Nollywood producer chinneylove has begged her colleagues not to destroy YouTube the way Netflix and amazon were destroyed.
“This message is to my colleagues, when my I mean colleagues I mean actors, filmmakers everybody. Guys this is 2025, let’s be calming down. I am talking about this YouTube space, let’s not use our hand to spoil it. Netflix came everybody was excited, amazon came everybody was excited there was a lot of competition. Boom!!!
Netflix left; amazon left. Netflix is still buying but you know what I am talking about, investments there are none. That time there was Netflix and amazon you call somebody aah my money is 10 million naira; I am charging 10 million for one week. Now where are they, are they investing millions of dollars anymore? Even if they are buying, the licensing fee, how much? Let’s not use our hand to spoil this YouTube.
I was one of the few people that started YouTube, though there were marketers on YouTube way before me. I am saying YouTube in Lagos, premium films we were not a lot doing YouTube then and when we started YouTube it was a genuine place of love, we were not more than four even the names you see now were not even on YouTube.
We were not more than four, it was a place of love we would communicate between ourselves what we do, how do we go. We were not even interested in stars, we would pick people up and say okay let’s use this actor. We would use new actors and a lot of them are doing so well now.
It was all love. I remember when I made my first $200, it was from an old content that I had produced that I put on YouTube, I was so excited, for me to make $200 that means I can make $1000 and that is how the ginger started but now you see the whole madness for millions of views competition everywhere. It has become a toxic place. Actors hike their fees not minding how much people are losing. That it favors a few people does not mean it favors the whole industry; let’s not use temporary gains to affect everything.
This is an industry that people crawled so that we can run, people founded this industry. So unfortunate that people don’t have respect for such people anymore. These are the same people that toiled so that you and I can eat. Competition between filmmakers, competition and toxicity everywhere. This was not how the YouTube industry was, we started it from a place of love. The way we used our hand to destroy Netflix and amazon we can do the same to YouTube. Yes, YouTube is a giant platform they cannot just pack up and go but there can be a lot of restrictions that will not favor filming on YouTube, they can decide to make joining you tube so hard. Yes, everybody can produce, but the influx of producers everywhere even in the diaspora. Every actor is a producer”