A budding musician, Emeka Seun Otuata, has lamented that artistes in Nigeria have been groaning under the crush of telecommunication service providers and the radio stations which deprive them of their due royalties while using their works without commensurate compensations.
Lamenting the impoverished status of most of Nigerian artistes who he said are merely struggling to survive, Hip Hop star, Otuata, aka ‘Styleh’, observed that lack of government’s appropriate policy was making the service providers to grow their businesses at the expense of Nigerian musicians who toil day and night to make a living.
The artiste stated that while music globally is a lucrative business due to conducive enabling environment in the advanced countries, it was not so in Nigeria as the artistes here labour without much to show for their efforts due to the exploitative nature of doing business in the country.
The musician, whose recent single ‘Eleda mi’, is currently making the waves, blamed the plight of Nigerian artistes on radio stations, which he maintained, regularly play music to enhance their operations without paying royalties to the musicians to compensate for the efforts, hence killing the morale of the toiling artistes.
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According to him, it is also the same situation with the telecommunication service providers, who he stressed, download the works of the musicians online to promote their own businesses without paying the commensurate dues to the artistes, thereby side-tracking their efforts.
To salvage this situation, the Delta State-born artiste, with the stage called on the government to create the enabling environment for the entertainment industry by making it mandatory for radio stations and telecom service providers to pay appropriate monetary dues to artistes when their works are deployed for their own business interest.
He further regretted that when it comes to sponsorship or endorsements, where the artiste could make some reasonable income, the corporate bodies would prefer to patronise the ‘A’ List artiste, whereas there is no discrimination when they use the music of the up-coming artiste to promote their own business.
He decried the cheating, which he stated, is being suffered in the hands of telecom service providers and radio stations, stressing that musicians across board needed to be encouraged in their musical career for the entertainment industry in Nigeria to grow and live up to expectation in the global perspective.
The artiste urged federal and state governments to be proactive in their attitude and policies for youth encouragement and empowerment programmes, stressing that Nigeria should desist from being a dream-killing country, which he lamented, has been leading to brain drain in the country.
On drug addiction for performance enhancement, the musician urged his colleagues who thrive in such vices, to desist from such destructive acts and be natural in their performing bids, because of the side effects of unbridled hard drug use.