Entertainment and showbiz personality, Dayo D1 Adeneye, has given inputs into how the Nigerian music business can become more rewarding and structured.
Adeneye, in a chat with the founder of Made Men Music Group, Ubi Franklin, says most upcoming Nigerian music acts don’t know exactly what they want.
The ex-commissioner for information and strategy in Ogun State says, “To improve our industry, we need to structure it, we need to put a proper structure in place because we have big boys in the industry, we have Olamide, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Tubaba, D’Banj, Idris Abdulkareem they have done this and that, but the structure has not grown and the only reason it hasn’t grown is that most people getting into the game don’t know the reason they are getting into it. Most don’t have an understanding of why they are into this game.”
Continuing, Adeneye says, “If you ask Ed Sheeran or Jay Z, in as much as at the back of their mind everybody wants to make money, they will tell you they got into music for the love of it. But in our part of the world, people chase the money first.
When we got into this game myself and Baba Keke, we didn’t get into it for the love of the money, we started by trying to help young talents and by the grace of God we were able to translate it into money-making business but the love of music was there, we did it for the love of music whether through Raypower or AIT Jamz, whatever we were doing was just because we were having fun doing it.”
Proffering the solution to the decay in the music industry, Adeneye said, “So if you find your passion or calling and you attack it and you persevere and consistent, you would make money eventually and you put out the best product, a good record label will find you and take care of you.
But if you go into it just because you want to blow or make money, when the money doesn’t come you and the record label will begin to have issues, same goes to the record label if the record label is in it just because it is a business and they want to make money then, of course, they started on the wrong note.
Anybody can just call themselves a record label now, so the structure, management, packaging, A & R, production, all those are things we need to be talking about that are not given enough attention.
“When I say structure, our artists want to be their own songwriter, they want to be their own manager they want to be their own promoter, they want to be their own producer, you can’t do all those things effectively, you can’t be a jack of all trade, find proper management, let proper management manage you, not your brother or your cousin of friends and find a good lawyer that will read your contracts, whether its a performance contract or recording contract, have a proper structure in place. But most importantly the beginning is what sets the tone, be very clear why you’re going into it.
“Let me give you an example what structure can do for you, we got the first artist endorsement for any artist in this Nigeria with Tuface with Guinness, we brought the first MTV base awards to Africa with the same Tuface, that is what structure and cooperation between artist and record label will do for you when you listen to you record label or management and you let them go to work for you, that open doors, before then it was unheard off for any African artist, but look at it now, we are being nominated for Grammys. Hoping to win the Grammys,”
