…Telecoms, music industries losing millions in potential online revenue

Fitzgerald Munyoro

The lack of business synergy between the local music industry and the telecommunications industry has been prejudicing artistes of a hypothetically lucrative multi-million dollar venture that stands to benefit both sectors commercially.

A list released by African music monitoring website Music Africa which highlighted the top 10 continental music streaming services, exposed a glaring absence of viable and marketable online music streaming services that cater exclusively for Zimbabwean music, regardless of having trending artistes who are internationally acclaimed music icons, the likes of the late Dr Oliver Mtukudzi.

The highlighted 10 music streaming services were dominated by online music service providers from countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya. Interestingly half of the 10 rated sites are wholly owned by telecommunications companies or make use of mobile devices technology. This is an indication that potential exists between telecommunication service providers and players in the music industry to forge partnerships that can generate profit for both parties.

Commercial online streaming services can counter music piracy.

The highest rated streaming service was Simfy South Africa which is owned by South African telecommunications giant ExactMobile. Other streaming services bankrolled by telecommunications companies include Mziiki from Tanzania which falls under under Singapore digital content company Spice VAS Africa, fellow Tanzanian telecommunication service provider Milicon Media sponsors its own streaming services Tigo and Spinlet from Nigeria is also rumored to be owned by investors involved in the Nigerian telecommunications scene.

The algorithm used to compile the list of commercially viable streaming services took into account factors such as number of artistes active on the website, active registered users, amount of revenue per stream, number of purchases, monthly traffic and amount of music on offer.

The mobile consumer based criterion demonstrates a direct correlation as to how mobile service providers and artistes can collectively exploit the digital space in making their creative spaces profitable.

For instance, Simfy South Africa is said to have a catalogue of 27 million songs across all genres and is available in Nigeria and South Africa and subscription packages range from R25 to R60.

In turn the artiste gets paid a proportionate sum of the subscriptions and income generated from advertising, which depends on the monthly performance of the artistes streaming channel.

Nigerian streaming service Spinlet boasts of over 50 million subscribers and has 635 400 monthly unique visitors.

According to the last updated database in 2016, Spinlet contains over 50 000 local artistes and artistes receive 90 percent of the money generated from online units sold at a rate of US$0.038 per song.

Nigerian singer Simi

In 2017, it is reported that Nigerian artiste Simi and South African house duo Distruction Boyz recorded outstanding sales from the Spinlet music streaming service as they sold 3 million and 10 million digital units respectively.

The trend for music streaming services is on set to increase given that, of the estimated six billion people on the earth, two billion of them are active in mobile technologies, which is the main medium of online music promotion.

Global economists have projected that the music streaming services is set to grow globally by 60 percent in the year 2020 and active participants in mobile technology will play a key role in that expansion.

Evidence gathered in Zimbabwe seems to mirror those projections give the increase in the country’s mobile penetration since 2014. Although according to the Postal Telecommunications and Regulatory Authority Of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) the  mobile penetration recorded a decline of 2.5 percent to reach 90.6 percent in 2019 from 93.1 percent recorded in 2018, the high rate is still a positive indicator of the potential to develop lucrative deals streaming music online commercially.

Music analyst and marketing executive Lesley Kusena believes that telecommunication companies, local record labels and independent artistes are sitting idle on a goldmine by failing to capitalize on how modern mobile technology has a magnetic relationship with the music business.

“Look, the growing trend everywhere is music streaming. The culture of buying physical copies of music is slowly waning and local artists need to move away from that. Telecommunication companies right now are in a position of privilege by having access to over 90 percent of the population in Zimbabwe who are said to own smartphones,’’ said Kusena.

Kusena also believes the emergence of a viable music streaming service could circumvent the cancer of content piracy and cloning which has plagued the music industry for over a decade now, depriving artistes of profits from their works..

‘’Artistes will just have to focus on recording a song then submit it to the streaming service. Post-music production costs are cut and there is no need for the music to be expensive, of which with cut production costs, the price is minimized and if the music is of good quality, I believe people will buy the music online,” said Kusena.

He added that music streaming services could be cheaper than the cost of producing hard copies which are also at risk of being pirated.

“Unless the telecommunications companies revert to capitalistic patterns, the price of a digital song should be affordable to all and sundry so that the target audience does not pirate the music,’’ said Kusena.

However, local artistes have raised concerns that there is no buying culture of music by fans in the country and this is why there is lack of confidence on both the telecommunications sector and the artistes to come up with mergers for online streaming services.

The Diamond Boyz (Dboi and Sparxx)

Desmond ‘’D Boi’’ Gopo of the afro-pop duo Diamond Boyz said music consumers in Zimbabwe are yet to adopt the practice of buying music online and this might serve as an impediment to the profitability of such a venture.

‘’In my observations, the average Zimbabwean is not active or knowledgeable about music streaming and it’s a culture that will need a lot of time to implement before it becomes a money generating venture. Hence it would be futile for an artiste to make use of these streaming services as there is a feeling of doubt over whether the online clientele is big enough to make all the work worthwhile’’said Gopo.

Gopo’s sentiments seem to hold water as a snap survey conducted shows that currently Zimbabwe only has a handful of visible music streaming services which are making little to no profit.

Existing streaming sites such as zimbomusic.com make local music available for free download which means the artistes are likely not making profit from their content.

In 2015,the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (ZIMURA) revealed plans to launch an online music library named MHANZI which would exclusively sell local music for 10 cents via a mobile application that one would download and install on their smartphones.

However, indications are that the project suffered a still birth as three years on, the initiative is yet to see the light of day. However with the new normal brought by Covid-19, where live shows are indefinitely banned, this is the perfect timing to push for this initiative and sell music online.

Zimbabweans are being forced to use online payment systems and with Government endorsement this might revolutionize the growth of active online music streaming services.