Are the Boomplays, Empires & other Distribution Labels becoming A Curse rather than a Blessing to our Local Music Industry?
In every Music industry the news of a Major Label coming in is good news but in our case it seems it’s becoming a Curse rather than a Blessing.
The Music business just like any other business has a SUPPLY CHAIN as part of its Structure which leads to the marketing & distribution of the Product and in this case the Music.
It starts from identifying a Talent and grooming it to becoming a household Brand to be marketed for Profit.
All across the world we have indie labels grooming these Talents and marketing them to Major Labels for continuous business and I can give a good example of the Lynx Entertainment grooming the likes of Kidi & Kwami Eugene and marketing them to Empire for continuous business which still makes Lynx Entertainment the Managers of these Artist.
Another good example is George M. Britton grooming Camidoh & partnering with Crux Global.
Now for some strange reasons there seems to be a new cabal formed in our industry being used to disrespectfully steal artists from their Indie Labels instead of going directly through the indie Labels as the norm.
Interestingly today if you ask any Major Label for an advance to build a new Artist they’ll tell you NO without blinking yet as soon as there is a HIT you’ll see them popping up from everywhere so the question is who should groom for them to milk? Obviously they are ready to enrich greedy individual Artist & empoverish Indie Labels that have many other Artists under them.
HITs do not pop up by themselves. I mean there is almost always a machinery behind it and these are the Indie Labels that some prefer to call them Angels as if we are in heaven. Nkwasiasem.
These local indie Labels will spend all their time and monies to build these brands to a marketable stage only for these industry cabal who have turned themselves into middle men/agents to directly approach the indie these Artist who are ingrates and are as greedy as these cabal members and willing to leave their Labels after seeing the offers these Agents have negotiated with these Major Distribution Labels on their behalf.
Now when these guys steal these artists from the backdoor with some contractual excuses what happens is that they break the SUPPLY CHAIN and discourage the indie label from grooming more talents since they rip them off their Investments.
Fact is these monies coming from the Major Labels into the industry are suppose go to the Local indie Labels who will intend put it back into Radio, TV, Print & Social media promotion to breed new Talents and so these Agents/Cabal diverting these monies into their Pockets is indirectly killing the local industry.
Now these Major Labels are not ready to groom new artists and these Agents acting as indies have no idea how to groom new Talents so why are these Majors encouraging these agents to rip-off the indie labels whose Job is to breed these talents for the industry?
Honestly I thought these guys were wise enough to think of the future but it seems greed has made them so dumb that they can only think of the present.
This new form of slavery called music neo colonialism is finally destroying the last fabric of our already weak music industry.
I mean how do you steal Lasmid from Kaywa who produces the HITs that you as a Major Label needs to sell? I mean that’s very dumb since instead of encouraging him you’re rather robbing him off his investment and you expect him to breed more Talents for the market with what monies?
Anytime there are these conversations you always seem to hear names like Boomplay, Empire etc popping up.
Yes one Sheriff will go but the opportunity for 20 other Sheriffs would have been destroyed.
Yes the Industry is so weak that anybody walks in and does whatever he or she wants without any authority questioning the legitimacy of their activities but that doesn’t mean the Players should sit and watch these foreigners connive with our own people acting as agents to destroy the industry completely.
My question is, are these Major Labels here to Destroy the Indie Labels or they’re here to rightfully assist them sustain the industry?
Well I believe they know better and can do better just like they did with Lynx and other indie Labels across Africa.
We Are Observing.
Source: Enoch Agyapong
