The Urban Grooves musicians have teamed up to form an association aimed at curbing piracy. In early 2000, the Urban Grooves music stormed the domestic musical scene with so much verve due to the former minister of Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyos 100 percent local content policy. However, this too much airplay did harm to the group because their songs were hit by piracy.
The artists came together recently and formed the Urban Grooves Association (UGA), chaired by Eddy Dhliwayo, owner of Nitrade Studios.
UGA has already registered 30 members within a month with more members anticipated to join the association.
In an interview with The Zimbabwean the UGA Public Relations officer, Cindy Munyavi, popularly known as Cindy in music circles, revealed that the organisation came after the realisation that most young musicians were faced with a lot of challenges.
She said: As Urban Grooves artistes, we are facing a lot of challenges in our music business and piracy is on top of the list. The organisation is a noble endeavour to provide a platform for young musicians to interact and discuss ways to move forward. This will make the artistes speak with one voice and represent their various musical interests. The association is also a platform for identifying and developing local young aspiring talent.
Added Cindy: Over the years, Urban Grooves musicians have been continuously facing serious challenges such as piracy, which is one of the many reasons why we have decided to come together and fight the battle as an association.
She said the association was rich with dynamic talent from musicians, producers and choreographers.
She said: Music piracy hurts so much. One gets utterly nothing after spending a fortune on recording time.
Piracy has been ripping us apart. It is one of the major reasons why most young musicians are failing to develop as mature artistes because we get virtually nothing after spending more than US$200 in the studio recording an album, she lamented.
Cindy further revealed that UGA was considering opening their own music store where their CDs could be purchased at lower prices from the US$7 to US$10 currently charged to as little as US$3 to limit chances of getting their music pirated.
However, recording companies responsible for the marketing and distribution of their music holds the authority to set the album charges. The companies have been largely criticised for charging extremely high prices, fuelling piracy at the expense of the musicians. It is estimated that the whole cover layout, printing and packaging of CDs cost less than a dollar.
The Anti-Piracy Organisation of Zimbabwe (APOZ) has been advocating for record companies to use a hologram, a technologically advanced security device mainly used in printing currencies (British pound, Euro and Canadian dollar), and also used on credit and bank cards for security.
This will assure that record companies become transparent by releasing actual figures of CDs, DVDs and cassettes and limiting chances of music piracy. However, most stables have vehemently rejected the system.
Urban Grooves has been widely criticised by some music analysts as bubble gum music lacking maturity and contextual meaning.
Yes, in as much as we want to stamp out piracy, the Urban Grooves artistes are not original. They just take music baselines or instrumentals from known international artistes and just affix their lyrics to come up with a song, said Farai Mhanda a music analyst.
The other thing is that the Urban Grooves artistes should learn to play live instruments and not to rely on computerised music. With all this, serious music lovers would not spent their hard earned cash in buying their music. That is why they burn their music, he said.
Post published in: News