Nigerian Entertainment Industry’s Failure to Leverage Digital Revenue is a Great Loss in 2020 – SJW Entertainment Boss

Music entrepreneur and investor in Nigeria entertainment and music industry who is Chief Executive of a leading music company in Africa, Mr. Justine Obiajunwa popularly called Sir Justine has said that the failure of the entertainment industry to leverage digital revenue opportunities has resulted in a great loss to artistes and other players in the sector.

The music label promoter called on other players in the industry to look to the direction of the digital revenue stream to cushion the negative impact of the Covid-19.

The record label owner noted that there is a huge opportunity to earn great revenue from the digital download, streaming, and subscriptions. He explained that Movie, Music, and Comedy contents, as well as other intellectual property items, have enormous potential to drive revenue from the digital space.

“The last year 2020 because of Covid-19 we can notice how we have not utilized our digital revenue space. Most of the artists, even the A-List Artistes, went broke because of the lockdown which resulted in a lack of shows. Many were not able to earn any income last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. More so because they neglected the opportunities in the digital revenue space. There is a need to look into the opportunity in digital revenue.”

“While 2020 was the worse year for African and Nigerian entertainment stars, American artists were busy making money and buying new cars, buying gifts for their families and spending money lavishly because they were earning from the digital space. Sadly, we are neglecting digital revenue opportunities. The question is how much do Nigerian artists earn from Youtube and other platforms? Nigerian artists should look again into digital revenue space”.

“A country of 200 million people with over 40 million youths active on the internet and social media; it is such good numbers that should translate into good earnings for our artistes. Why is it that Nigerian artists need to have shows, tours, and concerts, and other live events to be able to make money? This should not be so in this fast-paced and well developed digital age”

Sir Justine insisted the Nigerian entertainment industry must to do better and increase revenues through digital avenues in 2021 to ensure that both artistes, record label owners, and investors in the industry can maximize and scale value, and to attract more talents with potential for Nigeria to keep dominating the global music space.

“in this new world of digital, the entertainment industry should take full advantage because digital and data is the new oil. The focus should be on digital revenues instead of concerts and shows which are no longer coming. Nigeria must have its digital platform where people from all over the world can buy our content. We are a country of 200 million, and active internet users with a strong love for entertainment. By having our platform, the government too can make enormous income, we control our data, Africans in Africa and diaspora Africans and lovers of African entertainment can buy our content, on our platform, not on Youtube with 1million views that equal to just less than $3’000 and others. Uploading our contents on foreign digital platforms don’t generate revenue for our government, that’s why our government doesn’t care to invest in Entertainment because they have no way to track revenue. We need to think about how to build our digital platform”

“Most of our A-list and upcoming artists are often in a rush to sign international deals which put them in enslavement. Most of the foreign and international platforms and labels offer our artists some peanuts to take away their copyrights and ‘steal’ their intellectual properties. They don’t own their royalties. We don’t need foreign platform because they no longer benefit us and our country”

“Added to this, we now have the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, AfCFTA, which create a single market for Africa with 55 countries, over 2.2 trillion dollars GDP and over 1.2 billion African population, this is a great new chance we have to scale the opportunities in our entertainment industries and grow revenues”

In 2019, the revenue from digital downloads was around 394 million US dollars. In the same vein, subscription and streaming revenues reached a whopping 8.83 billion US dollars in 2019 and this makes up almost the entire revenue for the music industry.