South African Music Industry - Just a Heads Up

So, because we are going to be writing a lot about South African musicians and bands, we thought we would give you a very brief description of how we view the South African music industry. Hopefully this will help you understand where we’re coming from.

The South African music scene is pretty good and growing. In fact, it’s one of the fastest growing music markets in the world. We have great independent labels such as Gallo Music Group, Unreleased Records and Just Music. There are lots of places for people to get their stuff recorded and distributed. Which is pretty awesome. 

We also have tons and tons potential. South Africa is crawling with talented musicians just waiting for a break. But they don’t have the right audience or infrastructure for them to get what they need. Most of South Africans live in poverty and can’t support local music- whether it’s because they have no money or no interest, and many other South Africans just don’t seem to give a crap about the local music. There also seems to be a trend here that when one band makes it in the big wide world, other bands feel the need to copy exactly the same music these bigger bands make. So, original, new music is hardly made. 

Another downside to our industry is that there are less and less venues for musicians to perform in. Live performances and live music, as we all know, are big factors in the music industry and without it record sales (or downloads) will plummet. Take Durban as an example. Many venues there are opening and closing like a hooker’s legs. They struggle to keep a good live music vibe going. Or to just keep their doings legal. People over there just don’t seem to care anymore and this can easily happen to other cities across South Africa.

Thankfully we have awesome people like Darrly Torr - a Grammy Award winning sound engineer who owns a recording studio called Openroom Productions - pushing things forwards for the industry. We also have things like MK which is a South African music channel which showcases South Africa’s best artists through things like Studio 1 and various music festivals.

Although our music industry still has many downsides, we are growing. And that is something we can all take pride in. All we need is some musical education and originality… among other things.