The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
WHEN local musicians were questioned last year, as part of a study on the Zimbabwean music industry by UNESCO, 68 percent of them confessed to not having made a dime from online streaming services in their career.
The study came a few months before Spotify, the global streaming giant with an estimated 345 million monthly active users, was set to announce its arrival in Zimbabwe and 84 other markets in Africa and beyond.
In the year 2020, the year of hand sanitisers, face masks and social distancing, it is well established and accepted by everyone except the hard-headed the era of the Compact Disk (CD) is almost at an end.
The CD has now largely followed the cassette and the vinyl, becoming a ghost of our musical past. Sure, it had a good run from 1982 when giants Sony and Phillips came together to develop it, but it is now rapidly becoming a reminder of a bygone age, a plastic reminder of the proverbial good old days when artistes used to sell millions. Instead, digital streaming, is here and Zimbabwe has also not been left untouched by this digital revolution.
“68% of musicians questioned in November 2020 declared having made no revenue whatsoever from streaming in the past year, and only 2% reported having made more than US$5000 from streaming revenue in a year,” the UNESCO study said.
Yet, in the year in which artistes were starved of the stage, the year in which everything from office work to DJing moved online, very few of Zimbabwe’s artistes were ready for the sudden switch to digital platforms necessitated by the global epidemic.
“The Covid pandemic has pushed music consumption even further online, including watching streamed live performances. Zimbabwean consumers have responded favourably enough to paid streaming of live performances to have incentivised investments and innovation in this realm by music promoters and digital platforms,” the study said.
Even in this era of Zoom meetings and online shows, only a small percentage of Zimbabweans access their music from streaming services, with many happy to just lick content that drips from illegal but free sources on the internet.
“Most online consumers of music are consuming music freely, with only 27% of Zimbabweans reporting having a paid subscription to a streaming platform. YouTube is by far the most popular platform for Zimbabwean music consumers: 78% use the platform at least once a week. The second most popular platform is Facebook Live, used regularly by 37% of consumers. Only 8% of respondents say they do not use any streaming platform regularly.
Zimbabwean platform Buddie Beatz is only used regularly by 2% of respondents,” the study said.
So why are local artistes missing out on the online gravy train? For music scholar Plot Mhako the answer is simple : local artistes are not yet to grasp the art of making money from online music services. With a large number of artistes using platforms like WhatsApp to distribute and advertise their art, Mhako forecasts that there is a long way to go before artistes realise any financial reward from such platforms.
Plot Mhako
“There is only a handful of artists from Zimbabwe who are making money off streaming platforms. The majority of artists are still yet to master how to monetise their content online. YouTube is the most widely used platform by both artists and consumers in the country, the uptake of other platforms is still very low since the cost of internet is still high and the subscriptions beyond the reach of many.
“Most artists are using free download sites and apps like WhatsApp to distribute music hoping to get a hit and get booked for shows but now there are not many shows happening,” he said.
While Zimbabwean artistes, hard hit by an unpreparedness for online and Covid-19, are not laughing all the way to the bank, elsewhere around the world there are doubts about whether these streaming services can put enough food on the plates of artistes.
According to Forbes, for one million plays of a song, artists receive roughly the following payout from these streaming services: Amazon MusicUS $5,000; Apple Music US$5,000-YS$5,500; Google Play US$12,000; Pandora US$1,400; YouTube US$1,700. The streaming revenue model doesn’t serve artists, Forbes observes, particularly those in the independent sector. This particular fact is especially relevant in Zimbabwe where the record label and the distribution company preceded the CD to the graveyard of musical history.
“These streaming websites pay because as we have been saying, physical sales have been affected by the fact that even the distributors that used to do that job are no longer there,” said Thandazani Nyoni, the Marketing Manager for Martin Sibanda’s rhumba outfit, Ndolwane Super Sounds.
“When the artistes do that job themselves, they end up distributing very few copies. This is because there are no central points where people can buy copies and even if they’re there, it takes a lot of effort to ensure that people are well informed about them.
“These streaming services, they make sure that the music is accessible to a larger number of people and even if sales reps don’t reach the people we want to market our music to, they still get these songs and videos. This depends on which digital platforms one is registered to. What is required is that an artiste should be well informed before he or she sells their music online. They need to know how they will benefit and how they will be paid,” he said.
Besides the work put in by the musicians, Nyoni said it was also the responsibility of the fans to make sure they paid tithe to streaming services preaching a gospel that is favourable to their preferred artistes.
“Fans also need to be well informed about how they can buy music to the artiste’s benefit online. It is a process.
Those that started doing it a long time ago are now benefitting but those that are started are still struggling. It all depends on the fans and their understanding of the streaming sites but I’m sure after a while they also get the hang of it for the benefit of the artiste,” he said.
While Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube might be the most visible streaming platforms, there are other smaller, less prominent sites in the dark corners of the web that are prepared to give a fair share to artistes. When Asaph released his smash hit song Mambo, it was on these sites that he learnt that there was money to be made from streaming.
“As it stands now, it all boils down to what considers as making money. Money can come through these platforms.
Artistes are able to monetise their platforms and really own it themselves. They can make money through platforms like Tuneco.
“I remember the first time I put out Mambo, that’s what I was using. Money was coming in through Tuneco. Maybe it was not the kind of money that could change my life in terms of maybe buying a house or a car but there was enough money coming in to maybe get back in the studio, record more music or probably shoot an affordable video.
It was that kind of money.
“Money can be made. It may not be ‘change your life’ money, it might just be grocery money or money that you can invest back in the music, for example, to sponsor your posts, or buy your beats or do your photoshoots and stuff like that. What artistes need to do is get the knowledge and find people who have done it before and show them how to do it,” he said.
While there may be questions on how much artistes can milk from the streaming cash cow, Asaph says that there cannot be any doubts that they need to be given the knowledge to be in a position to get anything from it in the first place.
“What artistes need more of is knowledge and I guess that come from things like workshops where those that have done it before come through and explain the best way to go about it. We also need adequate time online and so if we could have spaces that provide work desks and Wi-Fi so that people can come in and rent a desk for a day or two or even a week. This will enable artistes to push their music online, make sure they’re registered and making sure that their work is monetised and flowing the right way. I guess that’s what I’m thinking about,” he said.
