Eldee tha don, one of the leading lights in Nigeria’s Afro-pop genre has revealed how greed destroyed Alaba market notorious for music piracy.
The former Trybesmen member said he approached Alaba market, which was primarily the country’s electronics market hub and possessed the best distribution channel for their products across the country. He presented them the idea of making profit from expanding to selling physical records, by mass producing and branding via their already established distribution records.
“To get them on board, we would have to earn their trust, and convince them on how they could make even more money if we marketed legally licensed products for them.” Eldee elucidated.
“The vision was clear so I made a move with my close friend and record label manager at the time (Babajide Familusi aka FAB) and approached them with our proposal.”
Eldee teamed up with his associate and they approached them with the plan, but could only find one willing person in 2001. His name was Tochukwu aka Tjoe. Tjoe understood, signed a deal with them, and began to rake in the millions for himself and the artistes. They set a price model for CDs and the money flowed. Tybesmen’s “L.A.G Style” was the first record to be officially distributed legally via Alaba.
Other marketers joined the moving train and hit deals with artistes and movie makers. Alaba became the largest official distributors of music and movies in Nigeria, and by extension, West Africa.
Today the game has changed for Alaba marketers as they are back to where they started from.
“Unlike Tjoe in 2001, many of the merchants got greedy and it was only a matter of time before most if not all the distributors began ripping off their content creators. They went legal for a few months, but soon went back to being pirates. They figured out ways to produce more than they declared to the creators, sometimes up to millions of extra copies of music and movie works.”
“Content owners lost confidence and millions, greedy merchants and marketers got cocky and cheated rights owners with impunity, they even declared battle against copyright agencies and anyone who attempted to disrupt their operations.There were multiple raids on many Alaba stores by content owners and the police and then portable mp3 technology began changing consumer habits.”
“Numerous Alaba marketers who were once capable of paying content creators distribution advances of up to N50,000,000 can barely pay their store rents at the market today.The Alaba market is still alive today but they have been reduced mostly to pirates, selling “latest” mixes once again” Eldee said.