Mr Eazi says he is ready to pay for lawyers to help artistes sue anyone who collects money on their behalf without passing it on. The Nigerian singer and entrepreneur made the pledge in an interview with 3Music TV, as reported by Pulse Ghana and GhanaWeb.
“What I will never be in support of, which is why I’m doing Locker Room Bonus as well, is somebody collecting money and saying the money was going to the artiste, meanwhile the money doesn’t go to the artiste,” he said. “If the money is not going to the artiste, I will never ever be in support, and right now that I have money, I will even hire lawyers for them to come and sue you. This is the most serious I’ve been.”
3Music TV shared a clip from the conversation in a post on X on Thursday.
Locker Room Bonus is Mr Eazi’s scheme that pays lower-league footballers in Nigeria directly after they win matches. Speaking separately to The Beat 99.9 FM, he told Channels Television that the money “doesn’t pass through the FA; it doesn’t pass through the club—it goes straight to them.”
In the 3Music interview, he also spoke about the cost of breaking through as a young musician in Ghana and Nigeria. Recalling his own early days, he said: “I remember those days when I had to go from YFM to this one to that one to drop my CDs across. You invest so that you get to your fans.”
He said emerging artistes today often have to pay bloggers to get their videos on TV and their songs on radio, and questioned whether that spending ever comes back. In the US, he explained, radio plays are tracked and artistes receive publishing royalties. “By the way, with GH¢5,000, if you get your song on radio, you have to thank God. If I spend that money, when the radio is playing my music, am I going to make that GH¢5,000 from there?” he asked.
He added that an artiste who relies mainly on Ghanaian streams from platforms such as Apple Music and Audiomack, without regular shows, would struggle to get by. “Am I going to be able to feed my family? Am I going to be able to survive? The answer is no,” he said.
His comments add to the long-running debate over royalty collection and payola in Ghana’s music industry, where artistes have often complained about how little they earn from airplay.
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