(Beehive to the World)
My dear visitors, i apologise for not posting any article for a while now, its been because of reasons beyoud my powers but i am back and this time the with more efficiency and style. this is an open letter to all up coming artiste in the city of bauchi
My dear visitors, i apologise for not posting any article for a while now, its been because of reasons beyoud my powers but i am back and this time the with more efficiency and style. this is an open letter to all up coming artiste in the city of bauchi
Beehive as the city of Bauchi is called by the entertainment industry has grown rather rapidly and surprisingly in terms of the quality of music pushed outta the industry weekly by its indigenous artistes both lyrically and instrumental quality. On a majority scale, rap music headlines the art and
Artistes from beehive
now headline events within and around the city incurring a large followership
as they progress thereby raising the rap bar high for fellow contending states.
I was present in Kano when B.O.C pulled out the crowd present at the show of a
relatively more famous Arewa (northern) artiste just with his presence outside
the venue even though he was not slated to perform that night. His No English
mixtape tour was a huge success as he shut down Kano, Kaduna, Keffi and other
states making sure fans had a swell time enjoying their money while he rhymed.
Back to the matter at hand,
promotion of projects or songs by artistes, labels e.t.c is the business part
of entertainment as a whole because through it you get downloads, shows, money
and collaborations from various artistes who got to hear your work. Artistes in
the city of beehive (Bauchi) have had it as a challenge and the nature and
system of promotion of music by artistes especially the upcoming is nothing to
brag about compared to the quality of music being exported by these same
artistes. Aside from Facebook, a lot of these artistes have no social media
life, means of relating to their fans or a medium of promoting and sharing
their projects, as a matter of bitterness, some artistes still depend on
WhatsApp and Bluetooth as the only available means of sharing their songs with
people.
WhatsApp fucks with the
quality of your song as it reduces everything you hold dear about the song.
Instead of WhatsApp, sharing music’s using email/Gmail is advisable which brings us back to the question, how many
beehive artistes have an email and how often do they use it?
Serious labels don’t
need your phone number to contact you neither do serious minded business people
because as Nigerians we all know the light issue which might end up leaving
your phone off for days but the email ensures safe and sure delivery of
messages and music’s shared through mails remain of same quality as initially
produced.
Twitter is a strange
terminology to most artistes in Bauchi state. From my own personal research,
60% of the artistes in the state don’t know the way twitter works, they don’t
even know the use neither do they know how important it is when it comes to
promotion and business.
Twitter is a platform
for promotion and hype where serious minded individuals and cooperate bodies
advertise themselves and market their products for serious potential clients.
Twitter has a large coverage and a single retweet of your tweet by a person
famous on twitter with a lot of followers could kickstart your career. Hype and
promotions are run on twitter by creating a hashtags (#) of the project name
(either a song, album or mixtape) then generating trends by engaging people to
tweet about the hashtag which in turn attracts people to join the trend. If the
hashtag trending is about a song by an artiste, this trends increases the
number of downloads the song gets which is the dream of every artiste no matter
the form or genre he or she practices. It pays to be on twiter as an artiste.
Album art/ cover art of
projects or singles dropped by any artist is also a tool for promoting the song
or the project therefore it needs to b something attractive, meaningful and
also passes the message in the son along. From the name of the song and the
cover art, a fan should be able to create a pictorial image of the song and
also be anxious to listen to the song. Some artist in beehive think a cover art
is not a necessity so they just create a very wack art which is so depressing
that the interest of the fan to download the song suddenly vanishes. As an
artiste in beehive I put it to you to get a good graphic designer, pitch your
idea of the song to him and what you would like him to put on the art for you
because its your project so its supposed to be your concept if not totally then
80% then let the graphic designer use his expertise to expand your idea and
generate something really dope. (S/O to Spinart).
Most upcoming artistes
in beehive believe that since they are not making money yet from the art they
cannot afford to pay bloggers to put their songs on their blogs forgetting that
this is the most important part of promotion as this gives you’re a wider
coverage and fans you could never reach even if you were left to. Those who use
the free hosting sites like datafilehost.com, mynotjustok.com don’t even know
te importance of sharing these links so people can download their projects.
Even MI Abaga admitted to using datafilehost.com to share his third mixtape
#IllegalMusicIII which accumulated over 200,000 downloads fo rhim making it the
most downloaded mixtape. I would leave the renowned bloggers in the city to
explain the importance of uploading music’s on their platform because they
would do that way better than me.
I believe the mentality
of the artistes in Bauchi has changed abit this year in respect to radio
promotion and airplay. The system was fucked up initially with zero assistance
coming from the radio houses which made the Bauchi artiste solely depend on
social media to hype their project but there is work in progress on giving the
local artistes airplay especially on ray power network where DjBlaze ensures
that local artistes get their music’s aired during his programs (S/O to the
entire cast of #TheWeekendCruise). Other platforms are being put in place to
promote home based artiste with time.
Finally, the typical
Bauchi artiste does not know that the DeeJay is a very important figure in the
music promotion business, they see the deejay as a regular guy that has no
importance except when a show is in play not knowing that the deejay could make
your performance epic or ruin a spectacular performance with the push of a
button and you can’t do nothing to him. The artiste and the deejay are supposed
to be partners who grow together helping each other.
As a Deejay that I am,
if you meet me on the street of Bauchi as an artiste that you are and tell me
to open my Bluetooth so you can send me your song, I don’t think I would give
you a suitable answer and even if I am in a good mood to collect them I might
delete them the second we part ways except I requested for the song to be sent
to me through that medium for reasons best known to be. All I need is for you
to share your music links with me and tag me on necessary posts that promote
your music in that case I can also help in sharing them while I download mine.
In conclusion, if your
plan was to be a subsistent artiste (family consumption only) then state it
from the beginning of your career so we don’t bother when we see your numbers
and also not to disturb you when we are planning events but if you as an
artiste in Bauchi state want to show the beauty of your art to the world then
you need real promotion packages. Hook up with Deejay Blaze for radio promo and also to have your singles make it
in his mixtapes which are downloaded a lot by fan all over the country and also
hook up with Mayor
(www.beautifularewa.com), Josh (www.beehivegossip.blogspot.com)
or any other blogger in the city to get your music online while you do what I
wrote in this article and see how your fan base increases.
#InMyOwnOpinion
#Beehive2DaWorld
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