Kenny St. Brown: Creative Industry Needs Separate Body To Regulate Relationship Between Labels And Artistes

Nigerian gospel musician, Kenny St. Brown, has said there is need for the government to provide a body that would regulate the relationship between record labels and the artiste signed under them.

In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday, Brown said the creative industry is huge enough to have its own unions and regulatory body and not to be joined under the umbrella of another ministry.

She said if the government had a ministry for creatives, some of the cries for justice breaking out now would have been avoided.

Brown said this in her review of the state of the Nigerian Music industry, following the recent demise of the popular 27-year-old Nigerian artiste, ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba, otherwise known as Mohbad.

“What we are seeing now is as a result of neglect from the government and a system that should have provided regulation, policies, protection and defense. The entertainment industry is an industry that is organically grown and because of that they think that they will find their way. It has gotten to a stage where it has gone beyond our hands.

 “Anybody now can decide to own a record label. it’s very open, very porous. If the pharmaceutical industry can have a regulatory body called NAFDAC, if the manufacturing industry can have a standard organization of Nigeria and they are called industries, the creatives also need regulations now.

“They think there is the ministry of Tourism but the correlation between the tourism industry and the creative industry is that the creatives boost the tourism industry. So, when an artiste is being signed on a record label, there are no rules, no guidelines. The record label can decide things on their own. At the beginning the artiste just wants to be heard and be famous. Now the neglect has resulted in the whole world rising up now to demand for justice out of an abuse that could have been controlled.”

Also, the Former National Administrator, Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria, PMAN, while speaking on the functionality of PMAN in Nigeria, said the entertainment industry has gone ahead of the association due to its (PMAN) inability to evolve.

“Concerning the relationship between artiste and record labels, it is an age-old problem. We have had that problem for as long as the industry has been here. So those are the reasons we need a permanent hand on, like an advisory or regulatory organization set up because disagreement is part of human life.

“When you talk about the functionality of PMAN, every aspect of organization in our country’s history behaves like the government. We have not evolved in governance beyond what the colonial masters left us with in 1960, maintaining the same structure and the world has gone and left us behind.

“That is how the industry also has gone ahead and left the PMANs of this world behind also. We should call ourselves and admit that this has become so embarrassing and do something about it.

Mohbad died on September 12, 2023 in Lagos and hundreds of Fans have held protests and candlelight processions in the last few days in the memory of his demise.

Chioma Kalu 

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