For Abuchi Peter Ugwu, CEO of Chocolate City Music, one of the country’s most influential music labels, the biggest shift in Nigerian music over the last decade isn’t just the sound, it’s the technology. From the era of hawking CDs in Alaba to tracking TikTok spikes and Spotify data, the business of music is now deeply shaped by tech.
“Technology changed everything,” Ugwu told in an interview. “Ten years ago, if you had a hit, you had to go to Alaba.” Now, a tweet can spark a global record, he adds.
But virality alone doesn’t pay. Ugwu, who has over two decades of experience in the music industry, argues that most artists chasing TikTok fame won’t see a dime without structure in the new streaming economy, where a million Nigerian streams are worth less than a sixth of the same number in the UK.
“Streaming is just the entry point,” he says. “Only the people with real systems actually get paid.”
While his team uses AI for CRM, influencer analysis, and marketing, he’s skeptical about AI-generated songs replacing human creativity. “Music has to be true,” he says. “Once you take away the human element, you take away what makes music.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
From your experience in the music industry, particularly in the last decade, how would you say technology has changed the landscape of the industry?
Technology changed everything. For example, one of the breakout artists of my era was CKay’s “Love Nwantiti”—that song went about eight times platinum. You could see technology was key to that growth.
Ten years ago, once you had an album or a hit song, the way you pushed it was to go to Alaba. And when there was traction on the album, you sold it to Alaba and collected ₦3 million for the masters.
I managed MI for about 15 years. MI’s biggest album—MI2: The Movie—was sold to Alaba. I think Ahbu Ventures paid ₦3 million for the rights. We didn’t get any money after that, and that album sold 30,000 copies in 30 minutes or so. It was an amazing album, but we made only ₦3 million.
In that era, there was Facebook, and Twitter started popping, and now we’ve transitioned to platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, and other DSPs. Before we even talk about DSPs, social media came and changed the game: the way we market, the way we consume, and the way we create content.
First of all, you need to think about technology, especially social media, as an equalizer. Before, if you had a good song, you had to go to Lagos, which has over 40 radio stations, and distribute the song to each of them. But now with technology, once someone has a good following, they just tweet, and everybody picks it up. That’s why we have artists who can compete because technology has brought everybody together. It’s an equalizer. You don’t need so many resources or money; with the right strategy, you win.
Then you come back to the platforms. It is quite unfortunate that the two biggest platforms—Spotify and Apple Music—don’t sell music. They sell subscriptions. Spotify’s model is the subscription. Apple Music sells subscriptions and data. Music is the end product. Because people need to come to the platform to experience music, they care about what song has the most demand, not necessarily what’s the best.
Now we’re in this era. Technology shapes everything we do. Even with us as a team, what I always tell people is that there’s a sweet spot between creativity, technology, and data. When you hit that intersection, you win.
From your experience at Chocolate City, how has the rise of streaming platforms changed your operation, in terms of talent discovery, music distribution, and revenue generation?
We need to start thinking about streaming as the entry point. You know how everybody just cares about streaming—everyone wants that viral effect to make money and cash out. But even when you get that viral effect, only people who have structure really get paid.
For example, if you go to TikTok every day, there are so many people that stream. But how do you convert that streaming into getting paid? You have to have the proper structure. When you have that, you can monetize properly.
Now, if you want your song to blow, you try to make it go viral on TikTok. But TikTok doesn’t really pay for streams. So you might get that viral set, but not money. And when you dig into streaming, you realize one stream in the UK is worth six streams in Nigeria. If you get 6 million streams here, that’s equivalent to 1 million streams from the UK or the US. They pay us a fraction of what they pay international markets
Streaming has come to stay. It has given us the opportunity to be creators and create value from our work. It has moved the industry to the next point.
We can’t talk about streaming without talking about the fraud in streaming, like streaming farms. Is it because trending is one of the surest ways to get virality that artists are incentivised to inflate numbers? Can technology help solve this?
To be honest with you, it’s a very delicate and complicated matter. Sometimes the artists don’t do it themselves. Someone might send an email saying, “Hey, we can get your artist to trend on this platform.” Most just say, “Oh, you can do it? Send me an invoice.” Then they pay for it.
Apple Music recently said one of the biggest artists had 20 million streams wiped off because they suspected they were fake.
Music is about perception. What people try to do is game the system. Once they’re number one in Nigeria, they use that as a marketing tool to amplify their work. When a curator puts your song on a good playlist, that alone can generate 10 million streams. That’s how powerful playlists are. Curators look for the biggest artists in a market. Artists game the system to get there.
But fundamentally, it’s fraud. We’re doing ourselves a disservice. It affects everyone: the PR people, the radio people, the street promo guys. You start to feel like they aren’t necessary because you can just game the system and push the music. It’s something the industry should frown upon because it affects the system.
On the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry, especially in Nigeria, what use cases do you see?
AI has come to stay. We need to get with the program. At Chocolate City, we’re working on a CRM platform to automate most of our processes end-to-end.
Data is big for us. We have Chartmetric and a few data points. For example, I want to know every day if there’s a spike on Young Jonn’s song, on CKay’s song, on Blaqbonez’s song. Where is the spike coming from? Most of these platforms are AI-powered.
Once I see traction, I jump on it. Speed is important. Once your audience loses interest, they’re gone. AI has helped make this process easier, even down to automation. Most of our processes are automated—even music production.
Now we’ve seen people create entire songs, even albums, using AI. Is this something you would do at Chocolate City? Do you see this trend becoming mainstream?
To be honest, I’ve listened to some great AI-generated projects. For me, music has to be true to yourself. And I feel like you can never get that from AI.
For music to be the truth, it has to come from someone, it has to be who you are. So I understand the danger. If this takes off, it could wipe out a whole ecosystem. I don’t know. I’m not a big fan of that happening. Once you take away the human element, you take away what makes music.
Are you saying you don’t see the immediate use case for AI in music production?
When it comes to creating raw data—music in pieces to make a whole song—some great classics from the band Roden were recreated using AI-generated sounds and vocals. That is genius.
But when AI replaces humans entirely, when AI does the voices and everything, you take out the human element. Music is 50% publishing and 50% masters. Everyone who came to create the song owns 50% of the publishing; everyone who paid for it owns the masters. If AI takes over the creative process, that will definitely happen. But I’m just not a fan because it removes what makes music.
You mentioned Chocolate City is using AI in operations. Can you elaborate on some use cases?
We have a B2B agency that provides entertainment assets for top clients. Part of what we do is run campaigns. For example, how we select influencers for a campaign is through an AI platform we use in this market called Humans.
What Humans does is that once your profile is open (not private), I can access your data. I put in your name, and I can see how many followers you have, how many are fake. That’s how detailed the information is.
AI is even used in marketing. When I’m running ads for an artist, AI can tell me where I’ll get the best returns.
One concern with AI in industry operations is that it may take jobs. What is your perspective?
When your business starts growing, you have to ask if you’re running a business or an NGO. You have to optimize. AI is here to stay. The good thing is, people operate AI. So the question is: how does everyone equip themselves so that AI becomes a tool that enables them, rather than replaces them?
Where do you see the intersection of music and technology going in the next decade, and how is Chocolate City Music preparing for that future?
One key thing is that part of our ethos and goal is to enable creatives to create freely. We’re not going to go left because technology says so. We believe technology was made to enhance productivity, not for people to serve technology.
Regardless of what the future holds, our ethos remains. But one thing is certain: AI and tech are going to be huge. As a company, we’re building a large data and tech team to study trends. We’ve been here for 20 years, and we’re working to be here for the next 30. We know we have to keep innovating.
