REACTIVATING THE AFRICAN MUSIC DOWNLOADING MARKET
Around 2012 there was a lot of excitement in the Nigerian music space where a number of companies were being established with the sole…
Around 2012 there was a lot of excitement in the Nigerian music space where a number of companies were being established with the sole purpose of disrupting traditional music distribution channels and capitalising on the anticipated growth prospects of digital consumption of music.
These companies, such as Spinlet, iRoking and others were attempting to spark the revolution of (legal) digital downloads which, it was hoped, would go a significant way in curbing the piracy problems the music (and overall creative) industries were grappling with at the time, both online and offline.
However, given the fact that most consumers in the market were still very much beholden to the traditional modes of music consumption — through which there was a lot of leakage in terms of sales revenues — coupled with the (relatively) high cost of internet data (a necessary cost of consuming music via the chan…