Legendary Apala singer, Musiliu Haruna Ishola, in a recently-held chat, said music is no longer a lucrative art.
While revealing why he’s yet to release a new album, the veteran musician said a lot of things have changed, hence, music is now less profitable.
According to him, aside from the poor situation of the country, piracy has eaten deep into the music industry, a menace he said is causing artistes like him pains.
He said, “the country is not encouraging and not conducive for musicians to release albums like in the past. During the time of our dad, there were little or no pirates, but now pirates have eaten deep into the music industry coupled with free downloads among other things.”
Exemplifying his point, Ishola stated that though his most popular album, Soyoyo sold almost 20 million copies while the album that followed, Authentic, ended sales at 15 million copies worldwide, it is hard for an album to sell up to 20,000 copies in recent times.
In the course of the chat, he went on to say that some people misconstrued his not releasing albums with quitting the music scene.
Clarifying the ‘misinformation’, Ishola maintained that his genre of music (Apala) is waxing stronger by day because it has been identified as one of the music of the future.
“I’m still in music and I have no other job except music,” he stated.