Malawi music sales plunge
Music sales have taken a hit with top seller OG Issah sales down to 8 000 tapes from 90 000.
Despite the Malawi music market being dominated by cassettes for many decades, tapes are slowly getting out of the picture. It all boils down to the proliferation of CDs, music on flash disks, DVDs.
Music sales in Malawi have for a long time been determined by the number of cassettes sold.
Musician McDonald Mlaka Maliro still holds the status of being the first local artist to sell over 131 000 copies in just four months. That was in the 90s when compact disks (CDs) were not commonly used in the country.
But today, new technological innovations have resulted in tapes being pushed out of the market and music dealers such as OG Issah quitting the music industry.
However, despite CDs taking over as the most commonly used source of music, many Malawians, especially those in rural areas, cannot access them.
In an interview, Afri-musice chief executive officer Hanif Osman said if authorities do not take serious action, the country’s music market will collapse.
“There is dirty piracy. Music sales have drastically fallen. I wonder if Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma) and Musicians Association of Malawi (MAM) are really doing their work,” he said.
He revealed that they sold only 8 000 tapes in September.
Osman also said they closed their main shop in Limbe due to poor business which has been a result of piracy.
He said they are now only distributiing music through Afri-Music office.
“We used to sell 80 000 to 90 000 tapes in a month. It is history now because people have more access to pirated music,” said Osman, adding that this is why he is not venturing into CDs distribution.
One of the country’s musicians who enjoyed good sales when takes were widely used Skeffa Chimoto said: “I can confess that I really feel the gap that has been created. I do not sale my music directly to the public, but my music sales in tapes have enormously dropped.”
He also said although CDs are dominating music sales, it will take time for them to beat the record set by tapes.
“Tapes are cheap. Everyone had access and they were selling fast. Many people have no gadgets where they can play CDs and they are expensive. This means our market size has reduced. Producing CDs is more expensive than tapes. We are selling few CDs which means our profits are not improving for the better,” said Chimoto.
MAM president the reverend Chimwemwe Mhango concurs with Chimoto.
“Artists can no longer sell many copies as they used to do. Sally Nyundo confessed to me that he wished to sell at least 10 000 CDs of his new album, but looking at the market, he now aims at only 2 000 copies to recover what he invested,” he said.
Mhango believes if the rural masses were still part of the equation minus piracy, music sales through CDs could be high and artists could have been making huge profits.
“Successful musicians used to sell over 100 000 cassettes. These figures were supposed to grow, but we are back to square one. We really need to do something; otherwise, the music market will die, especially when we also think about introducing small and cheap radios sets that support flash disks and memory cards,” he said.
