Nigeria’s based leading digital music distribution companies, Free Me Digital who housed content our favourite musicians such as Adekunde Gold, Falz, Ajebutter 22, Olamide, P-Square & others reportedly taken down their entire music catalogue from Africa’s leading streaming giant, Boomplay Music.
According to a report published by Free Me Digital has reportedly pull-down their entire catalogue from the streaming platform.
In an Instagram Story post by David Evans, he claimed that ‘The Chinese Company With No Nigerian Representation On Their Board Has Exploited The Nigerian Music Industry For Long Enough’.
Speaking to The NATIVE, Evans said:
“Boomplay doesn’t provide any value for the music industry. They don’t have any advertising so they’re not getting more s, they also have the lowest per-stream rate around here. We’ve asked them to address some of these issues but they don’t seem to want to budge. They use our artists’ popularity and numbers to make themselves look good, but they don’t pay us or offer us anything that s the industry.”
He continues:
We produce thousands of songs, hundreds of music video which cost us nothing less than 1 billion Naira altogether a year. If all the music distributors came together to actually calculate how much we’re spending, we can’t have foreigners just come and take this content, put it on their app which they have raised money to operate from investors. Not a single dollar has gone towards the advancement of the music industry and speaking for the music industry and for myself, it’s not acceptable. It’s almost like slavery.
In the said Instagram story post, David Evans confirmed that his decision to pull-down Jungle Venture’s entire music catalogue was ed by Michael Ugwu, CEO of Free Me Entertainment, and Bugo Arinze of MAD Solutions.
