By Pride Sakupwanya
The battle against piracy in the country has been raging for a while, news articles have been written, songs of awareness and campaigns.
Not so many years back wars in the CBD between law enforcers and vendors selling pirated compact disks would go on without achieving much.
Technological advancements brought streaming services such as Spotify, YouTube, Deezer, iTunes and these services help to purchase and stream music and it has been beneficial in the Western world.
Consumers argue that it is expensive to buy and stream due to socio economic difficulties facing the country and relatively expensive data is arguably a barrier.
Why buy and stream?
In an interview with a Mufaro Chifamba Record producer and a music fan said it is a civic duty to buy music in support of artists
“I buy and digitally stream because it’s my civic duty to support the artists in question, a lot of money goes into the creation of music and the revenue that comes from music goes into supporting the artist and investing into more projects”
In his view he is of a thought that a number of Zimbabweans are now embracing new digital media though it is still a work in progress
“I think they are slow. There are still hurdles but surely they will”
He also said most music is there online but some artist are still to learn how it works in terms of distribution
“Yes, most of it is. A few, most artists are not well versed in how distribution works and they don’t have teams to handle that,” he said.
Most artists have adopted selling of music directly to the public model through whatsapp utilizing ecocash as form payment.
