Africa Music Law™
AFRICA MUSIC LAW™ (AML) is a pioneering music business and entertainment law website and podcast show empowering the African artist and Africa's rapidly evolving entertainment industry through brilliant music business and entertainment law commentary and analysis, industry news, and exclusive interviews.
For general inquiries, advertising, licensing, or to appear on the show as a guest, please email (info@africamusiclaw.com). Thank you for visiting.
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Credited for several firsts in the fashion and entertainment industry, Uduak Oduok (Ms. Uduak) is a fashion and entertainment lawyer, speaker, visionary, gamechanger, trailblazer, and recognized thought leader, for her work on Africa’s emerging global fashion and entertainment markets, and the niche practice of fashion law in the United States. She is also the founder of ‘Africa Music Law,’ an industry go-to music business and law blog and podcast show empowering African artists. Her work in the creative and legal industries has earned her numerous awards and recognitions, including an award from the American University Washington College of Law for her “legal impact in the field of intellectual property in Africa." She has also taught as an Adjunct Professor at several institutions in the United States. For more information, visit her at https://msuduak.com.
Firstly let me state that I am a Nigerian music blogger living in the UK.
Having been privileged to fully-explore the culture of both the UK and British industries, I have to say I agree with 9ice 100%.
From my understanding of copyright laws, posting a song on a website directly generates income for the blogger through the views (ad impressions) it generates. Hence, such a song is being indirectly used for commercial purposes. Infringement #1
It gets worse when such songs are made available for free download especially when the artist hasn’t consented to such distribution. This is more or less equal to Privacy. Infringement #2
Unfortunately the Nigerian audience would forever favour free downloads over paying for anything. Not even a premium Spotify or Spinlet account.
Hence the big blogs encourage it and the smaller blogs will copy the same business model to be able to stand a chance in the competition for views.
That said, if this continues how will our artistes make money from thier labour? I’ve always encouraged Nigerian artistes I know to follow thier international counterparts by uploading thier songs to thier own official soundcloud accounts and then allow the bloggers to embed that. This way it is a win-win for everyone. And that way the artist is even able to actually monitor how well his song is performing based on the centralised stats.
Based on the Nigerian mentality, I think 9ice is in for a very tough battle because even the so-called big blogs & fans are presently not seeing things from his point of view sadly.