Nigerians Are Treated Well Here Than Ghanaian Artistes – Richie

Musician and Chief Executive of Lynx Entertainment, Richie Mensah, has expressed disappointment that Ghanaian musicians are some of the least paid acts in the world and that even in Ghana, event organizers still pay acts from other countries better.
Richie explained that though this may be due to the fact that Ghanaian musicians have relatively smaller markets because of the small country size, the disparity in pay levels is overly unfair and cited Nigerian acts as an example.
“You even find them (Nigerian acts) being paid  more money than Ghanaian acts when they come to Ghana.
This is not fair because the difference in paycheck is many times outrageous.
I would understand it if that difference is not too significant, because they might be bigger names and from another country.
But sometimes it’s not very reasonable when you compare paychecks,” Richie noted in an interview with Eddy Blay Jnr.
He explained further that “there are about 150 million people in Nigeria, and 25 million people in Ghana.
A Ghanaian artist can have about 100,000 views on YouTube, whereas a Nigerian artist can have 600,000.
The foreign market is able to understand it more. Any international act would take this into consideration.
They would obviously pick an artist with more followers for a collabo.
Adding to more numbers, they are also able to spend more money in their marketing and production.
“This gives them that advantage over us. It in no way makes them better than us or more talented, but their final product might be ahead of ours because of these factors.
Some of their videos might be better than ours simply because we don’t make as much money as they do.”
Richie, however, admitted that Ghanian artists may not be doing enough to break onto the international music market:
“We are not doing enough. I can say we think we’re doing our best, but it is not enough.
Every artist is different and has their limitations, so I can’t really generalize.
But I can tell you it’s very difficult, and expensive to break into the international market, or to promote yourself in another man’s land. It basically all comes down to money.”

When asked if one of the setbacks of Ghanaian musicians is the fact that most of them sing in Ghanaian languages, the Lynx Chief Executive said he begged to differ.
“We enjoy and dance to so much music that is not in English. We don’t understand what they are saying but still try to sing along.
Good music knows no language barrier. That being said it does play a small role in marketing.
If you look at the Nigerian songs that have ‘crossed over’ you’ll realize that most of them are in English and Pidgin English.
It doesn’t mean that if you don’t do English you can’t go international, but it just means it might be easier in a language that most people can understand”, Richie noted.
Source: news one