Renaissance of the music industry in Ghana: Reimagining a forgotten market – Socrate Safo writes…

Fellow creatives, media professionals, musicians, producers, and friends of Ghana’s vibrant creative industry, before you read this, reflect on Proverbs 24 in the Bible.

For some time now, there has been a healthy debate about CD sales versus online music streaming. This debate stems from the realization that the music industry’s economy is dwindling, with musicians frequently complaining about revenues from online distribution.

It has therefore dawned on all right-thinking people in the industry to ask the relevant question: What went wrong? What happened to all the money-making channels?

Over the years, the music business has thrived on multiple channels to generate revenue: sales of music, live performances, merchandise, synchronizations, and endorsement deals. Of all these avenues, it is direct sales that serve as the backbone of the business; the rest are seen as additional income.

We began selling music with the production of singles on vinyl. Over time, vinyl records were expanded to accommodate more songs, about six to eight, depending on size and speed.

This development compelled musicians to record more songs to create a full album. With time, technology made other formats possible, such as the eight-track tape, then the cassette, and not long after, the Compact Disc (CD). As technology continued to evolve, so did the methods of music distribution.

Let me state here that no court in Ghana ever banned the sale or distribution of these formats. No law was passed in our parliament. What we witnessed was not a legal collapse, but a cultural and commercial shift. But make no mistake, the market for these formats didn’t die; it was abandoned. So, I am not here to mourn it, but to propose a path to revive and repurpose it. (Read Dear musicians, CDs or No CDs?)

Let me use the story of the five monkeys, a bunch of bananas, and a ladder to illustrate a point about cultural shifts.

Imagine a cage with five monkeys inside. In the middle of the cage is a ladder, and at the top, a bunch of bananas. Every time a monkey starts to climb the ladder, the researchers spray all the monkeys with cold water. Soon, whenever any monkey tries to climb, the others pull them down to avoid being sprayed.

Eventually, the monkeys learn that climbing the ladder leads to an unpleasant outcome for everyone, so they stop trying. The researchers then begin to replace the monkeys, one at a time. Each new monkey tries to climb the ladder and is attacked by the others, even though it has never been sprayed. This continues until all five original monkeys have been replaced. Now, none of the monkeys have ever been sprayed with water, yet if any monkey tries to climb, the others will still stop it.

The Lesson

This industry is full of proverbial monkeys avoiding the ladder. The monkeys simply learned to follow the “rule” (don’t climb the ladder) because “that’s how we do things here,” without understanding the original cause (the cold-water spray).

The parable highlights how traditions, rules, and behaviors within our society can become ingrained, even when the original reason or purpose for those behaviors no longer exists.

Why do people resist ideas, even if they seem logical? Often, it’s because “that’s how we found it.” We follow norms without questioning their relevance or effectiveness.

We live in a time when everything digital, trendy, and instant is considered “sexy.” But in chasing the future, we have neglected viable, tangible, and income-generating channels. The CD, which was the last viable hard-copy format on the market, may no longer be dominant, but it still exists, and pirates are profiting from it, simply because we, the rightful owners of the content, have forgotten its value.

One format that did not make it into the mainstream market was the pen drive. It emerged during the period when CDs were facing challenges in traditional distribution channels and nearing collapse.

Now, let’s return to the biggest question: Why did all these formats collapse? Did people stop buying CDs because they didn’t like the product?

No, they stopped buying full albums loaded with filler tracks. The advent of new hard copy technology compelled musicians to release albums containing eight to ten songs to fill the space on the disc. Every music consumer can attest that it takes a miracle for a musician to produce an album where people like every song on it. Consumers didn’t want to buy ten songs just to get the two they liked.

Frustration set in for buyers, especially drivers, who formed the largest segment of the market. Imagine driving and playing your favorite musician’s CD; on that album, there may be only two or three songs you like. You end up changing the CD as you get bored with the others, essentially becoming a DJ while you drive.

That was when FM stations came in. They had DJs playing hit songs back-to-back, making it more enjoyable to listen. This new avenue attracted audiences by making it easier to consume music. Eventually, people shunned buying albums from individual artists.

The arrival of recordable CDs sealed the fate of the market. Music consumers would go to spinning shops with lists of their favorite hit songs to have them compiled. So, it wasn’t that they didn’t want the CD format; they just didn’t like the content on the albums.

Pirates, unlike mainstream distributors, were smart about this challenge and served the market with compilation CDs tailored to consumer tastes. That’s the model the industry didn’t realize, or ignored.

As sales dropped drastically, musicians began accusing distributors of pirating their songs. Anti-piracy raids became the industry’s clarion call. Periodic raids were organized; “banderoles” were introduced, with accompanying campaigns in the media. Billboards were erected across the country to promote genuine copy sales, hoping it would clear the market and compel people to buy albums. It didn’t work. Consumers formed alliances with the pirates who were giving them what they wanted, and how they wanted it, and moved underground to trade there.

The industry still didn’t realize what was happening. They were disillusioned by their fame and egos, unable to come to terms with the fact that their individual bodies of work were no longer in vogue based on current trends and technology. 

Musicians kept attacking distributors at every opportunity, whether in the media, at private functions, or at industry gatherings. Sometimes, these confrontations even turned into fisticuffs in the marketplace. (Read Streaming platforms making musicians poor –Socrate Safo)

The organized bodies in the industry failed to intervene at this point. A smart leader of these industry groupings should have called for a confab with the pirates to understand what made their illegal products so attractive, even if not cheaper. Instead, they joined the nagging brigade and fueled the harassment of the distributors.

Then came the Digital Streaming Platforms, with their enticing promise of a worldwide market for musicians and a transparent, instant accounting structure.

