Artistes should cough up 50% of money spent by record labels, says IllBliss

Tobechukwu Ejiofor, better known as Illbliss, has said artistes should raise 50 percent of the money invested in their careers by record labels.

The rapper and music executive has said artistes should start treating the music business as a business.

“First of all I think the artiste need to take a little bit more control over the music and they need to become partners in the business,” Illbliss said.

“That era where you are an artiste, is fading. So when you are stepping in and meet a record label, how about raising 50 per cent of the money?

“So that when you sit down at the table, it becomes a partnership in its true sense.

“That is where we should go to now because everybody should become an investor in the cause.

“Not the artiste pops up, the label spends a lot of money, then the artiste wakes up one day and says I’m leaving and you don’t even know if the label has recouped all of its investment.

“On the other side the labels need to also spell it out from onset, from day one, make it clear cut, we are looking for partners, we are not looking for people to just sign and help their lives.

“It’s being unofficial, the record label-artiste relationship has been very unofficial in Nigeria, let’s make it official.”

Kiss Daniel is the latest Nigerian artiste to leave his record label to set up shop on his own.