The music industry in Zambia has been brought to an era where artist work so hard and not only to make hits but to make money. Much as the...
The music industry in Zambia has been brought to an era where artist work so hard and not only to make hits but to make money. Much as the industry is worth a lot of money the battle is to the artists themselves to make money in shows and to remain in the showbiz. For the upcoming artists unfortunately, it's more challenging to hit the breakthrough even if they can have hit songs. The problem our entertainment segment has observed is the upcoming artist and dj relationship that is not good. We have big stars like Mk Macky 2 who sung about the same in his "ati how 2010" song in which he complained about a lot of challenges he was facing as an upcoming artist and in the "nangu banchinge" song with exile he spoke of the challenges and how hard it is for a radio dj to even listen to an upcoming artist and to even take a look at the promo cd of an artist. In Ng'ombe compound where the Ghetto Link who rocked the nation came from there is so much talent and in Matero where Slap Dee came from there is much talent even country wide but a lot of people in Zambia do not get to the breakthrough stage not that they couldn't get there but there are numerous factors that are so unfriendly to the artists themselves for example the issue of lack mentorship, lack of musical reality shows, lack of sponsorship and unfriendly behaviour of dj's and the musicians who are already there. In Nigeria it's not that hard to get into the game but its that hard to remain there because of stiff competition and fact that their focus is not just to create great music but great music in their pidgin English targeting Africa, America and the rest of the world. The problem that a lot of upcoming artist complains of is lack of commercialising the industry by viewing it as a great contributer to our nations GDP and the issue of going back to the basics where CD sales would be encouraged and promoted. Now that the world is gone digital setting up of online musical stores for the music sales will give equal chance to the upcoming artists as well as to the already big stars. But since the coming of Komboni radio that has seen the musicians as dj's there is a slight improvement and most of the upcoming artists have come to the scene through Komboni radio which is a good sign yet more of such platforms are needed in a country that would prefer pay Slap Dee the king K10,000 at the show where an from outside the country would get above a 100K at the same function.
Smooth Talk on ZNBC TV1 has given great support for close to two decades of telecast on the public broadcaster and has embraced a lot of young talent thanks to Smooth IK who gives a platform to everyone except that the upcoming artists lose direction due to lack of mentorship and for most lack of Secondary education as most upcoming artist dropped our of school at grade 7 or 9 not that some of these have no genuine reason for dropping out but that most would simply disregard education for music when in reality it's talent plus knowledge which brings about great achievements.
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