Carl Ncube

Last Updated on Sunday, 23 May 2010 02:03 Sunday, 24 January 2010 09:52

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Miss Tourism Zimbabwe, NAMA and ZIMA director Carl Joshua Ncube has committed a week living in the streets of Harare in an anti-music piracy campaign. His message is simple "Piracy kills the artist, kills the music and kills the industry". Carl Ncube revealed that his actions are aimed at fighting against piracy in the music industry and he taking residence in the streets is a move that will allow him to make people aware of the ills of music piracy.

During his 7 day stay in Harare's CBD, he is working to educate the masses on this demon that has plagued the local music industry. With his is his laptop which he is using to update his facebook profile on his experiences living on the streets and a petition that people in support will sign as commitment to fighting against piracy.

Music piracy can be defined as the stealing of music. One scenario could be borrowing a friend's CD and burning a copy for you. A positive consequence for stealing music is that you get free music for your own enjoyment and you can also profit from your piracy. However, more often than not, piracy will result in negative consequences.

Caught pirates are sued and occasionally served with jail terms. The local music industry is threatened by mass pirates who are making an illegal living off the work of artists who labour day and night to produce music that at the end of the day does not feed them. Artists invest so much money but the return is next to nothing because of music pirates. But who is to blame, is it the musician, record label or the illegal music dealer on the street? It can be said the artist and the record label together are at fault. An artist records an album and the release and marketing is not up to standard. Zimbabwean record labels (Gramma, Metro and ZMC) do not make the music readily available on the market thus the next best thing is piracy.

The cost of the final product in stores is unrealistically high that people who sell copies will make a killing because he or she is selling at a reduced price. Walk into any record store in Zimbabwe today and you rarely find the new EX Q, Stunna, Mafriq, Mahendere Brothers, Sulumani Chimbetu, why? Because record labels do not supply stores with albums in time. You hear the new single on radio but the same single is not available in stores so the man on the corner will get his Stunna single copy it and sell it to a hungry public.

Award show's like ZIMA as much as they promote local artists, they also fuel piracy. How one might ask? For starters the criteria used to come up with winners is not really known, is it based on album sales, by popularity basis or because of radio rotation? How do they come up with best sungura, best urban groove artist or even best new comer? Sales should determine all these categories. If nominations were mainly based on album sales then the sale of albums will be made important and advocated for the most. Record labels would make sure that they promote an album such that it sells because at the end of the day the label suffers because they make their money from the sales.

The selling price should at this point be reasonable because if it's too high as they are the man on the street will sale it at much lower price and make a killing for himself as he kills the industry. Carl Joshua Ncube should however be commended for the fight he has embarked on, but for the fight to be won change should start from above. Music labels should revise their operations to be industry friendly, artists, radio stations and the arts council should join in also and change how they operate so that piracy can be dealt with effectively. Yes artists recorded an album to fight piracy and even marched but has it helped? I don't think so. For starters that album or single artists recorded is not readily available on the market and there hasn't been any other campaign to support the march. Until artists start taking themselves seriously and professionally, piracy will still plague the industry.

Props to Carl for the stand he has taken, hopefully the industry can join him in this fight against piracy.