Mavin Records founder, Michael Collins Ajereh popularly known as Don Jazzy has disclosed that the label invested around $5m to push Rema’s global hit, ‘Calm Down’.
Gatekeepers News reports that speaking in an interview with Bounce FM, he explained that promotional budgets vary widely, depending on whether the project is a single, EP, or album.
Don Jazzy said campaigns can start from around $100,000 and rise above $1 million when an artist targets an international market.
He cited Calm Down as an example of a song that showed extraordinary early momentum, prompting the team to expand its investment.
The Mavin boss said, “For a song like ‘Calm Down’, we probably spent close to $4 million to $5 million to get it to where it is”, adding that promotion is done in phases and scaled up only after a track gains strong traction.
He noted that while some artists break through with far smaller budgets, global ambition requires significantly higher spending.
Released in February 2022 on Rema’s album Rave & Roses, Calm Down received a massive boost after a remix with American singer Selena Gomez dropped in August of the same year.
The track has since smashed multiple records, including becoming the longest-charting African song on the Billboard Hot 100, earning platinum certification in the UK, crossing one billion Spotify streams, and amassing over 1.2 billion views on YouTube.
