Music video director-turned-filmmaker,Apampa Oluwadamilola popularly known as Dami Twitch, has said Nollywood producers can no longer use Afrobeats songs in films without securing proper clearance from rights holders.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Afropolitan podcast which started trending on Saturday, he explained that the shift is largely due to publishing and distribution deals many Afrobeats artistes have signed with foreign companies.
Twitch noted that a lot of Nollywood producers can’t afford the fees for securing legal use of Afrobeats songs in their movies unless they have investors supporting their projects.
According to him, these agreements mean that most songs are no longer fully controlled by the artistes themselves, making licensing more formal and often more expensive.
Twitch noted that many independent Nollywood producers now struggle to afford the cost of using popular songs unless they have major investors backing their projects.
“I think because people have sold their song already. So it gets to a point where I want to use this song for my film, for example, but I can’t afford it because they’ve signed some distribution deal or some publishing deal with some company somewhere and you can’t even have a conversation,” he said.
He added that even personal relationships with artistes no longer guarantee access to their music for film use.
“Even if the person is my friend. They’ve literally gotten an advance for something. So that is a major factor in our problems because this artist don’t own the songs,” he said.
He warned that the growing commercial structure around music rights is affecting collaboration between Nollywood and Afrobeats adding that only big-budget productions may be able to afford licensing popular tracks.
“So that collaboration for now is at a very weird place. Not until if a big studio comes to support your film, you might be able to afford these songs,” he added.
Twitch further noted that independent filmmakers are the most affected, as limited funding makes it difficult to meet licensing requirements.
“But if you are mostly independent filmmakers, yes. So the independency won’t let us afford these things”.
