Streaming Farms and Other Afrobeats Lessons for Nigeria
Years ago, I made friends with a Togolese citizen who surprised me by saying their favourite artist was Adekunle Gold. Traveling at the time, I was already used to hearing “Davido” or “Wizkid”. But Adekunle Gold? He was new on the scene, and he mostly sang in Yoruba. She didn’t care about the fact she could hardly understand what he was singing. She just loved his art. Adekunle has since evolved his music and lyrics and has built a fan base around the world on the back of that evolution. He exemplifies the global success of Afrobeats over the last decade and this.
The Afrobeats music genre originating from Nigeria has got many lessons for the country itself. A largely underrated force behind the spread of Afrobeats is the advent of streaming platforms. Digital Service Providers like Spotify, iTunes, Boomplay Music, Tidal, Audiomack etc. have helped to render the need to export music physically through containers of Compact Discs (CDs) superfluous.
When Reminisce Alaga Ibile released his latest album, Alaye Toh Se Gogo, he did not need to make plans for the music to be physically moved from one country to another. It was available and accessible to any interested party, globally. The Internet, like it did with countless other things, is the ultimate democratisation of the business and culture of music. Music beyond borders went from an imagination to the norm.
That is not to say that democratisation ended the need for gatekeepers. Gatekeepers, contrary to what some experts say, hardly disappear, they just change form. They may not retain as much power as they once did beyond the disruptions brought about by the Internet. Rest assured though, gatekeepers continue to hold sway. There is a reason artists under big labels generally do better commercially than Independent artists for instance. When you squeeze the juice out of the why that is the case, you’d see that’s an element of the prevailing reality of gatekeepers.
The big lesson here for Nigeria is that, how do we move our products all around the world like we move our music via streaming platforms? To start with, we must start with the product itself. There are countless other emerging genres with the same access to the streaming platforms like Afrobeats, but they aren’t getting the same attention. The food that Afrobeats cooks retains the familiarity of American hip-hop with a blend of the unfamiliar, the Nigerianness along with its sound, culture and defining X-factor essence. They feel they’ve heard something like it before, then they are hit by the drums and the chutzpah of the Nigerian act. There and then they know this is some sort of refreshing familiarity. If we want to sell to the world, we must start with the familiar.
The mere exposure effect, also called the familiarity principle, means that anyone who’s familiar with American hip-hop will likely want to have some of what Afrobeats offers. Because intersections abound in music, style, culture and taste. It is a familiar shock at worst.
Platforms are essential. Whilst things appear to have improved, they have not improved enough. We need to do more Ease of Doing Business than we talk Ease of Doing Business. We need to be a competitive economy. A quick test of how competitive we are is to try exporting a similar product from Nigeria compared to Ghana. If it is easier to do that export elsewhere in West Africa, you’ve already failed the competitive test. If you can’t beat the average in a sub-region that isn’t known to be the global standard, how can you compete at the efficiency required beyond that level?
That Nigerians are exploring the likes of Ghana, Benin and even the UAE for their exports speaks to the mitigating factor that exporting from Nigeria is to businesses. Cocoa remains a major export from Nigeria. What happened to having an Agro Port in Ondo State to facilitate the export of agricultural products? The Lekki Deep Sea Port and the Lagos Free Zone offer a template for the sort of ecosystem one could build for specific industries and manufacturing generally.
Afrobeats has tapped into the Nigerian enterprising spirit, travelled with Nigerians all over the world and has become a global phenomenon, even as its spread continues unabated. However, like every empire, the seed of its destruction is advancing alongside its rise. Whilst Streaming Farms are a global phenomenon, it appears to be a deeper issue than acknowledged in Nigeria. Think of Streaming Farms like doping in sports. Circumventing the system to get ahead of everyone and be perceived better than one really is. It is a play for overestimation, a combat in the acceptance of one’s mediocrity.
It can cost as much as $12,000/track. Using computer programmes, a horde of systems, phones and other platforms connected to the streaming platforms, bots help to generate artificial streams for a song that then helps it jump on the charts. It is easier on some platforms than others. Spotify for instance frowns at it and has been seen to yank-off songs perceived to be using streaming farms to dope their numbers.
When there is a vast difference between a song’s popularity on one major platform versus another like Spotify where spamming comes at a cost, chances are that the numbers on the former got farmed.
That is why some of the end of year rankings on some platforms are deemed more credible than others. You cannot separate the Nigerian spirit of fair competition from the success of Afrobeats. Like humans elsewhere, given the opportunity, people will try to beat the system. Whilst a sophisticated music market and culture like that of the United States can quickly spot and have such attempts punished, ours, amidst of our success, remains largely inchoate. We have done an excellent job of exporting our best to the world of music, it’d come at a grave cost if we are deceived into believing the mediocre in our midst are the best of us. Streaming Farms can make that happen, if they aren’t nipped in the bud now.
