Many upcoming musicians believe their success is limited to how much “payola” they pay.
DJ and General Manager of YFM Kumasi; Nathaniel Osei Kufour says this assertion couldn’t be further from the truth.
DJ Mahony as he is popularly known summarizes it thus; “It’s not about your payola. If your music is rich, we will play it. If it’s not, we won’t play it no matter what payola you pay”.
In an interview with Bernard Buachi of www.ghanagong.com/www.rawgist.com, DJ Mahony revealed that Payola plays a very minute role in gaining airplay of music. “There are folks who have not even paid one cedi in payola but enjoy great airplay” he said.
DJ Mahony who has worked in the music industry for a while says musicians should take branding very seriously. “Some musicians will bring the DJ a generic recordable CD with marker inscriptions. If unfortunately, your CD mixes with other CDs, it will be very difficult for the DJ to sort out. Why don’t you take your time to put together a great playlist on a well branded digital medium” he opined.
He says promoting musical content has been made even easier with the advent of the internet and encouraged musicians to take advantage of the internet to promote their content. “Promotion has been made easy with the advent of the internet. Gone are the days when you had to travel from Accra to Kumasi to promote your song. These days people successfully promote songs without moving at all” he said and insisted that upcoming artistes do not need a producer(financier) to succeed.
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