THE head of artiste and repertoire (A&R) at Sony ATV Music Publishing South Africa Munyaradzi Chanetsa has urged local musicians to embrace proper ways of monetising their work on the internet in order to realise full financial benefits. BY KENNEDY NYAVAYA In an interview with NewsDay Life & Style on the sidelines of a music empowerment workshop, hosted by Gateway Stream — a subsidiary of Rainbow Tourism Group (RTG) on Thursday, Chanetsa urged musicians to use strategies that monetised the demand for their work online. “In this digital age we are, you do not have to rely on the traditional ways of how it used to be with just television and radio, now you can work in the digital space (and) if radio does not want to play your music you can put it online properly through an aggregator so that you earn revenue,” he said. “Rather than just giving someone a song, why not upload it properly and share a link with them so they can stream it. You can still make it work for you, it is just about doing the right thing and doing it properly.” Chanetsa’s sentiments come at a time a number of local artistes have, for long, been struggling to make a living from their craft owing to a wide range of hitches among them lack of royalty payment from radio and television as well as piracy. This has seen a bulk of artistes circulating their own work through different social media platforms for free as a marketing strategy to gain fans and attract bookings for gigs. Several artistes across genres have been in a long-standing battle with the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (Zimura) for failing to pay royalties or parcelling out paltry amounts when they do, a situation that has left musicians dependent on revenue from live performances. “I am not sure why there is a problem with payment of royalties, but one can register with another CMO (collective management organisation), if you go to South Africa there is Capasso or Samro and you can register there and they can make sure that you get at least some of the royalties due to you, that is an option,” he said. Meanwhile, Gateway Stream unveiled the Music Web and Mobile Application — an interactive music platform built for musicians and users at the event. RTG’s Corporate communications and innovations manager Pride Khumbula said the Gateway Stream Music application would enable musicians to upload their music, set pricing, manage inventories and receive revenue for all purchases “through a revolutionary wallet function”. “The Gateway Stream Music App will give artistes access to consumers and ensure that they can earn revenue from their trade, reducing the risk of losing earnings through piracy, she said. “A unique feature of the application is the socialisation capability where artistes can interact with their fans and share content in the same way as they would on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp. The only difference being that they are able to do all this on the same platform in which their music is streamed.” Follow Kennedy on Twitter @ken_nyavaya