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By Enyeribe Ejiogu
American distribution franchise, UnitedMasters, has launched its ‘Live From Lagos’ platform to boost the distribution of music of Nigerian artistes to the world.
• A “Live from Lagos” concert was held on December 14th, 2023 in collaboration with Don Julio.
The move is aimed at empowering independent African music creators worldwide. UnitedMasters has empowered over 1.9 million global independent artistes by distributing to teeming music lovers across the globe.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of United Masters, Steve Stoute. disclosed to Sunday Sun that the UnitedMasters Live From Lagos event will be held this December in Lagos, noting it will connect the franchise with fans, music lovers and industry tastemakers.
Announcing the incoming event and partnership with African artists, Stoute, during a panel discussion with Afrobeats singer, David Adeleke popularly known as Davido at the UnitedMasters SelectCon 005 held at Terminal 5 in New York City, said the company would begin to offer its services directly to talents in Nigeria by the end of the year.
Reacting Davido thanked Stoute for his efforts at opening doors of international opportunity to Nigerian artistes for them to excel.
He said African artistes have always been at a disadvantage in the music industry due to a lack of proper structure for them to promote their songs.
“It’s difficult coming from this part of the world but coming to UnitedMasters is a good thing. Some years ago, even if we had something like this in this industry, it wouldn’t have changed anything because we had an underlying factor which is structure. Our industry does not have a structure to reach out to people but a partnership like this sells us. It will help us to tell our stories to the world,” Davido said.
Some of the Nigerian artists and music producers that have benefitted from UnitedMasters’ global reach include Sarz and Mavin Records, which led to the production of DJ Big N’s single “How Many Times” which featured Ayra Starr & Oxlade.
The December event promises to be funfilled as top Afrobeats superstars like Sarz & DJ Big N will thrill fans with the music performances. Another international superstar Tobe Nwigwe is also expected to perform at the event.
With the growing number of artistes across Africa, especially Nigeria, more artists are going to be signed on to the platform of UnitedMasters.
“The plan is to “discover, develop, and empower the next generation of African artists,” says Steve Stoute.
Countries such as Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania South Africa and more African countries are going to be combed for talents to be discovered.
As the founder of UnitedMasters, Stoute said the intention was to enable artistes to maximise their creative and economic potential by giving them all the tools and support they need to directly connect with their fans.
A UnitedMasters mobile app would also be introduced. The app would increase transparency regarding artistes’ earnings where real-time streaming data will be available.
According to the company, independent artistes that sign up on the UnitedMasters mobile app would be able to choose from a range of plans that offer curated services to them based on where they feel they are in their career trajectory.
The three tiers of the plan are Debut, Select and Partner.
The Select Plan offers 100% royalty retention for all users and will be available exclusively to Nigerian users at a massively discounted price of N20,000.00 per annum.
Other features of the plan include access to unlimited music distribution to platforms such as Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Apple Music, Youtube, Snap, TikTok, Boomplay, Audiomack, Muska, Music in Ayoba, Anghami, and Joox.
They will also be able to share their songs on MasterLinks and customise their pages.
Nigerian artists are not the only ones to benefit from UnitedMasters’ incursion into the Nigerian music industry.
Brands such as Tequila Don Julio, Coca-Cola, TikTok, Snapchat and more will be part of the event.
Tequila Don Julio is joining UnitedMasters for their launch in Nigeria to create a new way for artistes to be heard.
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