The Crippled Music Business State in Ghana and How to Fix It

 In September 2015, I wrote an article titled “The Paralysis of Ghana’s Music Industry.” In the honest piece, I discussed the non-existence of a music industry in Ghana, and what may be done to create one. Almost five years down the line, the music scene still faces the same problems, and even probably worse. I see a lot of talents emerging with gut, passion and naivety, with little to no direction on how they can make a living off their craft. All because there’s no appropriate structure in place.

What I want to establish with this editorial is stated below:

-       The right structure of a working music industry, so the reader can have a good idea of how things work. We shall look at the creation of music through to consumption by the public, and activities in between that result in capital generation.

-       The current state of the Ghana music scene, and the problems challenging it.

-       The solutions that can be put in place to resolve the problems.

The Structure of a Working Music Industry

Musical Content Creation

Music is life; music is our comforter; music is the only friend that walks with us in every situation we find ourselves. To imagine the world without music is a nightmare. The creation of music is very essential to humankind. The music creation phase can be divided into pre-recording, production (which includes recording) and post-production. Pre-recording comprises of generation of ideas, songwriting, melody creation, laying the instrumental foundation for a beat, and so on. The production phase involves laying the beat properly, recording vocals, etc. Post-production includes arranging, mixing and mastering. Musical content has two distinct but frequently confused entities. The output which is put on record (wax), for instance Compact Disc (CD), vinyl or Digital Streaming Platform (DSP) is a sound recording, whilst the collection of lyrics and melodies are referred to as musical composition. The creators and professionals who come together to make this possible may include artistes, musicians, instrumentalists, producers, and audio engineers. At times, especially in this modern era, audiovisuals are created to put the song in a graphical perspective. The people involved in that are stylists, video directors, producers, editors, colorists, choreographers, cast, etc.

Distribution

After the song is exported as a product file, it’s ready for release to the consumers. Although it’s still done, in the past, the regular thing was that the record had to be burned onto a CD or copied onto a cassette or vinyl, replicated numerously, packaged, and assembled. In this era, majority of the public consume music by streaming via a DSP such as Spotify, Apple Music, Audiomack, SoundCloud, Boomplay, Aftown, Tidal, and the like.

The process to the get the song on these platforms to be available for the consumer to listen to is called distribution. Back in the day, the physical copies of the musical project had to be transported to music and retail shops, so fans could purchase. Thanks to streaming, this workload has been loosened. Now, the song just has to be uploaded and/or submitted onto platforms [DSPs] which allow streaming. Depending on the DSP, the sound recording can be uploaded directly, or indirectly through a distribution company. These are intermediary companies that are officially recognised by the DSP companies. They make sure the song and its details match with the criteria for the DSPs, and secure a spot for the artiste. If an artiste is signed to a record label, it takes charge of distribution directly.

Marketing

Spotify, the leading DSP alone has a catalogue of more than 50 million songs, and an average of 40,000 new songs are added to the platform each day. So what assures that every artiste will be heard? That brings in the aspect of marketing. Marketing is basically the business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. For an artiste to cut through the clutter and be heard by the right people, marketing is a necessity. Marketing can be done via radio, television, online platforms such as blogs and magazines, and the new avenue, digital marketing.

Digital marketing, although still a young avenue, has enhanced independent artistes who don’t have the connections to cut out the middlemen and achieve massive result within a fair budget. It involves website creation and maintenance, online partnerships, social media strategy, using online advertisements such as social media ads, Google (including YouTube) ads to reach potential fans.

Publicity/Public Relations (PR)

Digital marketing walks side by side with publicity/public relations (PR). This involves pitching for audio/video premieres, news stories, website placements, reviews and interviews. In the streaming era, securing playlists placement has become key. The essence of publicity is to generate buzz and interest for the musical project and/or artiste.

Monetisation of Music

Summarising what has been discussed so far, it can be realized that a lot of time, effort and money are invested into the musical project. Also, there are numerous professionals who come together to make it work. So it only makes sense that the investment is recouped and profit is made off the art. There are five major ways by which artistes can make money i.e. music streaming and sales, royalties, touring and live performances, sales of merchandise (merch), and brand endorsements and partnerships.

