Entertainment
Building Your Music Brand with SoundCloud
Promoting music today is a totally different ball game from what it was in the past. Previously, it was practically unthinkable for your music to be heard and become a hit if you did not have the backing of a major record label.
This was mainly because you required massive financial backing to enable you to get radio time, television slots, headline at concerts of already popular artists, go on road tours and more. This was something that was not possible for most artists back then.
Interestingly, the music industry was among the first to be hit by the changes brought on by the internet even before other industries began to experience massive disruptions. We can see this in this article here. The status quo had already been disrupted in the entertainment industry, resulting in a proliferation of what we now know as indie labels and independent artists.
One of the major tools that has made it possible for these indie artists to achieve fame and fortune even without the backing of any major record label is music streaming platforms. These platforms allow independent artists to build their fan base on the internet, sharing their songs and receiving likes, followership, shares and collaborations which all result in increased visibility.
With increased visibility comes increased demand for their songs which results in increased song sales, concert ticket sales, merchandise sales and other opportunities. In fact, a lot of them even get pickup by one of the major labels because they’ve shown that they have what it takes to make it in the entertainment world.
There are currently a number of these kinds of platforms, but we will be focusing on one and that is SoundCloud.
What is SoundCloud?
This is an online music sharing, streaming and distribution platform. Here, musicians and podcasters alike can upload their content, making it available for access by a huge audience. These uploads can be listened to, downloaded, shared, commented on, liked and reposted.
This platform offers independent musicians a great opportunity to bring their sound and music to the world without spending an arm and a leg. Everyone on the platform has equal access to the many platform users, so this levels the playing field for all.
Why Should I Choose SoundCloud?
There are a number of benefits that this platform offers. These benefits can be broken into two parts. There is the issue of convenience of use and the second issue which has to do with statistics. You can read about the convenience that the platform offers here: . We will however focus on the stats in this article.
Entertainment has always been about numbers. How many ears will hear it? How many eyeballs will view it? etc.So, in this regard, what does this platform offers? Let’s quickly enumerate a few of them right here.
User Base
A lot of different people use this platform. Some simply come to listen to music that have been uploaded while some others upload their music and also listen to music uploaded by others. SoundCloud currently has over 76 million users who come to the site for one reason or another each month.
The site also has about 20 million musicians who are registered on this site. Having such a huge community of artists, covering practically every known music genre means that collaboration is very easy.
Reach
Every month, content from the site reaches over 175 million people from around 190 countries of the world. These are 175 million folks that your music can potentially reach it you know how to go about it. That’s really huge.
Music Uploads
This year, SoundCloud announced that it had hit its 200th music upload. This makes it the streaming platform with the most uploads. You can read about it in this blog post. This should tell you that there is something about the platform that has warranted such a huge following.
How Do I Get SoundCloud to Work for Me?
All of the stats we have listed above will not profit you much if you do not know how to make the most of the platform. We will therefore dedicate the remaining part of this article to explaining a few ways in which you can get the most from this platform
Your Profile
It all begins with your profile. This is not something you treat carelessly. Put some thought into what you write here, understanding that it should be something that will pull people in to listen to your work.
Your Images
This is another very important thing to note. Your profile image as well as your album arts should be very attractive. People will see this before clicking to listen to your song. If the image is not attractive, the chances of getting them to listen to your song will be lower.
Quality of Music
No matter how wonderful your profile and images are, if a person listens to your music and it is horrible, what you will achieve will be negative publicity. It is therefore important to understand that you must ensure you do a good job before trying to promote it.
Proper Tagging
Tagging is very important when it comes to campaigns online. This is not just something you do for fun. It has to be strategic. You may want to read about it in this article. Properly tagging your work makes it easy for the right people to find it.
If you are a pop artist, tagging your song as pop and also using other related tags will ensure that pop lovers and other pop artists can find you easily. This is very important.
Offer Previews or Free Downloads
This is especially important for very new artists. You should consider offering free downloads so people can really feel your music. As you get more popular, you can begin to offer short previews of your new tracks. These will act as teasers that will get people interested in listening to the whole thing.
