RISING producer Tashinga Mungoshi — popularly known as Tash Van Manhize in music circles —has taken a dig at local artistes “pirating” their music online for peanuts, when they could gain more from their efforts through the sale of CDs.
BY PRECIOUS CHIDA
Mungoshi told NewsDay last week that most local artistes were forced by desperation for meteoric fame and ended up taking music as a hobby rather than a business.
“Artistes are showing that they are desperate to be popular as they are giving their music, for free to fans before making money out of it and this is destroying the music industry,” he said.
Mungoshi said trends in Europe and the United States showed that musicians sold their music on CD for at least a month after release, before migrating to digital platforms.
“What they [musicians] don’t know about Europe and America when it comes to music is that CDs are your best way to sell your music and make money,” he said.
“I did some research into this issue of uploading tracks online and realised that in Europe, they sell CDs for at least a month [and they obviously sell quickly] and only after a while do they make the tracks available online, having made a significant amount of money,” he said.
He, however, admitted that piracy in Zimbabwe affected the majority of musicians, but he challenged them to be creative enough to sidestep the problem.
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“We in Africa, particularly Zimbabwe should find a way around piracy and make some money from sales,” he said.
“Jah Prayzah has been able to sell his album, Mdhara Vachauya, before it was pirated and musicians should make an effort to do the same, it is only a matter of having good management and partnering with the right people,” he said.
