YBNL: The Street Label That Built a Nation - and a Scalable Business

How Olamide turned local leverage into global value—without selling his soul, or his masters.

Next up, in our series of deep dives on Nigeria’s leading music companies, is YBNL. Enjoy!

In the decade since Afrobeats broke into global consciousness, few labels have left a deeper mark than YBNL. And yet, despite a record of back-to-back star launches, billion-stream breakouts, and street-level brand dominance, YBNL has never once sounded like it was chasing Silicon Valley-style “scale.”

That’s because it wasn’t.

Olamide didn’t build YBNL to impress global music conglomerates. He built it as an alternative. A label for the streets, run with speed, precision, and independence. No frills. No corporate hangover. Just music, motion, and ownership.

But here’s what’s often missed: beneath the DIY visuals and local-first aesthetic sits one of the most economically efficient IP ventures in African music.

This is a breakdown of YBNL as a business—its economics, its catalogue value, and why it may be one of the smartest label builds in modern African music history.

The Olamide Doctrine

When Olamide launched YBNL in 2012, he wasn’t just trying to “own his masters.” He was rejecting the high-friction, low-margin dynamics of Nigeria’s legacy labels.

He opted instead for a lean structure: no bloated offices, no permanent payroll. Just a sharp eye for talent, a direct-to-fan pipeline, and the cultural capital to mobilize fans without intermediaries.

Early revenue wasn’t driven by streaming—this was the RBT (ringback tone) era. Artists made real money from mobile value-added services. Olamide himself was commanding $15,000–$30,000 per show at his peak in the 2010s, while breakout YBNL acts could fetch $3K–$8K. The label’s endorsement stack—Etisalat, Guinness, and more—added hundreds of thousands annually.

Crucially, YBNL kept operating costs down. With minimal staff and a highly founder-involved model, it’s likely the label’s core operations cost under $250K a year in those early years.

Translation: cash-flow positive, from Day 1.

The Empire Flip: Street-to-Stream, Without Losing the Street

Then came streaming—and the Empire deal.

In 2020, Olamide inked a global distribution partnership with Empire, not to outsource his business, but to unlock global infrastructure on his terms. The deal let YBNL keep ownership while Empire handled DSP relationships, international marketing, and some promo logistics.

It worked. Fireboy’s catalogue surged past 800 million streams. Asake’s 2022–2023 run delivered well over 2 billion. Olamide himself, even without pushing the algorithm, quietly racked up another 300 to 500 million in lifetime plays.

Let’s be conservative:

• Assume a blended per-stream payout of $0.0025

• Apply it across ~1.25B annualized streams from Fireboy, Asake, and Olamide

• That gets you to roughly $3.1M/year in streaming revenue

And that’s without counting live shows, sync deals, publishing backend, or brand partnerships.

A Venture Studio in Disguise

Most labels want to “keep” artists forever. YBNL doesn’t.

It operates more like a music venture studio: scout talent early, build fast, monetize hard, exit clean. Think Lil Kesh. Chinko Ekun. Adekunle Gold. All were signed, developed, and released without drama or equity disputes.

This rotational model has two key effects:

1. It reduces cash drag—no deadweight catalogue or long-term liabilities.

2. It lets the label recycle talent bets quickly, boosting IRR across artist cycles.

The exceptions—Fireboy and Asake—were likely longer-term plays, with Olamide possibly retaining revenue-share structures or backend sunset clauses. But even here, the focus was velocity, not hoarding.

Olamide’s Catalogue: Quiet Power

Let’s talk about the asset that often gets overlooked: Olamide’s own catalogue.

He’s released 9 studio albums, 2 EPs, and dozens of singles. No hype cycle, no clout-chasing. Just relentless output. Even a conservative estimate puts his catalogue at 180–200 tracks. That body of work—across genres, across platforms—still pulls in a meaningful volume of streams, especially on YouTube, Audiomack, and Boomplay, where his core audience lives.

It’s not all in Fireboy or Asake’s names. Olamide’s catalogue is a serious revenue floor.

Margins, Multiples, and What It’s Worth

Let’s get precise.

With lean operations, low litigation risk, and infrastructure offloaded to Empire, YBNL likely operates at 30–45% net margins. That’s exceptional by music industry standards—especially in Africa, where many labels are structurally unprofitable or overly reliant on short-term advances.

On valuation: if the label is pulling in ~$3M/year in recurring streaming income (again, this excludes shows, endorsements, or syncs), what’s that catalogue worth?

You could point to global benchmarks, where music publishing catalogs have sold for 16x net publisher share. But Africa is different. Monetization remains uneven, payout rates fluctuate across platforms, and backend administration still lags global standards. So let’s stay grounded.

A more reasonable multiple in the African context sits between 8x and 12x earnings. That gives us:

• $3M x 8 = $24M

• $3M x 12 = $36M

But not all catalogues are created equal. YBNL is young, high-velocity, and still compounding—Fireboy and Asake’s breakout tracks haven’t even hit maturity in the sync market yet. Olamide’s personal catalogue is a cultural asset, not just a financial one. Plus, there’s very little IP overhang—no litigation, no visible claims, no royalties drama.

Given that, a fair midpoint multiple of 10x is justified.

Final valuation estimate: $3M x 10 = $30M.

That’s a clean, defensible number. It accounts for the current income floor, the quality of the catalogue, and the structure of the business. It doesn’t speculate on merch or live expansion. It prices in executional discipline and cultural durability.

Would a strategic buyer pay more for Olamide’s personal brand, future rights, or bundled access to the next Fireboy? Probably. But that’s not the baseline. That’s the premium.

And YBNL isn’t pricing for premium. It’s not pricing at all.

Because it doesn’t need to.

The irony, of course, is that Olamide’s never hinted at selling. The leverage is the point.

The Beauty of Doing Less

It’s worth asking: why didn’t YBNL do what Mavin did? No publishing division. No merch. No sync agency. No investor decks.

You could call that a missed opportunity—or, more accurately, a deliberate constraint.

Because YBNL didn’t overextend, it stayed liquid. Because it didn’t try to “scale” in 10 directions, it kept discipline. It avoided the classic trap: raising money to build a 360° business with zero profitability.

Yes, it may have left 15–25% of backend publishing revenue on the table. But it also kept ownership clean, capex light, and execution focused.

The Untapped Optionality

Here’s what YBNL still hasn’t done—and could:

• Sync and licensing: Its music is criminally underused in Nollywood, Netflix, and global media.

• Merch and brand collabs: The YBNL aesthetic is tailor-made for streetwear. No one’s even scratched that.

• Fan monetization: A subscription platform or direct-to-fan model would work here—YBNL fans are loyal, not casual.

• Live/IP events: An annual “YBNL Nation” festival or regional tour circuit? Obvious, scalable, and owned.

Each of these is optionality—latent value that could be activated without blowing up the core model.

So What’s YBNL Worth, Really?

Here’s the play:

• Recurring streaming revenue: ~$3M/year

• Conservative multiple: 8x = $24M

• Strategic multiple: 12x = $36M

• Add brand equity, founder leverage, optionality? You’re easily in the $40M–$50M conversation

And yet, no headlines. No funding rounds. No press briefings. Because YBNL doesn’t need the noise.

Conclusion: If Mavin is Motown, YBNL is Roc-A-Fella

If Mavin is the polished powerhouse—backed, branded, and global-facing—then YBNL is the culture’s operating system. Raw, fast, independent. Less interested in valuation than in value. Less concerned with structure than with motion.

It didn’t raise money. It didn’t sell equity. It sold music. And then sold more.

Olamide built for his people. The world happened to catch up.