'Your understanding on music a display of ignorance' – Pundit tells Socrate Safo

Outspoken entertainment pundit and social media influencer, Ricky Tenneson has said that anyone who seeks to trash out the idea of musicians selling their music on digital platforms does not understand the real definition of the music business.

Ricky's comments come after Socrate Safo, Director for Creative Arts at the National Commission on Culture in Ghana, had advised Ghanaian musicians not to relegate the traditional way of selling their music by focusing only on the digital or online platforms.

Speaking on the 'Best Entertainment Show' Wednesday morning hosted by Halifax Ansah-Addo on Okay FM, Socrate argued that, there is a bigger market for CDs than the various digital platforms adding that, the digital platforms came into existence as means to sabotage the aspect of CDs.

"Compare the profit musicians gain from 100 people streaming your music to how much you earn from selling CDs and you will realise that CD sales are more profitable. Consumers are still there. They buy CDs and we shouldn’t only spend time to promote and sell music on digital stores."

"People sell pirated copies of the album in traffic and a lot of people are buying it. Ghanaian artistes should promote CDs more rather how they promote their music in digital stores. The digital stores are taking advantage of the work of these artists," he said.

However, Ricky responding to Socrate on the same show said the digital platforms came into existence as a means of helping musicians to reach a bigger audience in the music business.

According to him, the narration of Socrate seeking to suggest the online stores came into existence as an agenda for musicians to neglect the CD sales is an unfortunate talk.

"Listening to Socrate now, I am disappointed. His narration of seeking to condemn the digital platforms for musicians should not be tolerated. It clearly shows he doesn't know what exactly he is talking about. After CD, it was MP3, they did an MP3 version of the CD where you can put about 120 songs on it. It was the introduction of MP3 on CDs then it later moved to online for the free download. Then the streaming platforms realised the artistes are not making anything out of the free downloads, which finally brought into the existence the streaming platforms."

"It just didn't come to wrap out the CDs. It can never be an agenda by streaming platforms to trash out the CD sales, the musicians themselves realised a lot of things as times goes on and changed their ways a lot. The free downloading itself from research was spearheaded by musicians and a lot of people moved with that idea. Socrate does not understand the music structure well. Truthfully, a lot of times when he speaks about music, his understanding of music-related matters does not move me like when he is doing to movies. Clearly, he lacks understanding on how the streaming aspect even came into existence" he said.