Are Malawi Musicians selling digitally?

The biggest challenge facing Malawi music at the moment is selling their music. 

The catchword to describe their disappointment is 'piracy'. Making this challenge worse is the fact that there is no powerful music outlet in this country that can enter any forms of contracts with musicians.

Over the years musicians in Malawi decided to abandon the conventional ways of selling music by adopting the online market not necessarily by design but because they have no choice. We have such platforms like Malawi Music, iTunes, YouTube, Sound, Cloud, Audiomack, Spiritunez, Spotify, Amazon and Tidal among others where local musicians claim are their market spots.

While most of these websites claim to be legal platforms that offer digital sales of music to a global audience through credit cards using Google's wallet, others really do not have the straight forward way of doing business.

We also have other such online markets like Maluso Music, which says its primary mode of payment is through mobile money which is common in Africa compared to other continents.

The feeling is that many Malawians do not have access to other sites, users will have to use their international credit cards like Visa, American Card and Master Card amongst others which are used for the purchase of music.

In this case at one time Malawi Music was only selling in UK, USA and Germany thereby denying Malawians to buy online.

There has however been other arrangements where local music consumers can now locally access the music through TNM Mpamba, Airtel Money, National Bank of Malawi mobile phone transaction, PayPal and PayGo.

Not many Malawians can still be able to buy music through these means. When Malawians were buying music through OG Issah then, the means was buying from the counter using hard cash. This is the time we saw that our local musicians were able to be transformed through their sweats.

Now, while there is this problem to contend with, my huge and biggest concern is with the musicians who are supposed to be the sellers of these music products.

Like I said there benefits accrued during this time were obvious, this time round apart from reading in news outlets that so and so has had the biggest hits in downloads, such reports fall short to explain how this in translated into actual benefits for the musicians.

It is sad that in these days of many likes and following on social media platforms you find that our musicians will feel contented with these. There is however no wealth associated with their efforts.

I am waiting for the day that I will be able to see progress in careers of the local musicians based on what their products is bringing forth through online sales. It is useless to have musicians toil their whole lives without having to have more valuable following than Facebook likes.

As is the case elsewhere, we still need an orthodox music marketing system which should be complemented by the digital markets. We cannot continue with this laissez faire approach which can and will not right things.

Music is an evergreen product which knows no season to attract its consumers, however for Malawi it is the non-existent of the selling and marketing system which will continue to hurt its makers.