P-Square Battles SoundCity For Refusing to Air Their Videos Since January

SoundCity a music video and entertainment television channel has since 1st January, 2015 stopped airing music videos of Nigerian music group P Square. The manager for the music duo Jude Okoye has accused the station of blackmail against his artiste.

This allegation did not taste good for the station and they have issued a statement to address the issues as tweeted by Jude Okoye.

The Popular Urban Music Channel, Soundcity disclosed the real reason they stopped playing P-Square’s music on their TV channel in their statement.

Their reaction follows the outburst by Peter Okoye few hours ago, where he also urged their fans to stop watching them.
In an article posted on their website on Thursday, Soundcity revealed a deal went wrong between them late 2014.

Read their long statement below

For 10 Years, @SoundcityTV has been a huge supporter of #PSquare and the #PSquare brand, right from their 1st music video to the last video released in 2014. Most of their videos got massive airplay on @SoundcityTV than any other music channel.
@SoundcityTV viewers sometimes complain about the dominance of #PSquare videos on the channel & charts. We were a huge supporter and gave everything to their works.
We have assisted the #PSquare brand, toured with them over Africa at our expense. Gave them ad-spots for their events / projects. Gave them prime time slots for their videos and included them in our array of Programmes / programming.
We invited #PSquare to one of our annual events last December 2014 and they insisted we pay a certain amount of money. We reasonably asked, what is the least we can offer?; this was us foregoing the fact that we had invested a lot in #PSquare’s career as music talents / artistes & entertainers.
The feedback was, “WHAT HAS SOUNDCITY EVER DONE FOR PSQUARE? TELL ME ONE THING SOUNDCITY HAS EVER DONE FOR PSQUARE” (Jude Okoye, Manager).

Most importantly, Soundcity is not backing down on their decision to stop playing P-Square music videos. The rest of their statement below:

While we understand that this is business, there is also room for special consideration. Saying our TV brand has never done anything for #PSquare was quite damning. Clearly, there was no need to argue with their decision and reasoning. We decided to stop ‘doing anything’ with/for #PSquare, since our 10years of supporting the group meant nothing to them. We assumed our relationship was a mutually beneficial one, but clearly one-sided.

This battle between these two entities doesn't look like ending anytime soon as SoundCity dropped what many have called an epic response after the earlier one. In this statement, SoundCity schools the music duo on somethings that they claim might not be known to PSquare. 

Read that as well:

Dear Jude and @SoundcityTV Fans,
Thank you for your tweets Jude; we will certainly address each of these tweets, especially since they are some sorts of allegation:

• Of course, we did not think we are doing your group a ‘Favour’. Just like any other artistes, if you have a great material, we will showcase it on our channel and various platforms. Supporting, promoting, nurturing a talent isn’t a favour. It is obligatory, indeed?

• ‘Begging PSquare’ to Tour with? We needed the content? Soundcity is a music and lifestyle channel, music and music programming forms 80% of our content while lifestyle handles the remainder. We are pretty sure the expense of touring with you then was much more than rotating music videos, make a business case out of this and you’ll see for yourself why we wouldn’t have ‘begged’ as you have claimed in your tweets…but hey! We did it for the LOVE!

• Your job is to co-direct videos, and manage the group and ensure you do things in their best interest ‘reasonably’. Ours is to play the videos if we see them deem fit. Luckily, all your videos are co-directed with Clarence Peters, one of Nigeria’s biggest music video directors, partly a Soundcity Alumni. Please read between the lines of ‘reserving the rights to play.’ to fully understand what it means. Meanwhile, interestingly…our job also partly runs along us advising your group as per better professional input from us, for free.

We suggest rather than you wanting to ‘create’ a union in ‘we artiste’…you should speak and deal with your group squarely. NOBODY ever asked for your group to perform for FREE, only that we asked for a reasonable performance fee. You wanted to charge 10 or 12 Million or so. We are glad that a lot of artistes came through and yes; they played to their fans at the free event, for free.hat Blackmail? You decided not to work with our brand, we decided not to work with your brand by withdrawing your videos from our channel and completely stopped doing business with you. Not sure that’s what ‘Blackmail’ means. You took a decision, we took ours too. Simple.We don’t pay Royalties? Your job as a manager is to ensure your artistes’ get their royalty pay cheques. Check with COSON and MCSN, SOUNDCITY pays Royalties every calendar year for music use on Soundcity and on sister channels, the platform carriers (DStv) doubles that effort too. Perhaps you should ask your colleagues in the industry about how that works. COSON is the Copyright Society of Nigeria and MCSN is the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria, also you can learn more about COSON here http://www.cosonng.com

Lastly, we will do something rewarding for you today! Please tune in by 3PM to watch #PSQUARE: THEN & NOW! Fans will be able to catch videos from the early years to present and also, #PSQUARE vs. #USHER: ORIGINAL DANCE OFF! By 3:30 PM today. Really, there is no such thing as ‘Boycott’ in premium entertainment.

Actually, scratch that! We should but we won’t. We will do #CHRISBROWN vs #USHER: DANCEOFF for 3PM today instead, #ChrisBrown is trending right now on the Internet.
This is the last time we are speaking on this, we have a number one TV channel to run.

Thank you.

Ultimately, #PSquare music videos stopped airing on @SoundcityTV since January 01, 2015. Soundcity reserves the right to air music videos on our cable / satellite or terrestrial platforms.

Overall, we wish the duo the best in their endeavours. @SoundcityTV will keep airing works of the best and upcoming Nigerian artistes, and also, the best #African artistes to the world, especially nurturing their talents from inception till they become huge megastars and international superstars.
Thank you.