NIGERIANS CAN'T AFFORD THE DATA FOR STREAMING

I recently came across a video where a Nigerian artiste was advising his fans to stop downloading his music and instead stream it. 

Many artistes are good, but their fans are broke and do not have money to buy data to stream their music. So they download the songs from websites, so that they can keep replaying them. When you are engaging on Facebook from your browser, you can see a large number of people using Facebook Lite, which is a version of Facebook that helps save on data by showing texts only. 

Most people who stream either live abroad or have enough disposable income to spend on data, cuz the shit is freaking expensive in Nigeria.

I have a playlist on YouTube that contains just one song by one of my favourite Nigerian artistes. I also have another playlist that contains all the songs that he has ever published. I stream them regularly, and thanks to the repeat button, they will play multiple times before YouTube automatically pauses the streaming.

I can afford to do this because I use an unlimited wire-less connection that can sustain multiple devices at a time.

How can Nigerian artistes overcome this problem? 

I noticed that the artistes who suffer the most from poor streaming numbers are the ones who are yet to be recognized abroad. Meaning that if you don't live in Nigeria, you won't know about them.

Think of the fact that Johnny Drille released his debut single under Mavin Records in 2017, and I only found out about him last year December. That's almost FOUR years that I didn't know that the guy existed.

Nigerian artistes, even the upcoming ones need to start marketing their music towards Nigerians who live abroad. One single Nigerian person who lives abroad can generate more income for them than 10 Nigerians living in Nigeria.

I have written it before that less than 12% of the people who watch my YouTube videos live in Nigeria. That means that for every 100 viewers, only 19 live in Nigeria. And yet, my target is Nigeria and other English speaking African countries. 

If you are an upcoming artiste, be sure to be very strategic about how you market your music. 

Even me now as I dey here, I don add obodo oyibo to my target audience. Nigerians will not watch the videos, instead they will just read the comments and conclude based on that. Before you know, you have 10 people insulting you, but only one person has watched the video. 

This digital era is a blessing to anybody wey wan do small internet hustle, but my motherland is yet to catch up. 

For now, aim for abroadians. Na them get data to dey stream your songs.