“The focus has always been simple: build artists, build businesses, create opportunities and leave people better than I met them. I believe that work speaks for itself. Lives have changed, families have been supported, artists have grown, music has travelled further, people have found jobs, and dreams that once looked impossible have become real. That is the work I am proud of,” founder/CEO Dapper Group, Damilola ‘Dapper’ Akinwunmi, stated while recounting his career journey as a music producer during a recent interview on how the relationship between music producers and artists is formed and why they sometimes fallout.
  
Akinwunmi said: “These relationships do not begin casually, and they did not begin in bad faith. Every artist sends his/her contract in advance, enough time is created to read it and take advice on it before anything is signed, and the terms are negotiated rather than presented. From the very first meeting, Seyi Vibez was accompanied by his own legal counsel. NSNV was distributed through Dvpper Digital, we entered into an agreement, and we paid him to make music as an investment, with a clear understanding between both parties. We also worked on the project itself. We provided A&R on NSNV and we secured a feature for it. That is not distribution. That is a label doing label work.”
  
He continued: “In the case of Shallipopi, there were multiple witnesses present before signing, and every benefit and sign-on bonus under that agreement was paid immediately on execution. In the case of T.I Blaze, we also went through a documented process, with the records and the accounts examined at the time. Nobody was rushed, nobody was uninformed, and nobody was exploited. These relationships began because we believed in the music, the talent and what could come from working together.”
  
Speaking on the public notion and conception that the artists did not know what they were signing at the beginning of the contract, Akinwunmi said: “I do not accept that, and the record does not support it. A man who has the document days in advance, who negotiates its terms, who improves them, who takes the benefits under it on the day it is executed, and who then operates under it for years without complaint, knows what he signed. These were not boys handed a pen. They were businessmen making a deal, and they made it. What has changed is not their understanding of the contract but that they no longer like it.”

The Work Behind The Scene Of Making A Career For Artists
  
Akinwunmi said: “Over the years during these contracts, Dapper will do the work of a label; we handle the administration, the logistics and the day-to-day machinery that keeps a career moving. We help shape records. We provide A&R. We bring in songwriters and put the right rooms together. We secure features. We build the strategy behind the releases, the campaigns and the timing, and we execute it. That work is not visible from the outside, and it is rarely the part anyone talks about, but it is the reason careers move as fast as they do.
  
“The growth these artists experience are not accidental. It is built, deliberately, by a team. For some of these artists, the first video that ever ran and the first time their music took them outside Nigeria came through this company. I say that as a matter of record, not as a debt anyone owes me.”

The Investments
“Alongside the work put into making of their careers, we invest substantially: recording, production, artwork, marketing, DJs and digital campaigns, multiple music videos shot in Nigeria, South Africa, London, Dubai and the United States, touring, including headline shows in the United Kingdom and the United States, settlement of a prior label agreement, property, rent payments, vehicles and repeated personal cash advances. To put that in perspective, two videos for one artist, shot in America, cost this company $52,000, not N52,000. One of them was an announcement piece that was never officially released, so, it earned nothing and was never meant to. One trip to the United States, for recording camps and video shoots, came to over two hundred thousand dollars once flights, visas, accommodation, ground movement and welfare for everyone travelling were counted. There was no show and no fee attached to it. That was money spent purely on making the work, long before anyone knew whether it would return.

Every amount is documented, and every amount sits in the same accounts and statements.

How Label Financing Actually Works
“When a label finances a career, that money is not a gift and it is not free money. It is capital put at risk before anyone knows whether a record will work. There is no collateral behind it. Nobody signs over a house. The only thing standing behind those payments is the possibility that the music earns, and if it does not earn, the label carries the loss alone and the artist keeps everything they were given. When it does earn, the label recovers what it advanced from those earnings, exactly as the contract sets out and exactly as the artist agreed.

Advances are recoupable, and that was set out in the agreements and communicated clearly to every artist before they signed. It is not a detail anyone discovered later. That is not exploitation. That is the arrangement, and it is the arrangement that made it possible to spend that money in the first place. If a label cannot recover what it invests, no label will take that risk on an artist who is unknown and unproven. That is who actually loses this argument. I should also be clearer about the figures for better understanding. A catalogue revenue number is not money waiting in an account. Before anything reaches an artist, the platforms take their share, the distributor takes theirs, and the costs the label advances are recouped from what remains. That is the order, it is written into every agreement, and it was explained before signing. The numbers being quoted in the public domain are gross figures from the top of that chain, not net earnings at the bottom of it.

The investment exceeded the earnings, the balances remain un-recouped, and what is outstanding is owed to the company, not by it. When you place what was actually earned beside what was actually invested, these accounts do not show a label holding money that belongs to an artist.”
  
On Masters and Ownership, Akinwumi revealed that when a label funds the making of a record, it holds the recording it paid for. That is not a Dapper invention and it is not peculiar to us. It is how recorded music has been structured here and everywhere else, for one simple reason: a master is not free.

Somebody paid for the studio time, the producer, the mixing, the mastering, the artwork, the video and the campaign that made anyone hear the song at all. Ownership follows that money and that risk. None of this was hidden or discovered later. Our position on ownership is written into the agreements, it was there before anyone signed, it was explained, and it was agreed by both sides. It was negotiated, not imposed.”

Social Media Is Not A Court Of Law
Addressing the claims directly, Akinwunmi said: “Social media is not a court of law, and the person who cries the loudest is not automatically the person who is right. A tweet is not evidence. A viral video is not a judgment. Repeated insults are not arguments. If there is a disagreement about money, contracts or accounting, let us put the documents on the table. We have said this several times, and each time we are brought back to the same circle of image and business reputation tarnishing. Ownership sits exactly where the agreements say it sits. Let the lawyers do their work. Let the auditors examine the books. Let the contracts be read. Let the facts be established, and let the truth stand, even when it is not convenient. However, when every disagreement becomes a social media war, everyone loses. The artist loses. The executive loses. The investor loses.

The industry loses and the young person watching learns the wrong lesson about what it takes to build a business in entertainment. This is why we are addressing these issues rather than remain silent. There comes a time when silence stops being peaceful. I have spent most of my career choosing work over noise. I have never believed that every disagreement deserves a public response especially since there are documentations.”

The Process, Cooperation With Authorities
“The agreements set out how disputes are to be resolved through the proper process. Disagreement about a contract should never reach the point of threat. This is why we implore people to stop hiding behind disputes to malign my name and brand, and dismiss the work I have put into the Nigerian music industry.

I understand what fame, pressure and money can do to relationships but I refuse to accept that the only way to defend yourself is to destroy someone else.”
  
Akinwunmi who appreciated his team members for their steadfastness implored fellow music executives to invest in education around contracts, music business investment, financial reporting, independent audits and artists who genuinely understand what they are signing especially as the Nigeria music industry keeps growing.”