The Big Sipho Dlamini interview – part 2

Tell us more about the partnership with National School of Arts?

What we are working on and what we are developing with the National School of Arts, is a strategy to develop with them is a strategy to be able to support them with the long-term view and some of that support is not always necessarily financial. For example, some of these institutions that are teaching music and have music-based courses, are still teaching music based on the old version of music, so there are still teaching classical music, there are still teaching formal music in terms of being able to play a piano, a saxophone and so forth, but there is an element of music business now, that has moved on from that. There is engineering and being able to operate in the studio, as studio exists now, it’s the ability to use certain studio software whether its logic, whether pro-tools or q-bass, or whatever it is. It’s being able to teach students that want to do production or who want to do engineering, about the existence of the software and how to use it and being able to make them aware of the music business and how it operated now because there is no point studying music at school, but having zero understand of what the real world does when it comes to music. It’s about being able to explain the role of a producer, the role of a writer, composer, the role of a manager, the role of a booking agent and in the record label business what does A&R mean, what does marketing mean, what does press and promotions mean and so forth.

We are working with National School of Arts to help them pivot into a space that is closely better aligned with the music and entertainment industry. Whether for example it’s us doing workshops, we bring in some our artists to come into the school and do a mentorship session on songwriting, a session on recording and the process of recording or formats. But it’s important that they are exposed to the real elements of music business even while still in the education space. Whether it’s getting some of our producers to go in and spend time, whether its Prince Kay Bee who is a producer and getting to go to the National School of Arts and spend time with students to teach them about production. So those are some of the things that we are looking at. There is definitely a financial side to it that’s given, but for us it’s about being able to help modernise music education in some of these institutions so that when kids come out of these programmes, they are able to work within the music space and don’t find themselves with a degree or a qualification that doesn’t allow them to actually earn a living and that’s the process that we are going through with the National School of Arts. We are also looking into replicating this in other countries on the continent too. So we have already started conversations with other organisations or institutions that are either looking at music and music education or that are looking for education for youth and that are struggling with being able to support arts-based learning or arts culture-based learning for students that want to be in that space. There are kids that want to be actors and actresses, there are girls that want to operate cameras for film and want to be directing movies and TV shows. That whole culture space, we want to make sure that we are able to support, whether it’s doing a task force for meaningful change started by Universal, we want to able to support community-based projects in different countries on the continent that connect with music and the entertainment industry.

You have a rich background in strategic brand marketing. What is your advice to artists and brands that need to sustain their businesses during the pandemic?

I think its important to be able to adapt to the market and what the market is doing. It’s important to always understand your consumer, your fan base as an artist or people that are out there consuming music and make sure that you connect with them in their space. If you are an artist that is in a particular genre and that genre has to be very active on Twitter, the audience for that genre is going to be responsive on Twitter or Instagram, then its making sure that the presence on those social media platforms where your consumer, client base or fan base is likely to be. So for example, during COVID people were going out less and they were at home most and were either watching more TV or watching YouTube or programmes that are there. Its about understanding how do you pivot from where you used to be to be visible where people are now present and now consuming more and finding ways of being relevant in that space or in those conversations. I think COVID, as harmful as it has been, it’s been a lesson to remind us that we should never get too comfortable in what has been successful historically. We need to keep reinventing ourselves and that’s the same for every brand and company that is active in the music business. We have many artists that were very successful and used to be out touring, doing concerts and paid on a regular basis. When that stopped, those artists had to pivot and reinvent how they have a presence and can continue to do performances. For example, we helped some artists by using our live performance bases at the offices that we have and enable the artists to do live stream performances because we acquired camera and recording equipment so that artists were able to come in and we could film them and package the performances for online streaming and paid online performances. So that ability to remain agile and to be able to adapt, is very important for brands being able to also adapt with your consumers. For example, newspaper readership would have probably declined during the COVID period. So if you could use to advertise in newspapers, you don’t just stop advertising because there is a decline, you pivot and find other places where you can advertise, just as much as our artists had to do in the absence of live performance venues. And it’s either it does help us have very honest conversations about how our sector needs to continue develop and innovate so that we can in the future survive future pandemics if they were to happen. What are the lessons that we need to take away from this past twelve months and indeed the following eight or ten months, whatever its going to be before we return to a fully normalised post-COVID world.

Last year in October, British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee announced that it would launch an inquiry into the economics of streaming. What is your take on the current British parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming?

It would be wrong for me to comment on something that I am not fully informed on, but there were some glaring things that came out from some of the things that I noticed. It seems like there is a fundamental misunderstanding as to the streaming world. Whilst some would criticize streaming, would like to look at it from a different perspective. Having had the fortune of being in the business whilst we were still selling cassettes, we got to MP3 and vinyl and moved into CDs. One of the major constraints for us in Africa and the exports of our music and products into other markets, was that there was a physical process that was required for people to consume music in other markets, but if you wanted people in the UK to listen to a CD from an artist in Kenya, you had to physically send a CD to somebody in the UK and even if you send one CD to one person, how do you get that music to the right channels for it to be consumed by more than that one person. Also, you had gatekeepers to the audience, radio was essentially how people discovered music and you relied on a format where in an hour a radio station chooses what to play based on being able to attract advertisers. Their initial approach was, ‘what songs are most popular that would therefore attract the largest audience so that I can attract the highest advertising revenue’? We understand that, it didn’t work for the African continent, it didn’t work for content from other markets outside of mainstream pop in the UK and the US. What streaming has enabled is that, when we release a song on a Friday afternoon in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, Uganda where ever it is, that song is available immediately. You don’t need to send a CD to somebody and hope that they tell people or that they announce it on radio or it gets played on a TV channel. So that’s number one, the barriers of our music being able to travel have been removed.

