In May this year, Statistics SA confirmed that South Africa had joined the long list of economies in recession and obviously this was a wake-up call to various entities in the local music sector, specifically major record labels, who consciously started to unveil stricter signing strategies. According to experts, this is making it even more difficult for new comers to break through and may soon become a serious threat to the growth of the music sector unless more initiatives are put in place.
This week MIO had the chance to speak with Arnold Mhlamvu who is the CEO of a youth-oriented indie-label called Dreamer Music. The interesting thing about Dreamer to an unsigned artist is perhaps the fact that it strives to promote up and coming musicians by scouting for new talent and initiating affordable recording platforms despite the current financial crisis. In this interview, Mhlamvu walks us through some of the operations he is involved in, as well as the initiatives his company has been implementing to promote ordinary South African up-and-coming artists.
What is Dreamer all about?
Arnold Mhlamvu: Dreamer is an independent music company originally established in 2005 and consists of 2 divisions, namely Dreamer Music Entertainment (for recorded music) and Dreamer Music Publishing (copyright administration).
Who runs it?
Arnold : Well I run the day to day operations of the company which basically entails copyright management, marketing and distribution of records, scouting of talent (A&R) and events co-ordination.
Which types of artists do you look for?
Arnold : I work mostly with urban (Kwaito, hip-hop, house....) artists, but I've just signed my first traditional maskandi group called Abafana Bothando as I'm trying to tap into that market as well.
What would you say are your basic requirements when signing an artist?
Arnold :Talent! On top of that I bring in market conditions because it doesn't make sense to sell music in a market where you can't reach your profit margins, so the genre has a role in decision making and lastly I gotta love it so I can sell it to the buying public.
How does the label help an up coming artist?
Arnold : With the current economic conditions, labels aren't really dishing out deals especially not money, so you got to strike some balance. We work with a lot of producers (mostly whom we publish) who own their own studios and we try to develop those studios to production houses so that these producers play a part in talent scouting and we would finally handle the marketing and distribution of the albums. Some artists come to us with just 3 demo songs and we feel they are not ready for a full album, so as part of us developing them, we place them with other composers for collaborations, for instance we have this young and talented producer from Durban called Kepza who now will be producing his first major artists. We are not in a hurry to release artists, we want to develop them first, until we feel they are ready, they will just have to work on their skill.
What measures are you putting in place to cushion yourself from the crisis, as a label?
Arnold : Forming certain strategic alliances is key at this point, especially with other industries that compliment the products/services we sell, for instance aligning your label with TV productions companies, game developers etc., because we gotta be honest, as much as we love music, it doesn't sell as much anymore so you really gotta have both a corporate and specific revenue stream strategy, not just numbers but how you gonna achieve it, sometimes you have to let go of that artist.
Let's talk about achievements so far.
Arnold : As a company helping establish raw hot material, we released Sosha end of last year and he is now Durban's most wanted composer/producer, we've branded him the way we wanted to, and it worked. We recently released Fundile Mdingi who's a hot jazz artist and Abafana Bothando (a maskandi group) and we've got Aboskhotheni (Kwaito group currently blazing the airwaves) as an August release. On the publishing side of things, we represent quite a number of catalogues and we also represent catalogues from Sweden, USA and Shanghai.
Future plans?
Arnold : Well, let's see. We got a couple of surprise releases for the year.
On the long term corporate side, I really want to build a music company that can help establish and make it easier for talented artists to explore what ever it is they want because we are dreamers. I'm definitely building a music company that will compete with the major record companies and hopefully take it internationally, so you decide who you want to be affiliated with,. Other than that we are currently focusing on marketing and distribution deals for both artists and labels, so if you think you have that hit record then please be in touch with me on, arnold@dreamergroup.co.za.
| City: | Durban |
| Company: | Abafana Bothando, Dreamer Music Publishing, Statistics SA |
| Country: | South Africa |
| Industry Term: | Maskandi Group, Products/services |
| Product: | Fundile Mdingi, Sosha |
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