Akinwunmi raises bar on music distribution

To get optimal leverage from digital revenue, a music distribution expert and founder, Dapper Music Entertainment, Damilola Akinwunmi, has revealed pitfalls that Nigerian artistes get into and proffered ways out of them.

Akinwunmi described popular artiste and Empawa founder, Mr Eazi, as the poster boy that Nigerian artistes should emulate, adding that “I consider Mr Eazi to be the best at leading the digital space, he is basically toeing a path that everyone should follow and emulate. He also sets the bar so high and if you pay attention to what he does, you can benefit a lot as well.”

The man has been working with rapper, Ice Prince, to reposition his career. To his credit, he has distributed content for popular Nigerian artistes such as Sean Tizzle, Teni, Ice Prince, Mr Real, Orezi, among others.

• The façade of social media

Fondly called Dapper Damm, the Sociology graduate of University of Lagos cut his teeth in 2014 promoting rising Nigerian artistes, Koker and Dotman. He moved on in 2016 to join Temple Management, a Lagos-based talent agency as an entertainment executive.

At Temple, he was in charge of artistes such as Iyanya, Adey, Chris, Aaron and Tee-Y Mix.

According to him, “At the moment, I believe that platforms that make the most money for Afrobeats artistes are Apple and Spotify. However, a lot really depend on the artiste and types of content. One of the most important mistakes Nigerian make is they don’t have their content well distributed on all platforms.

“It’s easy for artistes to neglect some platforms because it’s not popular but when calculated, the missed revenue from that is huge. One of the main sources artistes neglect is YouTube Content ID and monetisation on platforms such as SoundCloud and Audio Mack.”