis Peter&nbsp;wrote for&nbsp;NATIVE Magazine</a>&nbsp;that Selar left over 90% of the proceeds from&nbsp;Alpha Ojini’s debut album,&nbsp;Half Price&nbsp;to the rapper. Selar was founded by&nbsp;Douglas Kendyson.&nbsp;

A few Nigerians have been using Spotify in Nigeria through a VPN.

It was the second streaming service in Nigeria after&nbsp;Deezer&nbsp;became the first notable entrance into Nigeria in 2012.

Unlike Spotify, Deezer’s subscription fee is against the dollar - which currently stands at around N5,000 and 2,000 - is quite steep. The fact that only account holders from only a few banks can access the app is also a problem, and it stopped a lot of Nigerians from their regular <a data-link-role-code="open_new_tab" href="https://24magix.com/music">MP3 download</a>.

UPDATE: On March 9, 2021, Deezer announced a <a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/deezer-brings-new-subscription-fees-to-nigeria/k1xrvgg">reduction to its pricing</a>.

Deezer also doesn’t have a Nigerian office, it primarily operates from South Africa. Interestingly, it also has a freemium, audio ad insertion feature for its freemium listener.&nbsp;It’s ‘Flow’ feature is also amazing and so is its&nbsp;<a href="https://listenafrica.substack.com/p/dsp-investment-in-podcasts-could">User-Centric Payment System.&nbsp;</a>For a company of just 500 people, Deezer is an overachiever.

Deezer and Spotify’s respective entrances into the country came after&nbsp;iTunes&nbsp;became a cool iPod, iPhone and PC feature for Nigerians. Around that time, YouTube Main also became a formidable tool for Nigerian music videos and viral content creators.

Michael Ugwu of FreeMe Digital and Jason Njoku of iROKO Partners. (Merlin/TechNomad)

When Spotify was easily accessible to Nigerians at the start of the last decade, it also competed with the now defunct&nbsp;Spinlet&nbsp;and&nbsp;iROKING&nbsp;by&nbsp;Iroko Partners.&nbsp;

In&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/oye-akideinde-an-entertainment-capitalist-inside-by-pulse/pzjsdj4">a conversation with&nbsp;Oye Akideinde</a>,&nbsp;the CEO of&nbsp;MusicTime Africa -&nbsp;who worked at Spinlet before moving to&nbsp;Boomplay -&nbsp;said that the Spinlet made a lot of strides but struggled in a more difficult market to the current market - which is still difficult for music streaming platforms.&nbsp;

On the other hand, iROKING took a difficult route. In 2013,&nbsp;Michael Ugwu&nbsp;who is now Founder and CEO of&nbsp;FreeMe&nbsp;was&nbsp;<a href="https://innovation-village.com/michael-ugwu-ceo-fired-from-iroking/">fired as CEO of iROKING</a>. The company cited misconduct and breach of contract. Ugwu was accused of launching a competing entity in FreeMe while he led iROKING.

After seven years, the matter was finally settled after&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/freeme-digital-ceo-michael-ugwu-acquitted-by-ibadan-court-after-7-year-legal-battle/jn84815">Ugwu was acquitted by an Industrial Court in Ibadan.&nbsp;</a>iROKING also wound up shortly after Ugwu was fired by the company.

In 2014,&nbsp;MTN&nbsp;and&nbsp;Huawei&nbsp;also collaborated for&nbsp;MTN Plus,&nbsp;which allowed users to pay subscription fees via airtime. The deal between MTN and Huawei shares certain similarities with the respective deals MTN has with MusicTime and TIDAL. However, they are not the same thing.

Around the same time,&nbsp;9Mobile&nbsp;(formerly&nbsp;Etisalat) also owned&nbsp;Cloud9,&nbsp;a music streaming platform in partnership with&nbsp;Timwe Group.&nbsp;But Cloud9 and MTN Plus have since gone under - at least, to the public eye and on that model, they have.&nbsp;

But since Spotify became officially unavailable in Nigeria, this is the first time it will be coming back to Nigeria.

<h2>Why was Spotify away for so long?&nbsp;</h2>

Spotify has been available in South Africa for a few years. Initially, it was thought that the struggles of music streaming in Nigeria was the sole reason why Spotify remained unavailable in the country while Apple and Deezer made inroads into the country.

After all, its cheaper student plan costs $4.99 or - per current exchange rate - about N2000 monthly. It’s main plan costs $9.99 or - per current exchange rate - about N4000 per month. But reports have claimed that while the struggles of streaming played a role, the major reason why Spotify stayed away was due to Nigerian laws.

One of those laws specifies that foreign companies could only take their revenue out of the country in Naira, not in any foreign country. The problem with that for any foreign company is that it would be operating against the dollar - arguably the most powerful currency in the world.

The dollar is one of the determinants of oil prices amongst other major things in the world. But while Spotify was away, a few Nigerians still used the service with the aid of VPN. A few IJGBs also accessed the service with their foreign bank accounts and ‘unrouted’ mobile devices.

<h2>Spotify and Nigeria 2021: What does it mean?&nbsp;</h2>

First off, it means that Spotify is ready to throw its hat into a really wide ring. If everybody else is in Nigeria, it could be doing itself a disservice by further staying away from a country of 200 million people, with a myriad of problems which could become multi-billion dollar companies.