Be Active
It is important that you do not just upload your music and then fold your hands. You need to be active on the platform. Listen to music by other similar artists. Make comments on their work, reposts some, reach out and try to establish some relationships. Doing this will organically attract more people to come check out your page and what you have to offer.
Collaborate with Other Artists
Following from the point above, collaborating with fellow artists on the platform can help build your brand. When two artists come together to do a track, they could easily be bringing their respective fan bases together to support both of them. This becomes more for each person.
Pay for Promotion
While you do all of the above, something else you should really consider is paying to have your music promoted. SoundCloud promotion offers could come in different forms. You could decide to buy SoundCloud reposts, followers, likes, comments etc.
There are companies that offer these services. If for example you pay for 1000 reposts, these will be delivered to you over a specific period. Same goes for likes, comments and followers. This is most certainly a good strategy to adopt if you really want to speed things up nicely.
Conclusion
There is a lot that SoundCloud has to offer you. Carefully take advantage of its many features and with a little help, you may find yourself the next big sensation to have come out of the social media space.
The family of veteran Nollywood actor, Pete Edochie, has dismissed viral rumours circulating on social media claiming that the film icon is dead.
Reacting to the reports in a video shared on his Instagram page on Tuesday, the actor’s eldest son, Leo Edochie, described the claim as false and malicious.
“I’ve been receiving text messages and calls over the nonsense post by some people that our father, Chief Pete Edochie, is dead. It is a lie from the pit of hell,” he said.
Leo added that the actor is alive and in good health, condemning those responsible for spreading the rumour.
“Our father is alive, hale and hearty. And if you wish someone dead, two things usually happen. The person will live very long and you will die before him. Shame to all of you,” he said.
The rumour had sparked concern among fans before the family’s clarification.
Nollywood veteran actress Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde is making her directorial debut with a different and sharper focus. Speaking recently with Newsmen,, the screen icon highlighted a glaring void in the industry’s catalogue, which is the authentic reality of mother-daughter relationships.
“We don’t have too many films that explore or showcase the relationship between mothers and daughters,” Omotola said during the interview, describing the subject as something deeply personal to her.
Speaking honestly about raising her first daughter, she admitted she had only one mode at the time, which was discipline. “I didn’t do a good job,” she said plainly, explaining that she understood motherhood strictly through control, not softness or emotional openness.
At the centre of Mother’s Love is Adebisi, a sheltered young woman from a wealthy home whose life is shaped by her father’s rigid control. Her first taste of freedom comes through NYSC, where distance from home allows her to begin discovering who she is outside her family’s expectations. She forms a friendship with a young man from a more modest background, and through him, starts to see the world and herself differently.
But the emotional core of the film isn’t Adebisi’s rebellion. It’s her mother. Long after being presented as quiet and compliant, she slowly reveals a resolve when her daughter’s safety and future are threatened. As secrets surface and buried grief comes into view, Mother’s Love becomes less about youthful independence and more about maternal sacrifice, unspoken trauma, and the emotional costs of survival inside a patriarchal home.
The Tide Entertainment reports that the film doesn’t shy away from weighty themes by including PTSD, unresolved grief, and social inequality at the centre of the story. It is far removed from the soft-focus sentimentality that often defines Mother’s Day-style narratives.
It also marks Omotola’s directorial debut, a significant moment considering how long she has shaped Nollywood from the front of the camera. She stars in the film alongside a mix of familiar faces and newer talent, including Ifeanyi Kalu, Olumide Oworu, and Noray Nehita.
Beyond the film itself, Omotola’s interview touched on a tension that has been simmering in Nollywood for a while now: how movies are marketed in the age of TikTok. Addressing the growing expectation for actors and filmmakers to create viral dance content to promote their work, she didn’t mince words. The pressure, she said, is exhausting and unnatural.
For her, the industry wasn’t meant to function this way. Still, she was careful not to judge anyone else’s approach. Everyone invests differently, carries different risks, and should be allowed to promote their films however they see fit.