Music Streaming, Sales and Royalties

Mobile phones have substituted a lot of devices and culture, and music consumption is not left out. Currently, the easiest way for one to listen to music is via a DSP. Once an artiste’s song gets placed on a DSP, the DSP company has an obligation to pay mechanical royalties to the artiste. Currently, 1 million Spotify streams equates to approximately 7,000 USD.

Performance royalties are collected from businesses including radio and TV stations, pubs, restaurants, clubs, and others that play music publicly to enhance their businesses. It’s collected by Performing Rights Organisations on behalf of content copyright owners such as songwriters and publishers and paid to them for the sole reason of the public broadcast and usage of their music for commercial purposes.

For artistes to get royalties on their intellectual property (i.e. music), one has to be registered to a royalties collection company, which scans for moments that the artiste’s songs are streamed, purchased or performed publicly. Then they distribute the money generated from this royalties collection among the individuals and bodies that own copyright to the said intellectual property.

There are other types of royalties comprising of synchronisation and print royalties, but I want us to keep our focus on the two mentioned.

Publishing

Let’s recall the beginning of this article when we discussed the creation of music. It was mentioned that the lyrics, melodies, and the like form the musical composition, whilst the final music product is the sound recording. If songwriters, musicians and producers sign a publishing deal with a publishing company, whenever the music is used either as a sound recording or even as a cappella in a movie, commercial, TV show, etc. the owners of the intellectual property (which is likely songwriters, producers and musicians) get paid.

Live Performances and Touring

This is quite familiar to the Ghanaian populace. When a concert or live show is put together, and artistes are billed to perform, they are paid an amount of money. The amount paid varies depending on the negotiations that happen between the artiste management and promoters of the event. In countries with a strong music industry, touring is also a goldmine. Basically, touring is whereby a performing artiste plans out a calendar of different live concerts in various cities in several countries (sometimes). Attendants of the concerts would have to purchase tickets to get access to the concert. Hence the artiste gets a cut of the total of the ticket earnings.

Sales of Merchandise

When J. Cole’s manager was asked in an interview, the means by which J. Cole himself (not the label he’s signed to) makes money, he answered “touring and merch.” Merch which is short for merchandise is basically a product designed and customised with the brand of an artiste, and sold usually to promote the artiste, a musical project, a tour, or what have you. This may come in the form of T-shirt, caps, footwear and even mugs.

Brand Endorsements and Partnerships

Companies and brands sometimes sign contracts with artistes to endorse their product or service. Companies do that for publicity and advertisement purposes, so they can penetrate into the market that the artiste spearheads. Hence, they usually contract artistes whose image and brand suit that of the company. The company pays the artiste an amount of money for fulfilment of the contract. This is a tried and tested tactic which works for most companies. It’s all business.

 

Other aspects of a music industry which deserve a mention are Artistes and Repertoire (A&R), artiste development, artiste management, and entertainment law. But I won’t get into the details of that in this session.

 

The Problems with the Ghana Music Scene

I call it the Ghana music scene because we don’t have a music industry. There are little to no structures in place to handle the monetisation of music. Ghana is blessed to have abundant talents, but currently the system being run is to make music, put it out for free [on online platforms], run outdated promotions and hope the song(s) blow up, so one could be booked for live shows and concerts, and money can then be made off the art and investment. A few of them get brand endorsements and partnerships once in a while. Hence, the system favours the artistes in the upper echelon like Sarkodie, Shatta Wale, Stonebwoy, Kwesi Arthur and a few others, who have hit songs. Even B-list artistes struggle to make a living off their art, not to talk about producers and songwriters. But in a well-established industry, that’s not usually the case.

The problem starts with a lack of oversight of the music business, which has resulted in the lack of foundational elements. Then it follows with ignorance, on the part of both the artistes and fans. That’s why I took time to write this lengthy article, so those who are serious about the music business can be informed. Most artistes have no idea how else to make money apart from the two means mentioned above. The few A-list artistes who are aware commonly lie to the public about how rich they are and the major moves they’re making. They hide their tactics of earning money from the others down the food chain.

The fans have a false notion that the artistes they support are cashing out, and that they’re really trying their best by downloading music for free from blogs, or buying tickets to attend concerts. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to explain to people that an artiste gets no money when they download music for free on blogs. Mostly, they argue that they pay with their internet subscription bundle, ignoring that the money actually goes to the internet service provider. This example alone is an indication that the average Ghanaian fan doesn’t have a digital culture embedded in him/her.

