Osei Kwame Despite Introduced Ghana’s First Payola – Kakyire Kwame Appiah
Veteran Highlife singer Kakyire Kwame Appiah, who is a renowned artist famous for his Christmas-themed hit songs, recently disclosed an interesting fact about his career.
During an interview on Top Pawa Drive on Top Radio, he shared that back in the day, musicians like himself had to compensate presenters at GBC, the sole radio station in Ghana at the time, to have their songs played. Despite having great songs, this additional step was necessary to gain exposure.
However, Kakyire Kwame Appiah mentioned that Osei Kwame Despite, a prominent business mogul and former music producer, took a different approach.
After producing Kakyire Kwame Appiah’s massive hit song, Osei Kwame Despite decided to invest in extensive airtime for the song on GBC radio by financially compensating the presenters.
This strategic move played a pivotal role in catapulting Kakyire Kwame Appiah’s career to new heights. As a result, his 24th song and other Christmas-themed tracks resonated with Ghanaians across the nation, solidifying his success in the music industry.
Kaakyire first addressed this matter during an interview with Hammer Nti on the Hammer Time show, which aired on Pure FM in Kumasi, three years ago.
“I want to show you where payola came from”, he recounted.
“I was recording my song 24 at the Ghana Films Studio with five engineers, then I went to Despite to get inlays for my new track and also to collect money he (Despite) owed me.
After listening to the song Osei Kwame, Despite telling me it was a good one and showed interest in doing business with me by being the main distributor”, he recalled
According to Kaakyire Kwame Appiah, after Despite paid his debt, he asked of how much he would charge him should his name be featured in the “Bronya” hit song.
Kaakyire continued that, “After telling him the price for a studio recording of ¢40,000 cedis (old currency), he agreed to pay me ¢100,000 and also gave ¢20,000 each for the five engineers working on the record. So he started paying Payola to the sound engineers to include his name to the music”.
Eventually, Kaakyire Kwame Appiah featured Osei Kwame Despite’s name in the later part of the music.
Payola is the act of compensating a commercial radio station to broadcast a song without revealing the payment. In the United States, radio stations are obligated by law to disclose any songs that were paid to be aired as sponsored content.
The frequency of song plays can impact the perceived popularity of a track, leading to the potential use of payola to manipulate these metrics.