“Do whatever you can do. It’s exhausting, it’s not natural. For me, the film industry is not supposed to be like that. We are encouraging nonsense if we are doing that. It doesn’t mean that whoever is doing it is wrong.”
Her comments arrive not long after the public back-and-forth between Kunle Afolayan and Funke Akindele over marketing styles, a debate that quickly turned into a proxy war between prestige storytelling and viral strategy. Omotola’s stance sits somewhere calmer. She understands the shift social media has brought, but she’s also clear about her own boundaries.
Omotola’s critique about the lack of mother-daughter stories isn’t unfounded. In Nollywood, mothers often exist as symbols rather than people. They’re either saintly figures who pray endlessly for their children or villains whose cruelty drives the plot forward. What’s missing is intimacy, the negotiations, and the regrets. The love that exists alongside resentment and misunderstanding.
Films rarely sit with the emotional complexity of women raising daughters in systems that also failed them. There’s little room for mothers who made mistakes but are still trying, or daughters who love their mothers while questioning the damage they inherited. Mother’s Love attempts to occupy that space, offering a more grounded portrayal that reflects lived experience rather than archetypes.
That’s where the film’s potential impact lies, in the decision to centre a relationship that Nollywood has largely flattened. If it works, it could open the door for more stories that treat motherhood as a lived, evolving reality rather than a fixed moral position.
Mother’s Love, directed by and starring Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, had its world premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2025. The film is set for a nationwide cinema release in Nigeria on March 6, 2026.
Funke Akindele’s Behind The Scenes becomes Nollywood’s highest-grossing film of 2025, earning ?1.77bn in under four weeks.
Multi-award-winning actress and producer Funke Akindele has done it again, and this time, the numbers speak louder than applause.
Her latest film, Behind The Scenes, has officially emerged as the highest-grossing Nollywood film of 2025, pulling in an astonishing ?1.767 billion in less than four weeks.
The Tide Entertainment reports that Funke Akindele Makes Box Office History as Behind The Scenes Crosses ?1.77bn
Earlier in its release cycle, the film’s distributor, FilmOne Entertainment, revealed that Behind The Scenes smashed five opening-weekend records, including the highest single-day gross ever recorded on Boxing Day, with ?129.5 million in one day. That announcement already hinted that something unusual was unfolding.
Reacting to the milestone, FilmOne described the moment as both surreal and communal, crediting audience loyalty for pushing the film to the top spot once again as the number-one movie of the weekend. And that sentiment feels accurate. This wasn’t just ticket sales; it was momentum.
What makes this achievement even more striking is that Behind The Scenes is Funke Akindele’s third film to cross the ?1 billion mark. Before now, there was A Tribe Called Judah, and then Everybody Loves Jenifa, a film that didn’t just open big, but went on to become the highest-grossing Nollywood film of all time. At this point, it’s no longer a fluke. It’s a pattern.
Part of Behind The Scenes’ success lies in strategy. The film enjoyed advanced screenings on December 10 and 11, quietly building curiosity and conversation before its nationwide release on December 12. By the time it officially hit cinemas, audiences already felt like they needed to see it.
Then there’s the cast. The film brings together a lineup that feels deliberately stacked: Scarlet Gomez, Iyabo Ojo, Destiny Etiko, Tobi Bakre, Uche Montana, and several others. Familiar faces, strong fan bases, and performances that kept word-of-mouth alive long after opening weekend.
Still, beyond timing and casting, there’s something else at work here. Funke Akindele understands Nigerian audiences. Their humour, their pacing, their emotional buttons. She doesn’t guess, she calculates, experiments, listens, and refines. That understanding has slowly turned into box-office dominance.
Behind The Scenes crossing ?1.77 billion isn’t just another headline; it’s confirmation. Funke Akindele has moved from being a successful actress to becoming one of the most reliable commercial forces Nollywood has ever produced. Three-billion-naira films don’t happen by luck. They happen when storytelling, business sense, and audience trust align.
And right now, that alignment seems firmly in her hands.
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