2021 will also see&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/news/facebook-to-open-an-office-in-nigeria-some-sides-to-the-conversation-report/ss9hv14">Facebook&nbsp;open a Nigerian office.</a>

Secondly, it means that the Nigerian music industry is in maturation. This year, the lockdown helped create a lot of platforms and solutions while the practitioners in the industry are now more visible. What remains to be seen is how much Spotify will charge users and its solution to the legal troubles that kept it away for a long time.

More likely than not is the idea that it will reduce its fees for its Nigerian users like TIDAL did. In 2019, the idea of something rumored to be called, ‘Spotify Beta’ flew around. The idea was said to be a Spotify service with reduced fees and limited features.

Yes, some of these companies will pack up and leave. But the few of them who thrive will really thrive. In particular, Spotify has shown a doggedness in a game where it struggled to break even for a number of years.

<h2>Benefits of Spotify to the ecosystem</h2>

By far, Spotify is the best music streaming service in the world. It is like YouTube Music on speedballing. Its UI/UX is amazing and its playlists are the best in the world. Two of its playlists,&nbsp;<a href="https://trapital.co/2019/08/08/why-spotifys-rapcaviar-playlist-cant-be-matched/">Rap Caviar</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/arts/music/hyperpop-spotify.html">Hyperpop&nbsp;</a>have single handedly launched a few careers. Rap Caviar alone has 13 million subscribers.

The entrance of Spotify will boost the wider Nigerian economy and present an opportunity for some high-paying jobs to a number of people who will be charged with creating something special.

Of course, after the early bubble, the company will face a reality check like every other foreign company, but the future of Nigerian music looks really bright so there’s nothing to be overly worried about.

ALSO READ:<a href="https://www.pulse.ng/bi/tech/a-music-artist-says-apple-music-pays-her-4-times-what-spotify-does-per-stream-and-it/xrj3w11">&nbsp;In 2019, Apple Music paid Zoe Keating four times more than Spotify despite having more streams on Spotify</a>

The entrance of Spotify into the Nigerian ecosystem will likely impact podcasting. Companies like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.visualaudiotimes.com/">Visual Audio Times</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://soundcloud.com/aristokratrecords">Aristokrat</a>&nbsp;are podcast networks with some valuable assets like&nbsp;234 Essential, A Music In Time, I Said What I Said&nbsp;and more. Spotify will be interested in podcasts as it seeks to dominate the audio experience ecosystem.

It will also hand out bags for original content formats. We are also likely to see high-priced buy-outs of African content platforms, distribution companies and streaming platforms between 2021 and 2025&nbsp;

Its ad-supported interface will also mean two things;

<ol><li>A unique opportunity to attract users.</li><li>A unique opportunity to get some ad revenue with its massive brand equity.&nbsp;</li></ol>

UPDATE: On February 21, 2021, Spotify expanded operations into 80 countries across the world including Nigeria and Ghana. Its pricing was reduced and similar to Apple Music’s and YouTube Music’s pricing.

While Apple Music has a student plan of N500, Spotify’s student plan is N450. Instead of a ‘Spotify Beta,’ Spotify has something called ‘Spotify Lite’ that reduces data consumption. The freemium model of Spotify is also aided by ads.

Like&nbsp;Deezer,&nbsp;the audio quality on the freemium size is also significantly lower.

Next stop for African entertainment looks set to be Amazon. Already,&nbsp;Amazon Music&nbsp;charges the least subscription fees in America.

A large part of this article was culled from a Listen Africa article, that was published in November 2020.

Here is a history of the rise of music streaming in Nigeria and a breakdown of  features and strategies. (Spotify)

Spotify becomes the 12th music streaming platform in Nigeria. Overall, it will become the 15th music streaming/download platform that Nigerians use one way or another

Here is a history of the rise of music streaming in Nigeria and a breakdown of  features and strategies

<h1>In April 2010, Oye Akideinde was a 32-year-old Masters Degree holder from the University of Hertfordshire, England, UK. This was also a few years after he stopped attempting to be an accomplished artist - he put out his first single in 2002.&nbsp;</h1>

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.&nbsp;

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.&nbsp;

“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.

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.&nbsp;

<h2>How did 360nobs scale in a tight market?&nbsp;</h2>

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.&nbsp;

“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.”

“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?&nbsp;

“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.

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.&nbsp;

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.&nbsp;

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.”

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.&nbsp;

“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.

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.&nbsp;

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.&nbsp;

The music phone became Boomplay.&nbsp;

MusicTime is a streaming platform that only charges per usage. You can learn about it <a href="https://www.mtnonline.com/play/musictime/#:~:text=MusicTime%20is%20the%20world's%20first,to%20local%20and%20international%20content.">HERE.</a> For now, the platform is building on its innovations and it's taking things one step at a time.&nbsp;

<h2>Oye on the future of music, singles and playlists</h2>

Akideinde says that our world is a singles market because;

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

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.&nbsp;

“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].&nbsp;

“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.”

<h2>Oye on why artists need to be creative</h2>

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?&nbsp;

“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.&nbsp;

“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.&nbsp;

“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.”

<h2>Oye on how artists should monetize their music videos</h2>

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.”&nbsp;

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

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,&nbsp;‘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.”

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…&nbsp;

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.

Oye Akideinde: An entertainment capitalist on a journey. [Pulse Nigeria]

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.

Oye Akideinde: An entertainment capitalist [Inside by Pulse]

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