Video discussion: Digital distribution in Africa

In his opening remarks, Mdundo CEO Martin Nielsen noted an upside and downside for the digital distribution space. The upside, he said, was that there were many people working in digital distribution, which made the space quite competitive and resulted in a variety of options for artists. The downside, however, was that there was a long way to go, especially for the revenue earned on downloaded music.

Content is king

Building up on this line of thought, Waabeh founder Tim Rimbui said artists needed to understand what it is that people want to consume. “Packaging yourself as an artist goes a long way in helping artists monetising their content,” Rimbui said.

The panel noted that digital distribution had opened up a space for a variety of music genres that enabled access to music idioms that could not be accessed previously in the broadcast space. Likening the digital space to a kitchen, Nana Yeboah of MobileContent.com said that when people went to a market they wanted to buy the relevant items to satisfy their needs. The digital space, he said, was the same: if you do not provide content that people want, they will not listen to your music, even if it shared on the best digital platforms.

Wiseman Ngubo of CAPASSO said that while the digital distribution space had made music easily accessible to more people, artist were making less money. “The artist is always playing catch-up. As artist how then do you get value out of this business model?” he said.

Sharing further on this, Yeboah said African digital distribution was being neglected. With most artists banking on live performances as their main source of income, he wondered why so many were not capitalising on digital distribution.

“No one thinks about digital distribution,” he said. “Artist hardly think about what made them great in the formative years of their career, when they create a hit single. Their thoughts are always about how to score a better paying show to perform at, and do not build on the producing of great music that brought them the fame.” He also advised artists to work with people who understand the market.

How much money is in the digital distribution space?

While there were varying responses depending on the region and entity, Yeboah gave an example of the card music service in Ghana where acts such as Sarkodie generate an income of about $5 000 a month from the service. After the deductions, the artists keeps about 60% of this.

Stating that artists need to diversify their revenue streams, Ngubo said that in their second year of operation CAPASSO had generated about $4.2m with 39% of this revenue coming mainly from songwriters and composers.

Panellists:

Tim Rimbui – founder, Waabeh

Nana Yaw Obiri Yeboah – country manager Zambia, MobileContent.com

Wiseman Ngubo – business affairs manager, CAPASSO

Martin Nielsen – Mdundo CEO

Moderator: Jude Clark – digital strategist, Joose Digital

Watch the discussion in the video below: