This follows a recent increase in the number of singers who play radios on street corners and sell their products direct to the public for as little R10 per CD, instead of the going rate of R50 for a CD and R100 for a DVD.
The proponents claim that this their way of fighting music piracy, but critics say it is actually making matters worse. One Johannesburg-based music producer and promoter described such musicians as opportunists with nothing to lose.
“Such artists are cheating fans by selling sub-standard CDs. How can we fight piracy as musicians when our own are giving a notion that it is possible to sell your productions for R10? It is disappointing when fellow artists help cripple the industry. These are just desperate people who got into the industry to try and make a quick buck. They lack creativity – they just sell old wine in new bottles,” said Fidas Sibanda, composer and lead-singer for Ofakazi Gospel Group.
He highlighted the urgent need to curb this kind of self-piracy. “Even the quality of the CDs is dismal and they do not last long. This is an insult to the industry and musicians need to unite and stop it. A real musician would not sell their music like thieves would. Real musicians value their own productions,” said Sibanda. Co-leader of the Nation Gospel group, Quiet Ncube, concurred. “We need to establish a board to deal with artists selling that way because they are also privately pirating other artists,” said a seething Ncube.
One of the gospel artists who refused to be named said, “We survive through sell of our pirated music as we are living in hard times. People are neither attending our shows nor buying our original CDs.So, we can’t just watch those selling pirated music reaping fruits of our music. It’s better to join them and get the little we can out of it.”
Post published in: Entertainment