Music creation, consumption and business has grown over the years. Presently, we’re in an era of computerisation and digitisation. Recording artistes and producers use software like FL Studio, Cubase and ProTools to create music. Distribution is done digitally using computers. Marketing has switched to digital. Publishing and royalties collection have also gone digital whereby tracking software are employed. Even most concert tickets are now sold online. The ready means by which fans consume music is by using a mobile phone, either by downloading, streaming or buying it.

This transformation started happening about ten years ago, but Ghana is still stuck with archaic means. I’ve realised that the root of the stagnancy is the lack of a digital culture ingrained in Ghanaians, and the expensive cost of internet data. I’m a digital marketer, so I base my views and opinions on real life experience and in-depth observation. When I speak about the deficiency of digital culture, I’m not referring to just music fans, but businesses, corporations, and even the government. Ghanaian businesses don’t invest much in digital marketing; the public barely click on online ads; online payment systems like PayPal have blacklisted the country; an insignificant fraction of the citizens possess an online transaction bank card; online businesses are gradually rising, but are still untrusted and on the low; internet connectivity is poor; big corporations don’t do hiring and communication with email.

Notwithstanding all these downsides, internet data is very expensive, hence people aren’t able to keep up with the new global culture. Considering the poor economy, the average Ghanaian cannot afford to stream a 10-track album each day for a week.

These and other reasons have left us behind. No doubt, quality music is been produced, but structures haven’t been put in place for the average fan to access music legally with a device that suits this modern era, which in effect doesn’t allow monetisation of the music, vis-à-vis royalties collection and distribution. In summary, Ghana is 10 years behind in the music business.

There are also no active companies and/or record labels to oversee the various aspects of the music business – distribution, marketing, PR, publishing, royalties collection and distribution, licensing, touring and bookings, A&R, and artiste development.

Investors are not willing to devote their hard earned money into the music business mostly because there’s no proper data that they can look at to have business confidence. They don’t see it as a lucrative venture.

Whenever Ghanaian artistes get hit by the reality of the broken system, they channel their energies to the government, but they never get results. The government and Ghana as a whole see entertainment as the last thing on their priority list. They have the economy, education, health, agriculture and other equally important sectors to fix.  When all that is done, then they gear their focus towards entertainment. The interesting thing is, taking a closer look at it, we don’t essentially need government intervention to fix any of problems raised. This indicates that the creators and stakeholders who are directly involved and affected have to take it upon themselves to solve the issues.

Possible Solutions to the Problems

I’m optimistic that if internet data is made affordable, in conjunction with sensitisation and education, Ghanaians would gradually develop a digital culture. Data affordability is in the hands of internet service providers (ISPs). These are companies who are in business to make profit. However, the cost of data is usually a reflection of the infrastructure and expertise invested into construction of internet connection. To my best of knowledge, presently, fibre cable technology is the latest system being used in Ghana. If a low-cost invention as compared to fibre cables is implemented and the ISPs are generous enough, then data prices can reduce.

DSPs that operate in the country like Apple Music don’t have a payment subscription system that is favourable for the average Ghanaian – a lot of people use mobile money for daily transactions. Aftown is the only DSP I know that has mobile money integration, but it’s not popular. To fix that, either the existing DSPs allow mobile money integration or a new app has to be built which factors that; and it has to be properly promoted and marketed with all hands on deck. Other payment methods which are easily accessible like scratch cards and third-party online payment systems like Hubtel should be included. It’d be a good thing for all the artistes to come together to agree that they release their music on this platform, disallowing bloggers to upload copies on their websites. This can be done in collaboration with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) services. When implemented, fans would have no other option than to legally consume the music by paying for it.

Companies have to be built to take care of the various aspects of music business. If record labels are farfetched, it can be started from the ground up by building digital marketing, PR, distribution, royalties collection, publishing, licensing, touring and bookings, entertainment law, and artiste management companies, agencies and firms, with state of the art skills, knowledge and tools, which are up to the task, and actually achieve results.

There’s also a necessity for the formation of a data and statistical company which computes analytics and reports on music released, capital invested, income generated, and much more, to encourage potential investors to contribute to the music business.

These are my observations and contributions, but it may not be exhaustive. If you have different opinions, suggestions, contributions or corrections, kindly drop it in the comments section. I believe we’ve done enough of the talking and complains. Let’s get to work.