3Music Awards' CEO – Nigerian artistes have more foresight than Ghanaian musicians

The founder of 3Music Awards says Nigerian artistes “know better” than their Ghanaian counterparts.

He said anytime someone asks him the “difference between Ghanaian and Nigerian artistes", he always say Nigerian acts have more “insight and experience.”

Recounting his time as the Country Director of Boomplay, Sadique Abdulai Abu said because of this lack of insight, Ghanaian musicians become jumpy when they are approached with an idea that could help advance them.

“I remember when we started Boomplay, I went to Shatta Wale to acquire his content and then he said we should pay him 1.5 million dollars. I was like, do you know the size of your market; what even entails the size of the business for us to start with that amount? I told him no, it doesn’t work like that.

“The average Ghanaian artiste don’t have the insight to know or see things when it is coming. So, anything you approach them with, they think you are trying to take advantage of them. So I’ve learnt not to wait for them.”

He continued that if Ghanaian musicians had taken advantage of the benefits of Boomplay, thy would have got more from their work.

“At the time I left Boomplay to focus on 3Music, we had about 11 million users in Ghana. Now Boomplay has about 17.5 million users in the country.”

He explained that the hike in the number of people using the Chinese Streaming platform is “because it comes preinstalled on mobile phones” such as Techno, Infinix and Itel.

He added that, artistes have to liaise with an aggregator to get their songs on the platform as they can make a lot of money through “listenership {and} subscriptions” by their fans.

The head of the 3Music Awards indicated that by the time he left Boomplay, the people in the music industry who “didn’t want to associate” with the platform are now “chasing us and wanting their content to be put on.”