In a recent interview, Flowking Stone, born Kwaku Nsia Boama, expressed concerns about the difficulties of promoting music in Ghana.
He noted that the industry has become more challenging compared to the past, where producers handled financial aspects, including radio slots and DJ fees.
The advent of the internet, Flowking Stone explained, led to a decline in CD sales, causing producers to shift focus to movie production, particularly in the thriving Kumawood industry. This left artists to fend for themselves, earning them the label “Indi artistes.”
Now, artists bear the financial burden of promoting their own music, including costs for dancers, radio and TV promotion, and digital advertising.
Flowking Stone believes this has made music promotion more difficult, as most artists lack the necessary funds for such expenses.
Despite the presence of record labels, Flowking Stone feels that the situation remains largely unchanged, with artists still struggling to access sufficient resources for effective promotion.
“Those days when we use to come to radio, there were the producers who used to drop our songs and fund it. Take the songs to the DJs and pay them. Now, it got to a time when the producers left to go do movies when Kumawood was at the top and music was not working like that.
“There was a change. They were not able to sell CDs, the internet was coming and the artistes were fighting with producers and a lot of stuffs. There was a very long period artistes were funding themselves; it is just recently that record labels are coming in.
“Now TikTok came and people started blowing and we were like okay. Even before TikTok, there was Facebook. There was a time even when you post a video on Facebook, they will open up to all your fans and reduce the number of people who will see. They will allow only 5% of your fans to see it unless you buy advert so we started buying advert and tipping the club DJs and radio DJs. Then TV stations came and you had to tip all the people.
“The funny thing is that the TikTok is the last hope and they started charging more than all the others. So now the job is difficult so you can blow on TikTok and if you don’t have good friends on radio, it will not go.
“So the original budget you need to fund that has become bigger and you the artiste you don’t have it,” he explained on Friday, August 23.
The rapper is currently promoting his ‘Decision’ album released last year while he was in the UK, the album has songs featuring King Paluta, Mr Drew, Morphty and others.
