It looks like it is going to be a rather interesting week in the entertainment industry. Let’s wait and see, then again maybe not. Happy New Week.
Watch 9ice declare war on bloggers who post his songs without his permission. He says they cannot criticize him for free and expect to also upload his songs for free.
He also takes on Linda Ikeji. “Linda Ikeji, who is she?” he responds when he is asked about her position that artists need to pay for marketing and promotions on her blog.
Are you a blogger? What are your thoughts on 9ice’s statements?
-Uduak
Firstly let me state that I am a Nigerian music blogger living in the UK.
Having been privileged to fully-explore the culture of both the UK and British industries, I have to say I agree with 9ice 100%.
From my understanding of copyright laws, posting a song on a website directly generates income for the blogger through the views (ad impressions) it generates. Hence, such a song is being indirectly used for commercial purposes. Infringement #1
It gets worse when such songs are made available for free download especially when the artist hasn’t consented to such distribution. This is more or less equal to Privacy. Infringement #2
Unfortunately the Nigerian audience would forever favour free downloads over paying for anything. Not even a premium Spotify or Spinlet account.
Hence the big blogs encourage it and the smaller blogs will copy the same business model to be able to stand a chance in the competition for views.
That said, if this continues how will our artistes make money from thier labour? I’ve always encouraged Nigerian artistes I know to follow thier international counterparts by uploading thier songs to thier own official soundcloud accounts and then allow the bloggers to embed that. This way it is a win-win for everyone. And that way the artist is even able to actually monitor how well his song is performing based on the centralised stats.
Based on the Nigerian mentality, I think 9ice is in for a very tough battle because even the so-called big blogs & fans are presently not seeing things from his point of view sadly.