A 16-year-old Nigerian teenager from Lagos has founded a social network in order to help his friends-musicians to gain worldwide recognition.
It is hard to believe that a guy from a large and low-income family has managed to promote his own music portal without money and advertisement, and then to sell it to a major communication portal in Nigeria.
But, nevertheless, Dayo Obiora became the local legend, for his friends firstly. It was the wish to fulfill their dream, which led the teenager to the idea of creation of his own music portal.
It all started with a dream and absence of voice.
The teen admitted that he had always dreamed of becoming a musician and even tried to play the guitar. Unfortunately he had neither a good ear for music, nor the voice. His parents, a father, who is a driver, and a mother, who is a primary school teacher, wanted their son to become a successful doctor. Therefore they did their best to collect money for his education. Every month they saved small sums in order to pay for college. However, the boy had low interest in medical handbooks. In order to get closer to his dream, Dayo started communicating with street musicians, which later created a small music band and played in the streets of the city. This is how the guy got his musical surrounding.
According to Dayo, when he listened how his friends play he realized that he would never become a musician. Walking through the streets he also saw scores of talented people who sing, play, but remain unnoticed. And one day he made a decision to help his friends- musicians to become famous, to make their music available for everyone, at all cost. The pocket money, provided by his mother for buying a lunch, was saved in a moneybox. His initial dream was to collect a sum necessary for recording a music album, and to donate this money to friends. The teen also confessed that in many cases he gave his dribblets to musicians in the streets. Not because out of pity for them, but because his heart was aching as the teen saw indifferent faces of people passing by, and heard wonderful music at the same time. The idea that he had no talent, but many other gifted people who had it, but still remained unnoticed, made Dayo really sad.
Music portal just in 2 months.
The parents presented a second-hand computer for Dayo's birthday. After watching tons of music home videos on the Internet, the teen realized that the PC provides him additional capabilities. And he will be able to fulfill the dream of many unknown talented singers and musicians by creating a special network for them, where they will upload their music for free. And this is how they would be heard by everyone.
His parents were not programmers, and Dayo himself had no skills in programming at all. However, in the era of modern technologies, finding the necessary literature on the web made absolutely no difficulty for the teen.
According to parents, they got concerned when their son set to studying literature on the Internet with terms and codes totally incomprehensible for them. He was no longer studying medical handbooks, but technical literature instead. He read a lot and learned how to create new simple applications.
This is how the self-taught teenager from Nigeria created NaijStar music social network within just 2 months. The first of tracks uploaded were the songs recorded at home by his friends. Other musicians from the neighbourhood knew about the network and also started sharing their tracks on it. The number of users of the free social network increased from 8 to 10,000 in just a month.
The innovation has been spotted by the administration of a major Nigerian communication and music portal Naij. They offered the fellow to join their team and to lead his own project, with their assistance. Dayo accepted the offer on condition that his music network shall be free. Besides invitation to join their team the general management of Naij portal has rewarded the young genius with a cash prize.
The fellow disclosed that he had already made his mind on how to spend his first salary. Part of the money will be handed over to his parents, while the other part will be invested to his new idea. He intends to continue supporting the promising talents. He also said that a new project is being formed in his mind but he was not ready to disclose anything about it. At the same time, the general management of Naij portal confirmed its willingness to provide further support to the gifted young man and their youngest team member.
NaijStar - star.naij.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment