Inspirational singer Yinka Ayefele has taken a new route to tackle piracy after teaming up with a UK-based tech firm, Ckrowd.
Ayefele made this known as he celebrated the 25th year after the terrible auto crash that confined him to a wheelchair.
“My first few albums, my marketer used to bring the proceeds from sales to me in the boot of his car. Internet banking has changed that. Technology has affected the sales of my CDs too. There is a lot of piracy. There are people offering my music for download on the internet who are not even affiliated to me. The profit from their activities is not coming to me,” he began.
The mutually benefitting partnership, according to Ayefele, will see Ckrowd staging an e-concert to help promote the singer and his new offerings to a wider audience across the world.
He said, “Going digital is one of the ways to continue making profit from my music. I used to sell over 3 million CDs for my albums in the past. Last album was about 600,000. The marketers observed that many of the people are now downloading the songs from the internet, from sources that are not affiliated to us. I am not the only one experiencing it. Other artists and filmmakers are too. Most of the successful artists rely on concerts to make their money. They stage big events and people pay to get in. The youths who attend those events do not really reckon with some of us. They prefer hip hop artists from their own generation to the likes of King Sunny Ade, Baba Obey [Ebenezer Obey], or Yinka Ayefele.”
Ayefele also rolled out drums to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his near-death experience that cost him his spinal chord. He said, “We are did this because of the pressure from fans and the support from Ckrowd.”
