In the Western world and African countries such as Nigeria and South Africa, they have encouraged their musicians and content creators to join different streaming platforms to benefit more from intellectual property.
If this was properly utilized, most A-list artistes would not be moaning “gavumenti etuyambe” just because the traditional ways of making money were blocked due to the pandemic.
According to Avay Ogbeifun Ehiagwinah, the CEO of Blacq Avay Records and Entertainment, YouTube earns one about $3,000 for collecting one million streams but most Ugandan artistes don’t tap into this.
Of course, data is now the new oil, hence there must be a paradigm shift in order to maximize the new normal.
“In an attempt to compete with the global trend, the whole structure that makes up the industry should, as a matter of necessity, improve their craft in order to be able to get a win. In other words, to be put in our pride of place, they must create content worthy of consumption not just within East Africa, but the rest of the world,” Ehiagwinah says.
He adds that it should be a blend of our uniqueness in line with global trends.
“You don’t expect the world full of trends to consume a sound that wasn’t properly mastered or a video shot with crude equipment.”
Uganda is a small country with very many artistes; so, it is time to think outside the box and go shoulder to shoulder with the Tanzanians, or better still, the Nigerians.
Facebook, YouTube, Apple Music, Tidal, Boom Play and many others are at every artiste’s disposal. Some, like veteran Shanks Vivie Dee, had long switched to streaming, even before Covid-19 came knocking.
“Most award academies now base their nominations and possible winners via numbers of streams and presence in the digital world. You don’t expect an organizer of an award to recognize one with 200k streams above one with 20 million streams. Sharing in the content industry goes way beyond the financial gains to recognitions, records and legacy,” Ehiagwinah says.
EDUCATE ONESELF
Former media personality turned media consultant, Brian McKenzie, says the first thing our entertainers need to do if they are to earn big from digital platforms is to educate themselves about these platforms or work with professionals that operate these platforms.
“In the conversations I have had with many artistes, their main problem is that they do not know how to navigate these online services. They do not know how to claim online payments or get distributors who can protect their music. It is very dangerous for someone to just say they want their content online and they do not even know how much these platforms pay, how long it takes to get the money back or even how to upload the content,” McKenzie says.
He adds that artistes also need to know that in order to earn big from these digital services, they should first let their payments accumulate by first putting in as much content as possible and wait for a particular time to start getting proper streams of revenue.
“If you want to get money from one song, you find that you cannot even get $20 a month from it, but if you have a good number of songs and promoting each one of them as they come out, chances are you can start getting $100 per month nonstop because the streams are continuous,” he says.
McKenzie says the problem with Ugandan artistes is that they always look at the quickest way to get money, which does not apply to online platforms, because they require one to first build a strong brand and that takes time; but the quick-money mentality is hindering many from investing in long-term online platforms.
“Building a YouTube account needs like a good five years if you want to generate reasonable revenue from it. But there are people who get on to it and want to have 100,000 subscribers instantly and when they don’t get them, they start sending their music to TVs and radios, claiming that YouTube does not pay,” he says.
Rapper Navio, who has hugely embraced these digital platforms, says the only thing that will help artistes to earn much revenue from streaming services is for the telecom companies to reduce data prices so that more people can get online.
“Without numbers online, we are like a Burundi or Lesotho trying to compete with Nigeria’s 190 million population plus their 40 million in diaspora, which is a losing battle. The government should subsidize these telecom companies so we get more people online,” Navio says.
HOW MUCH THEY PAY
Streaming platforms pay different rates per stream an artiste gets on their content; in other words, the more fans listen to a musician’s music, the more that musician gets paid.
According to various online sources, Napster has the highest payout per play at $ 0.00916 (Shs 337), Apple Music (iTunes) is at $0.00735 (Shs 270) per stream, Amazon Music $0.00426 (Shs 156), Spotify pays out $0.00437 (Shs 156) per stream, Pandora, the oldest streaming service, pays around $0.00203 (Shs 74) per play, Tidal pays around $0.0125 (Shs 46) per stream, while YouTube, the most popular streaming service, pays $0.00154 (Shs 56) per play.
However, even though Napster has a higher payout, its total stream count is very little because it has a lower number of subscribers than YouTube, Spotify and iTunes, which have a huge number of subscribers. That means, even though their payout per stream is lower, their total stream count is higher, which makes the artiste earn a reasonable amount of money from their content.
How much an artiste earns online also depends on how popular they are, the number of subscribers on their channels, the kind of deal they have with the distributor and how much content they put out there.
It is, therefore, right to assume that entertainers including Eddy Kenzo, Sheebah, Spice Diana, Rema, Ann Kansiime, Bebe Cool, Jose Chameleone, Masaka Kids, and Triplets Ghetto Kids, who have a very high viewership and a lot of content on these digital platforms, especially YouTube, are smiling their way to the bank even when they have not stepped on stage.
Streaming platforms, however, should not only be looked at as a source of revenue for artistes, as these also help in terms of music discovery, promotion and enable artistes to have their music heard by an audience that would not normally seek them out.
“With streaming and especially getting on digital playlists, an artiste gets the opportunity to get discovered by new listeners and essentially customers, which opens doors to an audience you wouldn’t have had otherwise. That is why you find that an artiste has a song which even people locally don’t know about but it has thousands of streams,” Mackenzie said.
If you too have been puzzled by Burna Boy’s (Twice As Tall) and Master KG’s (Jerusalema) massive popularity during a global lockdown year, there.
Get your craft online.
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