The Nigerian music business is little question one of many world’s booming music industries.
As Afrobeats continues to dominate the world with international information like Calm Down by Rema, Essence by Wizkid, and Love Nwantiti by CKay amongst others, world music executives proceed to look in direction of Africa.
Regardless of the heavy presence of the majors together with unbiased music distribution corporations, music distributors like AWAL, UnitedMasters, and others nonetheless couldn’t resist coming all the way down to Africa searching for a number of the Afrobeats honey.
No matter how booming the Nigerian music business seems, it’s not resistant to the financial forces that form the nation’s monetary panorama. One such power is the fluctuation of trade charges, notably between the US greenback and the Nigerian naira. On this submit, we’ll discover how these trade price actions can have an effect on varied features of the Nigerian music business.
As of 12:47 pm WAT on February 21, 2024, the greenback to naira trade price is at N1830 on the black market in response to Aboki Foreign exchange. The parallel part of the overseas trade market recorded a brand new all-time low on Tuesday after the naira depreciated to N1,830 per greenback.
1. Value of Gear
Most of Nigeria’s musical gear is imported. From guitars to pianos, all the way down to laptops, music manufacturing software program, audio system, and extra. A good portion of Nigerian musicians and producers depend on imported gear for recording and manufacturing functions. A weak naira means a excessive value of manufacturing. As producers, sound engineers will overview their costs in the event that they ever need to buy extra superior gear.
2. Extra naira for Nigerian artists through advances or royalties
Artists like Burna Boy, Rema, and Wizkid, amongst others, are going to be smiling proper now. These artists get advances for tasks in {dollars}, the identical as their streaming and publishing royalties. With the surge of digital streaming platforms, Nigerian artists earn income from streams worldwide. A weak naira means extra naira to those guys after they convert their earnings to naira.
3. Excessive buying energy for advertising campaigns in Nigeria
Though most media corporations, influencers, and businesses will overview their costs to align with the brand new trade charges, Nigerian artists and their labels are nonetheless going to seek out it cheaper to supervise advertising campaigns in Nigeria as in comparison with the price of doing so in 2023, when the naira was not as weak as it’s at the moment. However this may not favour indie and rising artists, as most of them earn in Nigeria and never {dollars}.
4. Touring Prices
Many Nigerian musicians aspire to tour internationally, however a weaker naira interprets to increased bills for reserving venues, transportation, and lodging overseas. Such elevated prices might hinder Nigerian artists’ capability to tour globally or power them to hike ticket costs to offset the elevated bills.
5. Buying Energy of Followers
If trade price fluctuations result in inflation or financial instability in Nigeria, the buying energy of followers might dwindle. This might lead to lowered spending on music-related actions reminiscent of live performance tickets, merchandise, and music downloads, thereby impacting the income streams of Nigerian artists.
6. Impact on Worldwide advertising campaigns
The Afrobeats to the world wovement is probably not potential once more if the greenback continues to step on the naira, particularly for unbiased artists who do not need {dollars} to spend. Overseas media cost in {dollars} or kilos which is one thing a mean Nigerian artist doesn’t need to spend on the present trade price.
In conclusion, the adversarial impression of the prevailing dollar-to-naira trade price outweighs any potential optimistic outcomes. The disparity between the 2 currencies has created important challenges for the Nigerian music business.
