KAMPALA — Over the weekend, Swangz Avenue boss Julius Kyazze with all the notes, pamphlets and question banks regarding the dynamics of the music industry in Uganda took NTV Uganda presenter Ngobi Isubikalu Douglas alias Dagy Nyce back to school on the topic of the internet usage landscape in Africa.
Dagy Nyce who was one of the panelists on the Reach A Hand Performing Artists Conference which was held at Victoria University on Thursday noted in his submissions how Tanzanian artistes are bigger than Ugandan artistes because of their numbers on different social media and music streaming platforms including YouTube.
Kyazze, who says did not get a chance to chat with the presenter about the issue beforehand, picked the discussion from a Facebook Post by Galaxy FM boss Innocent Nahabwe about the topic.
He expressed his disappointment in Dagy Nyce for making such a statement and how he belittled some of the legends in Uganda’s music industry like Bebe Cool and Juliana Kanyomozi for having low numbers on streaming sites yet they have been in the business longer than the likes of Diamond Platinumz.
“Dougy Nice, I didn’t get a chance to chat with you but I watched you mislead the audience on issues of artists and their low streaming numbers. You belittled people like Moses Bebe Cool Ssali and Juliana Kanyomozi for having very low numbers yet they have been here for long. You compared them to Diamond Platinumz,” Kyazze noted.
He urged the presenter to stop misleading the audience because the demographics are totally different in relation to the population of Tanzania and Nigeria which still lead Uganda in terms of numbers of internet users.
“I felt this came from a place of unawareness of the internet usage landscape in Africa but unfortunately the audience seemed to have believed you. Uganda’s internet penetration is under 9m compared to TZ’s 24m. Nigeria has over 70m internet users. So let’s work with our artists to uplift them and forge ways to grow rather than belittle them for some cheap clout.” Kyazze added.
