This is why Flowking Stone thinks music promotion in Ghana is difficult
Ghanaian musician, Kwaku Nsia Boama, known in the showbiz industry as Flowking Stone, says promoting music in Ghana has become tougher compared to the past.
In justifying his statement, the ‘Blow My Mind’ hitmaker said initially artiste producers were those funding music promotion and addressing all the financial aspects of the music business, including paying for slots on radio, television and DJs.
He added that the advent of social media affected the sale of Compact Discs(CDs) as many music producers shifted their focus from music to producing movies because Kumawood was thriving well at the time.
According to him, this left artistes to their fate to promote their own music and bear the financial costs.
According to him, most artistes don’t have the financial means for such huge budgets to pay dancers, promote on radio and TV, and run advertisements on various digital platforms and social media.
Although there are record labels, Flowking Stone believes the situation hasn’t changed much.
“Those days when we use to come to radio, there were the producers who used to drop our songs and fund it. Take the songs to the DJs and pay them. Now, it got to a time when the producers left to go do movies when Kumawood was at the top and music was not working like that.
“There was a change. They were not able to sell CDs, the internet was coming and the artistes were fighting with producers and a lot of stuffs. There was a very long period artistes were funding themselves; it is just recently that record labels are coming in.
“Now TikTok came and people started blowing and we were like okay. Even before TikTok, there was Facebook. There was a time even when you post a video on Facebook, they will open up to all your fans and reduce the number of people who will see. They will allow only 5% of your fans to see it unless you buy advert so we started buying advert and tipping the club DJs and radio DJs. Then TV stations came and you had to tip all the people.
“The funny thing is that the TikTok is the last hope and they started charging more than all the others. So now the job is difficult so you can blow on TikTok and if you don’t have good friends on radio, it will not go.
“So the original budget you need to fund that has become bigger and you the artiste you don’t have it,” he explained in an interview on 3FM Drive.
Flowking Stone is currently promoting his ‘Decision’ album released in 2023 while he was in the UK.
The latest album has songs featuring King Paluta, Mr Drew, Morphty and others.