We are over emotional about the role of corporations in our entertainment industry and culture in general. I sometimes feel like we think they are just going to happily hand us some cash because we are so great. Let us remind ourselves that these local companies not to talk of the multinationals have no written or unwritten obligation to promote our local culture. Most companies operate with a triple bottom line (Financial gains, Environmental and Social responsibility.) and as far as Cameroon is concerned I cannot confidently name one company that does more than the bare minimum as concerns social and Environmental responsibility - except maybe on paper.
I think paying artists well counts for investing in the culture which the last time I checked was the role of the Ministry of Arts and Culture. Now if the Ministry invited a foreign artist and paid him/her more, we have all rights to be outraged. If it is Yomee or MTN it is quite different.
Throughout history, labor unions have been formed to protect people in certain professions and that is because public companies owe some profits to their shareholders and therefore have every incentive to get the maximum results with minimal costs. So if they can make you do more work for the same pay or less, that is a success story for them and their financial bottom line.
Many companies also buy services from third party providers who mostly end up as partners for operational efficiency reasons. So it is not uncommon for a multinational like DIAGEO to have a concert deal with maybe SONY because SONY is in the business of managing artists and will therefore have the necessary experience in putting up shows which is not DIAGEO’s core business.
This is where we begin to find one advantage of being signed to an international label like SONY or Universal Music. If DIAGEO has such a deal with SONY, it is not Tekno that is getting paid but maybe a Category 1B artist which just happens to be Tekno. I don’t know if you follow. The rates are already agreed on when the deals are signed and at that level of business, the numbers are what we saw and even more.
Now as someone on a label, you just have to be on good terms with the label so when those deals come around, they slot you in. By the way, being signed also means a lot of that money is getting cut before Tekno gets his cut. I won’t be surprised if he actually got $20,000 as his to keep.
You know why SONY can negotiate such huge sums and the local labels cannot? Because DIAGEO can call SONY today that they need an artist in Japan tomorrow, and SONY will provide. It is business security for them working with SONY and that is what they are paying for. SONY operate at a very high level and is more like to share brand values and business experience with another big brand like DIAGEO. It makes the work faster and less risky.
The other argument is that our local artists need to be paid more because it is the money of Cameroonians that the companies are using to organize the show. I mean, there are hardly any shows in Cameroon that make more money from ticket sales than the money spent to put up the show. Most of these shows fall under BTL (Below The Line) marketing tactics. Also, multinationals don’t really function at country level. To prove it, The Jovi Vs Tekno pay discrepancy saga started from Nigeria weeks after the show. I am yet to see one Nigerian blog that has written about Maahloxs’ reaction and Jovi’s unexpected clapback.
This is just for us to see how the show that happened here is getting talked about in Nigeria. I can tell you they will remember it was a Johnnie Walker show before they remember which other Cameroonian artists performed.
So yes Jovi had a better performance and pulled most of the crowd but Tekno has more residual value - that is if we consider a performer as a fixed asset here.
Jovi doesn’t even do interviews so what are the chances that he will be on radio or TV talking about the Johnnie Walker show? Yea, he does his thing on social media but we cannot compare the reach. So these companies are bigger than Cameroon, when they do something in Cameroon, they think about how it affects their brand in India and so on.
We theorize that ohh the company gives the money and people in the company slice it before giving it to the artists but to me thats BS. I mean I know ethical standards in Cameroon are low, but I don’t think this can be happening in any company. So we think the talk does not get to those high up in those companies?
If a company really had in its books that it paid an artist 30M and the artist is out there claiming to have been paid only 3M, heads will definitely roll. Usually MTN has tasked a parter like B&C to put on a event. It is B&C’s place to book the artists. B&C sends its agents to negotiate the best deal for the company and that means, paying the artist the least amount possible. So you the artists who agree are just selling yourselves short which is hard not to do unless there is a union to force you to.
Until the artists are the show producers, they make the least nkap.
Until the artists own Spotify, they make the least nkap.
I am saying, the local labels need to become the Marketing Agencies (the B&C) in this scenario. I mean, how many times have we seen these companies steal lines from artists songs and used on their billboards. If they do that ever so often doesn’t it mean the artists are the plug for the words that command attention?
Any- Ha!
- Tino Foy