Diana Hamilton Urges Her Colleagues to Wake up to the Digital World
28 July 2020
[Photo Credit/LiveghanaTV]
By Naliaka Kitui
Award winning gospel artiste Diana Hamilton has urged her musician colleagues to make use of the online video sharing and streaming platforms to boost their music careers instead of staying at home and feeling sorry for themselves during this covid-19 period.
She made these remarks as she was responding to recent comments by gospel artist Ernest Opoku that online platforms favor secular artistes more than the gospel musicians. According to the Ernest Opoku, old ways of selling CDs and making profit out of it would work best for gospel artiste since they do not make money while streaming online.
"The secular artistes benefit a lot from YouTube and other streaming platforms but not gospel musicians. The secular acts get huge monies from there when they upload their songs but the gospel artistes hardly benefit and I am just being real."
"Some of the gospel musicians will say they make money from streaming but trust me it is a lie because I talk to a lot of them. They probably have sponsors who support them," he said.
“Let Sarkodie, Stonebwoy and Shatta Wale release a new song right now, you will see how the DJs and the fans will rush for it and download so they can make money, but we gospel musicians rather have to pay for our songs to be played. Ay Poyoo just got one million views on YouTube for his goat song, and I don’t think any gospel musician would have gotten those views despite their talent. Back in the days when we had producers behind us, we could sell CDs and make a lot of money for our next projects.
“Imagine about 800 people buying my CDs at GH¢5 in churches, not to talk about my fans, and I was good to go. If I release a song and spend money to shoot a video, pay a sound engineer, and not get close to half of what I put in, then what’s the point?
What am I doing with $300 when I spent over $1,000 on that particular song? After uploading on YouTube, I now have to pay DJs and television stations to get the song played. We are not doing well and any gospel musician who will disagree with me probably has a sponsor pushing his or her works," he added.
Diana Hamilton however, objected to Ernest’s comments during an interview with Peace FM’s Kwasi Aboagye and advised her colleagues not to lose taste of their digital touch which is becoming the new normal in the current world.
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