The second thing is, because of the streaming model where you pay a subscription but you have access to all the music, it means that discovery has been enabled hundredfold. If you look at the old model, you buy a CD and all you can listen to is the music on the CD that you have purchased. With streaming model, you pay one fee per month and you listen to all the music that is available on the platform. There is an example that somebody gave me, which I thought is an interesting way of trying to communicating that. If I come to you and I say, here is a bag of sweets and for every sweet that you like, I am making you pay. You would choose the sweets that you like. You might choose twisps, you might choose kit kat, you might choose a snickers bar based on what you like because I am making you pay for every sweet that you take. I think the example that I used was quality sweets where you had different brands of sweets within that bag. Now if I come to you and I say pay me one dollar and all the sweets are in this bag, you will now choose experimenting and tasting other sweets that you might not know because you are not being charged for every sweet that you eat. So now if there is a ball of sweets, you are not going to take the ones that you don’t know. You might try some that are from Japan and have seen but never tasted before, you might try sweets from Zimbabwe or from Nigeria because you are not being charged per sweet. I think it’s a bad example, but the point that I am trying to make is, you know, when people go on to whatever the streaming platform it is whether its Apple Music, Spotify or other localised platforms, I might go there with an intention of listening to a song by Tiwa Savage, but when I am on there and I see other songs that are recommended, that are similar to Tiwa Savage’s songs, I will start experimenting and listening to other songs and discover other music because I don’t have to pay extra for that other music that I am listening to.

I think part of what the UK parliamentary enquiry process overlooks is that, whilst there is an ongoing conversation about how to have a higher stream rates or higher royalty paid per stream, the flip side is that there are more artists whose music is being discovered, whose music is being streamed because they are part of the streaming service than before. So yes there are some artists that make a lot of money on streaming and there are some artists that don’t make as much money, but there is also a space where there are artists who were making no money before who are now able to make money and who are now seating in Malawi, but getting streamed in the US or they are seating in Cameroon and they are getting streamed in Brazil and Portugal. They are not even funding the course of being discovered in different markets and they can use their free tools like social media to market themselves, to have an impact on the streaming platforms. So you don’t have gatekeepers who are saying ‘no, no, no you can’t talk to people in Germany about your music or you can’t market without going through us’, you can market yourself wherever you want to market yourself. So I think for me that UK parliamentary process, maybe didn’t quite understand the full value chain of streaming and how it has opened up definitely for markets like us in Africa to be able to exist and participate and compete in other foreign markets. Again, the example of billboards in Times Square, we had billboards in Times Square in a space where you might see a billboard from Drake or a billboard from Chris Brown or from any of those international super stars. That facilitated because in New York you can stream Tekno, Nasty C, Sauti Soul and Diamond Platinumz. So being able to have streaming services like Spotify in that instance provide those billboards with artists in that market and its part of a relationship that we as record labels have with streaming services to be able to profile our artists in different markets.

You were the managing direct at SAMRO. What are the challenges of the copyright and royalties space in Africa?

I think technology is probably the biggest threat to collective management because there are different companies that are developing different systems that are now real time reporting and real time allocation of royalties for usage. If you take for example YouTube, YouTube has backend mechanism where someone can upload their music video and on a monthly-bases they are able to get report of how much ad revenue has been generated by that music video and that allocation of revenue that is sent by the streaming is done backend automatically without the involvement of these copyright organisations. So I think technology and the way that software has evolved and, you know if you look at businesses like Shazaam, when a song is played you, simply press Shazaam and you would know the artist, the song title and you have options of where you can get that. It means that in the background all that meta data, that relate to composers and performers allocating revenue to those performances, is being done instantaneously and I think some of these collective organisations are probably looking at how they mordenise their business model to keep up with what’s happening in that space to allow them to operate more in real time than having a delay in the collection and distribution of royalties. So it’s a challenging space and I think as digital disruption continues, a lot of companies will revisit what they have done historically and understand how they modify to keep up with the changes in consumption, revenue generation and distribution.

There has been a lot of criticism about royalty space and some CMOs. What needs to happen for artists to be happy?

It is a country-by-country conversation because different countries are at different levels of performance and operation, but definitely transparency is key. If artists feel like they don’t understand what’s happening with their money or their earnings, if they don’t understand the statements that they get – that explain what the royalty earnings are – there has to be a huge element of mistrust or a lack of trust with the CMOs. So I think transparent is key and regular communication to keep people updated as what’s happening is also important, especially in a time like COVID where distribution from these CMOs is crucial and information around: when distributions will happen? what is included in the distribution? And what people can expect to receive, I think that the more regular the communication is the more transparent. Also, collective management is a very complicated space and its important that CMOs are able to explain what they do in the manner that artists can understand and comprehend. There are lot layers of complicated activities that happen, you know, many collective societies interact with organisations globally and collect revenue from different markets and that revenue comes in and gets allocated, then it needs to be distributed. So it’s a complex process, but most people don’t understand what has to happen and that lack of understanding, lack of transparency – where that is the case – and the lack of regular communication, it spills this negative sentiment and lack of trust which is what needs to be worked on.