Music business consultant expert, Steve Osagie has cautioned artistes against ignoring the business aspect of their music career, saying many of them failed in this regard because they believe music only stops when they dropped a song.
Osagie said he feared many artistes with hit songs may soon go broke for their failure to study understand the business aspect of their music.
Osagie who has been in the forefront of artiste management and business of music in the music industry for 15 years in a chat with Potpourri recently explained that what people see as success in the lives of many artistes was only a facade that usually fade off because they lack substance that can sustain them.
The man who goes by the moniker ‘Steve Spotlight’ is the head of Label Services at Spotlight Management and Consultancy Limited, a prominent brand with over 20 years experience in creating multi-channel strategies to help SMEs, people in the creative industry, corporations across the UK and Africa.
Speaking further, Osagie disclosed that as entertaining as making music could be, many creatives get carried away with the wave while they fail to realise that there is more to music than dropping hit songs, adding that it takes due diligence to clearly distinguish doing music from doing the business.
“My fears are a lot of artistes coming into the industry now do not understand the business of music. They are just doing it because they want to ‘blow’. Other people are into it because they see people making money and they want to go into it too. They may be talented but they have not taken their time to understand the fundamentals of the music business. My take is that people are going to have great music hits but they would not make money from it in four, five years’ time.
His ardent evangelism in the music industry for over a decade is to awaken everybody involved in making music, singers, DJs, composers, producers and performing artistes to the full consciousness of the transactional aspect of music.
This, according to him, fuels his desire to keep educating African artistes.
Hear him “There is nothing wrong with being a one-hit wonder. There are people who have made a living from their one hit. Being able to sustain oneself and have a successful career should be the goal. If you have a one hit wonder, it has created a big awareness for you and your brand. You should then think about where else you can take your brand, music and sound to. What’s really important is having a long lasting successful career.”
He added further that lack of education about any business one ventures into would have adverse effect and is likely to make one poorer.
“The main thing is have a plan and understand the music industry and the music business. That education is very important. If you do not understand the music business, you can spend hundreds of thousands, even millions, and if you are not signed with a publishing administrator who collects your royalties for you, you may make no penny from hit songs.” he said.
