Mr. Eazi’s hotly-anticipated mixtape Accra to Lagos is out today. According to the singer, over 200,000 copies of the mixtape have been pre-ordered. If that figure is correct, then Mr. Eazi will become the highest-selling artist in the world in 2017, and that is, even if up to 30-40% of those pre-orders are cancelled.

To put that number in perspective, Def Jam rapper Big Sean, whose new album I Decided came out last Friday, is projected to sell 50k–60k in the first week in the US. But those are pure sales, when you include streams, that number doubles to 105k–115k. In the previous week, Atlanta hip-hop group Migos moved 40,068 units in pure sales of their new album Culture and 120,991 total with streams included.

The numbers for I Decided are underwhelming and so are the numbers for Culture, especially when you factor in the success of “Bad and Boujee”, a record that was number 1 in the US and is finally gaining real traction in Nigeria. Both of those acts are releasing proper studio albums and are signed to major records labels, Mr. Eazi, on the other hand, is pushing a mixtape with the help of a small but highly focused team.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQNSDQ_AHnx/?taken-by=mreazi&hl=en

 

Accra to Lagos will be released on the artist’s own Banku Music, which is important to note since he was reportedly signed to Wizkid’s Star Boy label last year. The Wizkid cosign is increasingly looking like it was done backstage rather than in a lawyer’s office but never the less, Mr. Eazi has developed liaisons that will ensure his music goes farther than any affiliation to an artist will take him.

The singer’s relationship with Beats One/Apple Music seems to be blossoming – with personalities Julie Adenuga and Ebro Darden having him on their shows at separate times, his songs repeatedly getting on the station’s playlists and now his new mixtape being released exclusively on Apple Music in its first week.

Sadly, exclusive deals like these are seldom in the best interest of the customer – we end up being sent around the internet looking for an artist’s music when it ought to be the other way around, they ought to make the music available everywhere as soon as possible. Entering exclusive streaming deals is a very dangerous game of hide-and-seek to play in 2017 – especially at a time when access to music has been democratized, making music unavailable to a whole swathe of people creates a gap. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the ways piracy happens.

Late last year, Apple changed the denomination of its billing on the iTunes Nigeria store from US Dollars to Naira. The advantages of the move where clear, the switch would allow Nigerians using Naira-denominated cards bypass local restrictions on foreign-denominated transactions, while on the other hand, it will allow Apple drive up subscriptions for iTunes, reduce the cost of content in the store and then gobble up significant market share in the mobile and PC hardware space in the medium-to-long term.

However, the plan was improperly rolled out and there seems to be a lack of communication between local banks, card providers, CBN and Apple. With only a handful of banks and bank account types being able to process payments on iTunes, several Nigerians have been unable to use the service for weeks now.

The workaround that banks are proposing is for iTunes users to get Dollar-denominated cards but, given the value of US Dollars in the black market right now, that simply isn’t very attractive to a lot of folks. What this means is that several thousands of Nigerians will not be able to download or stream Accra to Lagos today or the next 7 days, well at least not legally, thereby depriving the singer of the financial support of one of his home countries.

Why are first week sales important? First week sales is one of the currencies that artists could use to get investment in their future endeavours. Particularly on the internet, the first week is the period when the public’s interest in an artist’s project peaks and the artist, in turn, expends the most resources in promoting it. Because of this, a bulk of a project’s total sales is realized in the first week – sometimes up to 25% of the total sales in year 1. This is especially important for Eazi as he positions himself as an international star. The singer’s album proper is scheduled for release in 2018, if Mr. Eazi’s path is to end up on a major label and release his debut album on one, then a good first week is his leverage when negotiating that deal. Investors will look at those numbers as a direct reflection of how excited the world truly is about Mr. Eazi in the long run.

How many people will be cut off for the first week? It’s hard to tell Apple’s market share in the smartphone, desktop and tablet space in Nigeria but we can do some very rough, back-of-the-envelope mathematics. According to StatCounter, 15% of Nigerian internet users use Safari, Apple’s native operating system, to browse. According to Internet Live Stat, Nigeria had roughly 82 million internet users as at the end of 2016, 15% of that is roughly 12 million instances of Safari. It’s important to note that all 12 million instances are not unique users though, as one person could have several Apple devices connected to the internet. Besides, there are several Apple users in Nigeria who have never bought a single thing from the iTunes store before – which is one of the reasons why Apple changed the denomination of iTunes in the first place – but still, that’s a huge number of folks to be potentially excluded.

Will Mr. Eazi be fine? Yes, he will. Mr. Eazi’s phenomenal growth began with the popularity of “Pipi Dance” in the diaspora first, before Africa took notice, so the singer still has a large enough fan base who have access to iTunes and Apple Music outside Nigeria to move units. Although, having said that, the Nairas and Kobos from Africa’s most populous country is help that, I’m sure, the singer would have preferred to have than not to have.