Musicians fell for it. They saw it as a God-sent opportunity, an answer to their prayers that would liberate them from the shackles of the “evil” distributors who were milking them dry. They abandoned CD production entirely, leaving CD manufacturing plants to their fate. The plants folded with huge debts.

The proprietors of streaming businesses employed promotional strategies that generated positive narratives about their market. It looked and sounded so attractive on paper and in the media, those musicians no longer wanted to hear anything about CDs. They demonized distributors who had sustained the market for years. These distributors also folded and reinvested their capital elsewhere.

With time, some musicians realized that streaming platforms do not increase their reach or make them global, and the perception that streaming would bring the world to their feet turned out not to be as presented. Did musicians make the big money they were promised? No. They ended up worse off in terms of distribution revenues.

Research has proven that any group of people and for that matter, Ghanaians across the globe are the primary market for their culture, which includes their music. Any additional audience is secondary.

 The fact that your song is on a platform accessible in India or Bhutan doesn’t mean it will be streamed there. Any group of people will consume what they know, wherever they are, and the internet has made it possible for music lovers to access their preferred content even in Greenland.

A careful study of the streaming business shows that the proprietors of these platforms are making windfall profits from the sweat and blood of musicians, due to the transaction structures they operate. They use music as a hook to draw users to their platforms, make money from advertisers, and give the musicians whose work was used only a token of the revenue generated at their discretion. The music has no real commercial value to them. For these smart business people, making small amounts from thousands of individual musicians is good business, but it’s a rip-off for the creators.

At this juncture, the question is: Should we abandon digital streaming distribution too? No, and a very big NO is the answer. What we need, as an industry, is to restructure the entire business model. Let me be clear. I am not calling for a return to the past. I’m calling for a smarter future, one that includes both digital and physical formats. It’s not either/or; it’s both.

One may ask, where are all the CD players? Did we throw them away?

No. They’re still in our cars. While newer car models may not include CD players, there are still thousands of vehicles on our roads with CD and pen drive slots. We also have players in our homes, gathering dust, not because they’re broken, but because there’s nothing to play on them.

So how do we bring it back? Let me break it down with five strategic levers:

1. Product – Let’s rethink what we produce. The traditional album model is no longer in high demand. Instead, we can offer compilation CDs tailored to what consumers actually want.

2. Promotion – No revival works without marketing. If we push it, they’ll buy it.

3. Talkability – We must make it cool again to own and play any format, as long as it brings in realistic revenue.

4. Controlled Narrative – The story around owning hard copies of music must change, not as outdated tech, but as collector’s items, convenient formats, and nostalgic experiences.

5. Propaganda – Yes, propaganda. Let’s shape the perception in our favor, just as the digital market has done for years.

Will it work? Before you attempt to answer, ask yourself, “Why is vinyl coming back into the market?”

Because someone tried. A few artists tested the waters. A narrative was pushed in the media. It gained traction. Today, turntables are back in stores and people are buying. Vinyl is considered “cool” again. Other formats can follow the same path if we stop dismissing them and start reimagining them.

Let’s not forget, there was a time when theatre was shorn in Ghana. The advent of video film productions drew all patrons of theatre, from actors to crew. A few theater practitioners held the grounds and kept pushing with promotions in the media to targeted audiences. They produced scripts people could relate to, modified some dialogues with present-day slangs and it worked. They are filling halls again.

Comedy had the same experience. Ghanaian comedians, once declared not viable, now draw packed audiences. Generational thinking revived them.

We must stop assuming that streaming is the only future. Not everyone has extra money for data. Not everyone wants to stream. Not everyone wants to rent their music from the cloud.

There are people, right here, right now, who would still pay to own music on vinyl, CD, or pen drive, if we only made it available. Most of the people around the music industry today don’t even know why we stopped selling CDs, but they keep stopping others from trying.

Let’s think 360 around the industry. Let’s be business-minded, not trend-blinded. This is not just nostalgia. This is smart, inclusive, multi-channel business. Where there’s a residual market, there’s a revenue stream. Let’s not waste another day mocking what could help us. Let’s explore, invest, and adapt.

Having gone full cycle through the challenges, and knowing what worked and what didn’t, this is the time for a restructuring of the entire music industry. No individual can do this alone. This Renaissance requires a united ecosystem conversation.

One of the key suggestions to consider is value for the works on the market. Having realized that subscription-based revenues and their sharing models through unnecessary aggregators are not good business for the industry, the industry needs to move strictly to sales, both digital and hard copy formats.

We need the commitment of musicians, who must understand their role in rebuilding this lost market. Artists should be able to sell their singles to distributors for an agreed fee between them. We need distributors who believe in revitalized formats, whether vinyl, CDs, pen drives, digital, or something else. Platforms should offer digital sales of songs, where consumers can buy and own them on their phones and electronic devices for a specific fee.

We need education across the board, musicians, producers, distributors, everyone must understand the history, the mistakes, and the opportunities before us. Again, with emphasis, and most critically, we need the media, because the narrative they push becomes public truth. A positive propaganda machinery needs to be properly oiled with incentives to push a positive narrative around the industry and its razzmatazz.

The agenda should be market expansion, not substitution. Any format that can generate revenue must be deliberately promoted and sustained.

If it succeeds, the benefit will trickle down to everyone in the ecosystem. Bloggers will earn from successful musicians and distributors who need them to promote their compilations. Talk shows will be strategically managed and motivated to feature a booming industry. Distributors will place adverts on shows and stations to promote their releases. Newspapers will also have their share of the “spoils of the war.”

In the end, “obiaa bɛ didi pachaa.”

THANK YOU