My Name is Ademola Ogundele and I am here to share my story of how Notjustok has Progressed with Joy since founding it in 2006.
Notjustok went from a passionate hobby of mine to a household name in the Nigerian and African music space. It truly disrupted the Nigerian music landscape, forcing artists to rethink how they promote their music, from the old “direct to radio first” model to an “online first” model.
The reason Notjustok is popular today is because of the success of the Music from Nigeria. When I started posting Nigerian music on Notjustok, the only reason I was able to stay consistent after God’s grace, were the fuel of emotions generated in me when I heard the good music I listened to and my ability to enjoy the process of sharing and attempting to popularize the music I shared.
Here is a short story of how Notjustok has progressed with Joy from 2006 to 2016.
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Hobby
Notjustok started in 2006 as a hobby where I would post content I felt was interesting once a week and share my thoughts and experiences (I thought were very interesting and unique) with the then 10 people audience that were made up of my siblings and friends whom I forced to read my content.
Later that year I stumbled upon Nigerian music that was being made around that period and immediately started to enjoy it and appreciated the quality.
At this time, I was simply enjoying the fact that I could express myself through writing.
2. Passion for Music
As I listened to Nigerian music more and more I began to hear the mix of contemporary production with local language and expression and it was meshing well. Artists like eLDee, Naeto C, Ikechukwu, Dbanj, Don Jazzy and 9ice were beginning to become quite popular and my God, I loved every song they were releasing.
In June 2008, a website streamed the video of Mandela’s 90th birthday UK concert LIVE online. I was determined to capture 9ice’s LIVE performance of Gongo Aso at the concert in London using an application on my battered and overheated Dell laptop; still don’t know how I managed to get the laptop to download the software and record just the portion of 9ice’s performance.
Anyway, I shared the video on Notjustok.typepad.com which is where the site was back then and the number of people that came to the site that day were 1000% more than normal. After this pleasant response, my passion for Nigerian music grew even more and I felt I had the responsibility to keep feeding the people Nigerian music online. My dedication grew immediately and my brain started to come up with all sorts of ideas for the future.
3. An Audience online for Nigerian Music and “No” Couldn’t Stop The Passion
After sharing 9ice’s performance video with the Notjustok Audience, I knew that I had to keep sharing more Nigerian music content. The passion for both the music and sharing it drove me to track down ALL the Nigerian artists I could find on Myspace and Facebook.
Although many of them did not respond to my messages, I found a way to keep getting their new music via forums, myspace pages and ripping mp3s via weird sites on the internet. I felt I needed to be consistent with sharing music; there was an innate joy I felt when I posted and saw the responses of the people.
The post How Notjustok Has Progressed with Joy Since 2006 #ProgressWithJoy appeared first on notjustOk.
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