CEO of Ohenemedia, Abraham Ohene Djan, says Ghanaians should not make a big fuss over Billboard’s rating of Ghanaian musicians.
He says that Billboard has not made any significant investment into the Ghanaian music industry hence, their list of artistes in Ghana whose content on Youtube gained a lot of views in 2019, should not be seen as the standard for validating industry players.
The internationally acclaimed music magazine released a list, dubbed ‘The most-watched homegrown artists across Africa and sought to unearth the top five artistes in 2019.
For Ghana, Dancehall artiste Shatta Wale topped the list with 13.26 million views ahead of Sarkodie (11.72 million views), Stonebwoy (7.86 million views), Diana Antwi Hamilton (6.42 million views) and Kofi Kinaata (4.63 million views)
Reacting to the list on 3FM’s Showbuzz with Mzgee, the renowned entertainment personality, he asked for the opinion of local industry players on Ghanaian artistes to matter most.
He believes the validation of artistes in the country should be from those in the Ghanaian music industry.
“We seem to seek validation from the West constantly before we take anything serious. Why does Billboard need to validate who is big in Ghana before Ghanaians get excited? It’s not important. Who is Billboard in Ghana? What has Billboard done in our industry? Billboard has never come here to do a show, put any finance into the industry. I have spent 25 good years in this country, my opinion should matter more but we don’t look at that. We shouldn’t wait for the West to validate our creativity. We should take the creativity we have now and validate it ourselves,” he remarked.
