What It’s Like To…Run Nigeria’s Longest-Running Music Chart Publication
Similola Adegoke and Ayomide Oriowo launched TurnTable Charts in 2020, and it has evolved into the authority on what’s popular in Nigerian music.
Similola Adegoke (L) and Ayomide Oriowo (R) launched TurnTable Charts in 2020 and it’s become the longest-running music chart publication in Nigeria.
The popular saying goes: Men lie, women lie, numbers don't. However, in today's global pop music scene, everyone lies. Streaming numbers are often manipulated, sometimes by overzealous fans or unscrupulous executives. Regardless, the numbers remain the closest representation of the truth, which is why chart publications play a crucial role.
Before TurnTable Chart launched in 2020, Nigeria had seenfew attempts to track music statistics, with most efforts quickly abandoned. TurnTable's nearly five-year operation makes it Nigeria's longest-running music chart—a distinction earned through persistent hard work, strategic planning, scrutiny, and tangible growth.
Co-founded by Similola Adegoke and Ayomide Oriowo, TurnTablepublishes a variety of weekly updated music charts, including albums, genres, producers, artists, and its flagship Turntable Top 100 singles chart. What began with publicly available data quickly evolved through strategic partnerships with streaming platforms, record labels, independent distributors, artists and other stakeholders. These collaborations have transformed its charts into a comprehensive representation of Nigerian listening habits across streaming services, radio and television.
"We've always known that what's going to give us credibility is the numbers," Adegoke tells OkayAfrica, "and what is going to give us the numbers is the credibility – it's a catch-22 situation." Despite this challenge, the chart publication has successfully navigated this balance, elevating TurnTable certification plaques into highly coveted recognition within the industry.Below, Adegoke and Oriowo walk OkayAfrica through the humble beginnings and growth of TurnTable, being as authentic as possible, and their hopes for universal recognition.
Adegoke: We've been friends forever since we were young. We started bouncing around ideas for TurnTable in 2018 but didn't start until 2020. It felt kinda impossible initially, but in 2020, we were just like, "Let's start something." That was the beginning of everything.
Oriowo: We've worked on several things together, different ideas over the years, going back 12 or 13 years ago. The first one that became a thing that we built was a property market app that was supposed to go out between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, but plans changed, and we pivoted into TurnTable during COVID-19.
Adegoke: The secret of TurnTable's evolution is people. The first data we pulled out was public; we had to post it on someone's website. It was all about earning people's trust early on, and our first introduction to a real data source was Radio Monitor from South Africa. We got video and TV data and were still collating streaming services like Apple Music, Audiomack and Boomplay, using free data before we partnered with some of them to use their data.
Our first partnership was with Radio Monitor; then, we had Audiomack and Boomplay. The summary of our evolution has been based on people believing in us more than in our resources and them being convinced of our dreams.
Oriowo: [Regarding accountability], at the beginning, we just used public data, so it was more or less like you could do the math yourself. While slight variations might occur due to different weighting methods or methodologies, the results would be comparable. But even then, we encountered significant skepticism — a reflection of our society's general climate of distrust. Even with completely verifiable data, doubt persisted.
Now, we've expanded our data sources to include privileged information obtained directly from Digital Service Providers, artists, managers, labels and distributors. There's a side to the industry where people distrust what that other person is reporting, but our responsibility remains consistent: continue reporting numbers while ensuring maximum authenticity.
Sometimes — I'll give you an example — when labels send us data, they make a mistake and send global data, but we know what the numbers should look like — if that makes sense. We've done this for about five years now, and we know how many streams you should be getting. So when we see something drastic like that, it's easy to call them up to check, and then they realize that they sent in the global stats.
The main thing we do is maintain our side of things and make sure that the algorithm isn't compromised, and we make our methodology public, so more trust will come with time. Trust has grown considerably as we've built credibility over the years, and people have become increasingly familiar with us.
Adegoke: We've always known that the numbers will give us credibility, and what will provide us with the numbers is the credibility – it's like a catch-22 situation. Credibility means that people trust us when [they know] we have access to all the numbers, right? But the industry can only trust us with their numbers when they believe we're credible enough. Our strategy was to ensure that our initial offerings were sufficiently trustworthy and then leverage strategic partnerships and publicity to create FOMO, encouraging more people to partner with us.
We knew that time and consistency would give us validation. People trust Billboard because they've been tracking music numbers for over 80 years. The level of trust [they had in those early years] and what they have today are totally different. We know that every day we put out charts, information, data, and all of that, we're building more credibility and reputation.
What stresses me out is the inconsistent reception from fans sometimes. They'll accept our data when it favors their preferred artists, only to question it when it doesn't. When people challenge our methodology, they rarely bother to verify the facts. Our system aggregates data from Spotify, YouTube, and all major streaming platforms in Nigeria — and our formula is publicly available. Still, they revert to citing Spotify or any other platform where their favorite artist might be trending.
Oriowo: Looking ahead, we want our charts to gain international recognition beyond Nigeria because many people are interested in Nigerian music. Also, we want to organize our fifth year; we want to do things differently. I've noticed that when people get into media in Nigeria, there's a year when you're trying to figure things out, and then people may like everything you're doing, and you go ahead and consolidate. So you just become regular; we don't want to become a regular platform. We plan to launch many new products — chart-related and independent initiatives — that align with how we always want to tell Nigerian and broader African stories.
