PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

There isn’t a Car­ni­val on the hori­zon for so­ca mu­sic but per­haps the on­line mar­ket may pro­vide a much need­ed av­enue for a re­nais­sance of the genre.

This is the be­lief of YouTube chan­nel Ju­lianspro­mos

The chan­nel, which fea­tures al­most ex­clu­sive­ly so­ca mu­sic, hit one mil­lion sub­scribers, on Oc­to­ber 13.

To put that in per­spec­tive, Machel Mon­tano, wide­ly con­sid­ered the biggest in­ter­na­tion­al so­ca star cur­rent­ly has 393,000 sub­scribers. Kes the Band, 115,000 with Nailah Black­man tal­ly­ing 70,000 sub­scribers.

“It’s good for us. It feels re­al­ly good,” said Ju­lian Hack­ett, the own­er of the page, who be­lieves that this pe­ri­od presents a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for so­ca as much of the surge in sub­scribers had come dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, with many show­ing fur­ther in­ter­est.

“They’re en­gag­ing a lot more which is good be­cause when it comes to on­line mu­sic, the scene has changed a lot. The fo­cus isn’t re­al­ly about the views. It’s about peo­ple en­gag­ing, lik­ing the videos, com­ments and dif­fer­ent things like that. So a lot of the new­er sub­scribers they’re en­gag­ing a lot so that helps to get more trac­tion, which is a great thing ,” he said

But wor­ry­ing­ly, the re­lease of mu­sic has de­clined.

“Af­ter Trinidad Car­ni­val we’ll see maybe, let’s say 3,000 re­leas­es dur­ing the sum­mer months. This year we saw prob­a­bly 15-20 that was about it,” he said, not­ing that this post Crop Over pe­ri­od would al­so in­tro­duce a se­ries of new re­leas­es.

“We were see­ing maybe 20 new songs a week now. We’re see­ing maybe three or four,” he said.

This has been frus­trat­ing, be­cause Hack­ett be­lieves the pan­dem­ic has pre­sent­ed the genre the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to get out of its’ sea­son­al struc­ture.

“So­ca mu­sic has a unique struc­ture. Whether peo­ple like to ad­mit it or not, it’s sea­son­al. The lis­ten­ers are sea­son­al, most the artists are sea­son­al, the traf­fic is sea­son­al, the fi­nances are sea­son­al and the re­leas­es are sea­son­al. We’ve been able to time this pat­tern per­fect­ly over the ten years I’ve been do­ing this. Be­cause of this sea­son­al set up, artists aren’t able to build a large fol­low­ing on­line in­di­vid­u­al­ly,” said Hack­ett, “Even the largest artists in so­ca could be much larg­er out­side of a sea­son­al struc­ture.”

Hack­ett said in his dis­cus­sions with artistes, there has been scep­ti­cism to put out new mu­sic as artistes fear the mu­sic would be lost with­out Car­ni­val sea­son, which al­so has been the tra­di­tion­al pay day for these acts.

“Artistes are go­ing through fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties some are hes­i­tant to re­lease be­cause they don’t want their mu­sic to go to waste. My sug­ges­tion for artists will be that they can’t hold mu­sic. They have to re­al­ly get it out there be­cause even if there was Car­ni­val the chances of your song re­al­ly tak­ing off, are still the same, es­pe­cial­ly the younger artistes,” he said, “We re­al­ly want to try to get the mu­sic out of a sea­son­al set up be­cause we re­al­ly want the mu­sic to re­lease all the time not just every few months. So we’re re­al­ly try­ing to en­cour­age artists to con­tin­ue to put mu­sic in be­cause you re­al­ly, re­al­ly need to mu­sic to still be re­leased.”

But the chan­nel has al­so proven that the mon­ey can come in through the on­line plat­form as well.

“We have some of the most views playlists out there, some of which av­er­age over ten mil­lion views a year. All these views gen­er­at­ed, trans­late to as rev­enue earned on Our YouTube chan­nel, which is paid di­rect­ly the con­tent own­ers and their dig­i­tal dis­trib­u­tors. Our chan­nel gen­er­at­ed around $500,000us for artists year­ly, all of which are paid di­rect­ly to con­tent own­ers di­rect­ly though YouTube, not through us,” said Hack­ett.

He added, "The best way artists and pro­duc­ers can gen­er­ate rev­enue via YouTube and oth­er stream­ing plat­forms to­day is to first own a good per­cent­age of your mas­ter, and try var­i­ous ways to build your core fan base. Once you have a good sol­id fan base, it makes build­ing your stream­ing num­bers much eas­i­er via en­gage­ment and re-shares. Al­so net­work with var­i­ous oth­er plat­forms and press out­lets to get your songs around dig­i­tal­ly, not just on YouTube but via Spo­ti­fy and Ap­ple Mu­sic. A larg­er fan base will lead to larg­er stream­ing num­bers which will open up the doors for artists to re­ceive spon­sor­ship deals and pub­lish­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to gen­er­ate even more rev­enue for artists, pro­duc­ers and song writ­ers in the long term.”

Some artistes have recog­nised the op­por­tu­ni­ty and have con­tin­ued putting out mu­sic, or in some cas­es re-ig­nit­ed in­ter­est in some less­er recog­nised songs by re­leas­ing mu­sic videos, Hack­ett not­ed.

One artiste who has tak­en this op­por­tu­ni­ty is Nes­sa Prep­py, who has re­leased nu­mer­ous songs since Car­ni­val’s end, as well as shoot­ing mu­sic videos for two of her 2020 so­ca re­leas­es “Splash” with Patrice Roberts and “Pull Up, both gar­ner­ing more suc­cess since the vi­su­als dropped. Splash’s mu­sic video has crossed 12 mil­lion views on Ju­lianspro­mos, whilst spark­ing a Tik Tok chal­lenge which has seen in­ter­na­tion­al pop star Ja­son Deru­lo and Bay­ern Mu­nich strik­er Robert Lewandows­ki post­ing their ver­sions.

“It is my in­ten­tion to re­lease mu­sic re­gard­less of the un­cer­tain­ty about Car­ni­val 2021. I’ve not stopped work­ing on mu­sic,” said Nes­sa Prep­py, who has al­so tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­lease mu­sic out­side of the genre.

Last week she re­leased “Doh Wah Love” on the chan­nel, a song which mix­es sev­er­al gen­res.

“The re­al­i­ty is that the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try has been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and many of us are try­ing to work through the ob­sta­cles pre­sent­ed. For me, mu­sic is my dis­trac­tion so I have been busy and fo­cused.

“It is im­por­tant that fans un­der­stand it’s a tough time for in­de­pen­dent artistes to stay cre­ative. The thing is, al­though I am recog­nised as a so­ca artiste I have from in­cep­tion been singing var­i­ous gen­res. I am present­ly work­ing on my soon to be re­leased al­bum which fea­tures a fu­sion of var­i­ous gen­res such as so­ca, R&B, dance­hall and hip hop,” she said.

The YouTube chan­nel has al­so done its part in push­ing the re­lease of mu­sic for so­ca artistes, this week they re­leased the sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort with Ad­voK­it pro­duc­tions with the Ten­der Touch rid­dim which fea­tures Patrice Roberts, Nailah Black­man, Olatun­ji, Hey Chop­pi and Mel­ly Rose and Skales.