Many Nigerians will be unable to listen to singer's new mixtape, because we cannot access Apple Music in the country.
Mr Eazi has released his mixtape "Life Is Eazi Vol. 1:Accra to Lagos".
The tape which was scheduled to drop on February 11, 2017 has been brought forward by a day to be released February 10, 2017.
"Accra to Lagos" surfaces the root sounds, dialects, energy and styles from the two metropolitan hubs, which largely influences his music.
It takes the listener on an aural journey from the one city to the next beginning with five tracks reflecting the Ghanaian capital, and eventually ending up with five destination tracks from Lagos - all of these on the either side of one "border" track which combines elements from both cities.
The project which has been made exclusive to Apple Music and iTunes for its first week and features inputs from producers and prominent artistes including Masterkraft, Legendury Beatz, Del B, Maleek Berry, D-tunes, Wizkid, Olamide, Medikal, Mugeez R2beez, E-Kelly and Falz.
But many Nigerians will be unable to listen to it, because we cannot access Apple Music in the country.
Apple who switched transaction currency from US Dollars to the local Naira, has had difficulty maintaining their subscribers in Nigeria due to problems with the Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) payment option.
In changing the transactional currency to naira for Nigerians, iTunes is seemingly towing the same line that Facebook took in October.
Before Apple, Facebook had also adopted a similar change in billing currency. The social networking site started charging for ad campaigns in naira back in June 2016, as the currency situation got worse. Nigeria, with more users than anywhere else on the continent, represents an important market for Facebook.
Google started accepting naira payments for apps and games in its Play Store in Aug. 2015, just as the forex problems started to bite initially. But Google still requires Nigerian business users of its AdSense and AdWords services to pay in dollars.
Everything became cheaper in Naira. Previously a song off Beyonce’s Lemonade album will cost $0.99 ($475.2) dollars to purchase. Right now, it is sold for N100. The full album, which previously went for $9.99 (N4,795), is sold for N900. So with N900 you can own a Beyonce album, while J.Cole fans can smile to iTunes with N700 for his forthcoming full-length project – “4 Your Eyez Only”.
But it turns out you can’t pay for it in many banks. And that’s because many Nigerian banks have deactivated DCC on all their cards.
Dynamic currency conversion (DCC) or cardholder preferred currency (CPC) is a financial service in which credit card holders, when making a payment in a foreign country, have the cost of a transaction converted to their home currency at the point of sale.
DCC allows customers to see the amount their card will be charged, expressed in their home currency. DCC services are generally provided by third party operators in association with the merchant, and not by a credit card company.
With these, many subscribers have been unable to subscribe. Cards from GTB, Stanbic, Access bank, Ecobank and others have their DCC disabled. While a UBA bank card will enable the transaction.
Apple’s Senior VP of internet software and products, Eddy Cue told Billboard recently that 60% of customers using Apple Music have not bought content from the iTunes Music Store in the last twelve months. Apple Music which is now available in more than 100 countries has over 50% subscribers living outside the United States.
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