Popular Nigerian music artiste, Lanre Fasasi popularly known as Sound Sultan has told attendees at the ongoing Social Media Week Lagos that the technology of music streaming can help reduce piracy to the barest minimum in the Nigeria entertainment industry.
Sound Sultan believes that piracy, which has been the biggest challenge faced by many Nigerian artistes can fizzle out using the power of technology.
Streaming means listening to music or watching video in ‘real time’, instead of downloading a file to your computer and watching it later. With internet videos and webcasts of live events, there is no file to download, just a continuous stream of data.
Intellectual property is key in the digital age as it play a central role in driving productivity, revenue-earning potentials and overall growth in the Nigerian creative industry, just like any other within the local economy, he said at Social Media Week Lagos.
According to him,the entertainment industry should harness the full potentials of the Internet not only as a platform to earn revenue but where they can also ensure innovation in encouraged by protecting the intellectual property right of innovators and content creators.
“Streaming it is another way to challenge piracy, so to say. Piracy can stretch out from being an Alaba threat to a virtual threat, so streaming is an option for people to get your song first time before these pirates get a hold of it”, Sound Sultan said during a panel discussion at Social Media Week Lagos.
”There are various ways of streaming, the apps which when you get, you have the offline streaming and it gives you the opportunity of having your own playlist, it’s like you are acting like a DJ, so music streaming is a very good thing to both the consumers and we artistes.’’
On the financial gains of streaming to music artistes, the Nigerian artiste says it offers a very lucrative avenue when compared to when no such platform existed.
‘’Nobody used to pay for anything back then. There were no platforms for you to even reach out to your fans. So you have to be there where your music is or both radio and TV is playing it and nobody pays or remunerates money for that, hence this kind of platform becomes a good option’’, he adds.
According to Sound Sultan, “the money you make quarterly from such platforms as streaming is even more than what you get legally from the marketers in Alaba. It is really lucrative and it is a welcome option. We never had that option back then, so it is really very lucrative new thing in the music industry.’’
Sound Sultan however expressed optimism that more people will key into streaming platform and expect gradual growth and improvement in that area.
‘’Gradually, more people will buy into it and see that streaming is wiser to stream than to stack up your library and fill up the space in your system. So I feel like everything is gradually moving. If I check the data of people buying into streaming for you now, you will see it is increasing quarterly. The money we get increases quarterly. That means people are coming on and understanding that streaming is the new thing’’, Sound Sultan adds.
On the challenges of bad network and high cost of mobile data that people currently face to stream music online, he says: “I just feel like this is a growing economy, everything will happen gradually and people would understand and work around the shortcomings and still do whatever they want to do. That’s Nigeria you know. People would still listen to music regardless. So, amidst that, they would still buy into streaming.”
Representatives from big music streaming outfits in Nigeria like YouTube, Cloud 9 and Spinlet were also part of the panelists that discussed the Music Streaming session at the 2016 Social Media Week Lagod.
Teju Ajani, Partnership lead Sub Sahara Africa of YouTube said that the online video service gets licence from artistes to stream their music and the artiste, his record label and everyone involved gets paid when the music is streamed.
“For us at Spinlet, when the music streams, artistes get the chance of being discovered. It also gives people the opportunity to hear artistes they haven’t heard before. We have app on mobile services and on web as well’’, Rotimi Fawole, General Counsel at Spinlet adds.
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