Pirates or entrepreneurs? Informal music distributors and the Nigerian recording industry crisis

Abstract

This paper is based on field research in Lagos and seeks to examine a group of actors that is often neglected in the literature as well as in local discourses. I refer to these actors as informal music distributors: small-scale entrepreneurs like tape bootleggers and bloggers, whose business is the distribution of music recordings via channels that are not (yet) used by established institutions and which are not or only partially legitimized by them. Labelled with the catch-all term ‘pirates’, these actors are often depicted as exploiters of those who do the real work (like musicians or labels) and as both the cause and profiteers of a continuous crisis the Nigerian recording industry has found itself in since the 1980s. By contrast, I suggest a more nuanced perspective on the complex roles that informal music distributors play in this crisis. To this end, the paper investigates how the crisis unfolded, its impact on the Nigerian recording industry, and how different informal music distributors relate to it. I argue that by focusing on these distributors’ entrepreneurial skills, we can learn about how they deal with crises, how they turn precarious conditions into success while their formal competitors struggle to do so and explore their larger impact on Nigerian music.

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