Remember those days when we couldn’t wait for albums to drop for us to rush into the nearest music store to purchase a copy? The days when we weren’t internet savvy and our only means of listening to albums was by getting a hard copy from stores nearby. Even though Alaba boys did pirate some of those works for personal gain, the artiste could at least boast of making a reasonable amount of money from album sales.
Artistes like Tuface, P-Square, D’banj and others of the early 2000s all made money from their album sales. The P-Square brothers were particularly known to drop an audio album, make sales and later drop a video album of some of the songs on the audio album and tag it, “Da Videos”. Releasing albums was a target for artistes at that time as it somewhat measured your level of success.
Fast forward to today, albums have lost its significance and relevance in the music industry. Artistes can now drop songs for years without dropping albums and do not even get affected by it. The era when people looked forward to their favourite artistes dropping an album is gone and the excitement of an album doesn’t even last long, it fades away as soon as the album is released. At this point, it is safe to say dropping albums in Nigeria is more of a bad business than a good one for artiste, hence ALBUMS ARE DEAD.
An autopsy and further investigation reveals 3 major suspects responsible for the death of albums in Nigeria.
Right from the moment the Nigerian Music Industry kicked off, the Alaba boys had always posed as a threat to the successful sales of albums. From the DJ mixes that are being made and sold without royalties being paid to artistes to the different shades of pirated discs that are being made and sold there, artistes have always had a reason to count losses from album release. Different anti-piracy bodies have been set up to check these pirates and even constitutional laws have been drafted and passed, but they just have never been taken too serious. Most of these pirates made more money off the fans-who unknowingly bought pirated albums of their cherished artistes thinking the were being supportive-than the artistes themselves. This to an extent, discouraged artistes from dropping albums as it was a perfect illustration of the ‘Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop’ adage.
Over time, the lyrics of Nigerian songs have dwindled greatly and majority of listeners have run to foreign music to get the satisfaction of good lyrics. Save for very few artistes that have stuck to dropping songs with top-notch lyrics, majority of the songs getting airplay and attention in the industry are the songs we refer to as ‘Pangolo songs’- lyrically empty songs with very good beats. Even though fans enjoy dancing to such songs when they are at a party or in a club, very few of them would actually buy a body of work containing such songs with their money. And so, even the artistes with a repertoire of good music suffer the consequences of this. As a result, many artistes have relented from dropping albums because it just doesn’t make sense. Why drop an album when you know fans won’t bother buying it?
The advent of the internet came with a lot of advantages as people could now follow their favourite artistes on social media and know whatever they are up to. The internet however, is one probable major cause of the death of albums in Nigeria. Platforms like iTunes, Spotify and other online music stores seemed like they would help curb the rate at which albums were being pirated as songs were being uploaded to them for sale on behalf of the artistes, but as blogs grew popular and bloggers grew desperate to gather traffic on their blogs, many albums were and are still uploaded for free on these blogs for visitors to download, a case of modern day online piracy. The already poor sales from albums owing to hardcopy piracy and reluctance of music listeners to buy albums only got worse with the decision of bloggers to upload albums for free. Sadly, since they operate behind the computers from wherever they choose to, very little can be done to trace and get these bloggers that leak albums.
Artistes having discovered that most of the money they make from music is either from shows or endorsements deals, have started paying very little attention to albums. Artistes that drop albums these days only do so for recognition, record purposes and to add it to their catalogue. Fans have also taken the cue and have stopped buying albums. Should the need to listen to the album arise, a visit to one of the crooked blogs would get them the album for free. It has gotten so bad that most songs on albums these days are usually ignored until videos for them are shot and released. Reekado Banks once declared his disinterest in albums when a follower asked him on Twitter when his next album would drop. In his words, “We don’t appreciate albums anymore. Can’t waste my hardwork. One by one, una go hear am”.
While we gradually and almost unknowingly got to this point with albums, very little can be done to remedy the situation. New blogs are springing up daily and that means more sites for albums to be uploaded to for free. More hardcopy pirated works are being released and sold daily under the guise of ‘Best of *whatever artiste’s name*’. The various bodies that have been set up to checkmate pirates have all failed in their duties and even the affected artistes are starting to get used to all the forms of piracy.
Until artistes unite as one to speak up against piracy of all forms, take the necessary steps to stop it, the constitutional laws against piracy taken seriously and become well-enforced, the chances of the resurrection of albums in Nigeria remain slim.









Source : fureal.com.ng