Don Jazzy, CEO of Mavin Records, says the cost of promoting an artiste can differ widely depending on the scope and nature of the release.
In a recent interview with Bounce FM, the music executive explained that promotional budgets for a single track can range from “$100,000” to over “one million dollars,” adding that global-level promotion demands even more investment.
He cited the phenomenal performance of Rema’s “Calm Down” as a clear example. Released in February 2022 from Rema’s debut album ‘Rave & Roses’, the song quickly showed strong potential. According to Don Jazzy, that promise justified increasing the promotional budget.
“It varies. I used to say it keeps changing. Sometimes, it can be $100,000 or more. Is it an EP, an album, or a single?” he said.
“(For two singles). It can be $300,000 for promotion in Nigeria. Everything is in process. You have to get some level of traction before you now decide when to pump money globally. It also depends on the applications or websites.
“For a song like ‘Calm Down’, we probably spent close to $4 million to $5 million to get it to where it is. The song has to show tractions. You will now say, as you have conquered this place, you will spend the next money, you go to the next phase. Ask people who have done such a thing in the past. Lifestyle is costly, only you do not know.
“There are songs or artistes that we have blown (sic) with N10 million.”
Rema later teamed up with US singer Selena Gomez for the remix released in August 2022.
Since then, the song has achieved several historic milestones — platinum certification in the UK (March 2023), India’s second longest-charting No. 1 African song, and the longest-charting African song on the Billboard Hot 100 as of June 2024.
In 2023, ‘Calm Down’ became Billboard’s longest-charting US Afrobeats song with 52 weeks. That September, it surpassed one billion streams on Spotify.
As of December, the remix remains the most-viewed Nigerian music video on YouTube with 1.2 billion views.
Born Divine Ikubor, Rema signed with D’Prince’s Jonzing World, an imprint of Mavin Records, in 2019.