WHY YOU HEAR THE NAMES OF THE MUSIC PRODUCERS ON ALMOST ALL NIGERIAN POP SONGS

Nothing is wrong in a producer putting his signature on a song he produces, most especially when the copyright in the song belongs to him. The likes of Mike-Will-Made-it, Dj Khaled and some other producers in the US also do it. However when the hand-shake starts going past the elbow, we must quickly check what has gone wrong.

Like the popular milk brand's slogan, "Its in me". It's undeniable that an unquenchable lust for popularity is resident in us-Nigerians. This is the first factor responsible for our Music producers shouting their names on all the songs they produce. It has now degenerated to the abyss; where two music producers put their two signatures at the start of a track they co-produce, and the mixing engineer still puts his own signature loudly towards the end of the track, as if he had not been paid. This habit has defaced many beautiful songs like a twenty fist century "babe" with long village tribal marks....how sad?

The "It's in me" factor asides. The bitter gospel truth is, most Nigerian A and B list Artistes more often than not, do not give the not-yet-popular music producers an adequate official PRODUCTION FEE!!! Therefore the only reward these producers get is the accounting goodwill that rubs on their names, loudly put at the intro of the songs. Once the track becomes popular, and the producers' names go viral. They make the up-coming artistes pay dearly: the money they did not collect from the A-list artistes.

However whatever they think they are making from the upcoming artistes, is peanut compared to the eternal royalties they are losing in their efforts put in the A-list artistes songs. Even for the established producers who struggle to squeez a flat-rate from these big artistes' pockets. Failure to legally demand for their royalties, still births a great loss of intellectual wealth!

For instance in early 2015, I had a long conversation with a seasoned Nigerian music producer, whose works just got an A-list Rap artiste several award nominations and a couple of trophies in late 2014. A work of his also, just shot a young new artiste of a new record label to an untold stardom. He eventually got listed by the most popular music blog in Nigeria, as one of the Top 10 Nigerian Music producers of 2014.

I asked him a simple question.
"How much did you make, or hope to make from the production of these mega hits"?
His response was rather heart breaking.
"I didn't charge them for the productions"
He even counted himself lucky the artistes used his beats...free-of-charge.

To ones amazement nonetheless, the PricewaterhouseCoopers' Entertainment and Media Outlook Report shows that Nigeria made a whopping $51 million dollars in Digital Music Sales in that very 2014.

Let's do a simple arithmetic. ITunes pay $0.99 per song download, in which the artiste gets $0.69. If a song gets just a hundred thousand (100,000) downloads, the total amount accruing to an independent artiste would be $69,000. Multiplied by N160 which was the prevalent dollar to naira exchange rate for most of 2014. That gives us a few thousands over N11 million. Ideally, a music producer should earn an annual 20% royalty from an independent artiste; which should give a sum of N2. 2 million for that year alone. That's just on a hundred thousand downloads. Imagine what the producer would get on a million or more downloads. And this is just on downloads on a single platform. What of physical sales, streaming and publishing?

Our music producers are losing a lot for their lack of legal structure. And they are cheaply giving away the intellectual wealth that should settle them forever!

I hope next time you hear-------the wicked producer, or -----on the beat, or----Mr Producer....you won't  blame them to much. Goodwill is the only thing they are really gaining from their works!
Howbeit they get so used to it, that even when they eventually "blow", they keep putting their voice signature loudly on every track they produce or co-produce.

Kudos to all the Music Producers out there making good music.

©Joe Ademiju
Nigerian Music Business Strategist
+234 703 811 8005