Mvesesani’s 2nd Quarter Done & Dusted
Apologies, this post is late but it is late with reason. The end of Q2 and start of Q3 was a busy one for us. From putting out fires with downloads not working for some customers because our unique links were timing out too quickly to trying to deal with a sudden influx of artists interested in getting their music into the Mvesesani Store whilst also making sure we got our second artist payout done on time, it’s been a busy few weeks.
So, what’s been going on? I’ll try and unpack that a little.
FYI: There’s a chance that you missed my take on Net Neutrality in Zambia; the post was pretty closely tied into what Mvesesani has been dealing with since Q2 so maybe read that too here.
Making a Stand With Our Currency
From when we launched Mvesesani, in fact even before we did; we kept on hearing questions about what currency we would use to list the prices of our product. In particular people wanted us to list two prices on our website. We always had the opinion that we, as a Zambian company, serving Zambian product to a primary target market of Zambians could only really price in Zambian Kwacha.
The questions still come in though and even now we have to service instances of people telling they haven’t bought from us because they can’t workout what the price is in currency X. Interestingly, these questions have come from Zambians living in the diaspora, not international customers with no immediately visible connection to Zambia. Hilariously in one case we had someone tell us they couldn’t work out the cost in US$ despite apparently having been in Zambia just three months prior.
Infer from this what you will but here’s how we look at it, if you visit a Nigerian website you’ll see prices in Naira.
If one visits a South African e-commerce site, one will see prices in Rands.
Kenyan websites? Shillings.
I could go on but I think you know where I’m going with this. It’s already a difficult task to get Zambians to buy music, never mind people in general, ZAMBIANS are really hard to convince to buy music. A lack of digital infrastructure around music & e-commerce has led to rampant piracy and toxic entitlement to music for free. To be honest, we think that if you actually want to buy music & support the artists that make it (particularly if you don’t know what the ZMW is), you can spare the seconds it will take for you to ask Google, Siri, Cortana or Bixby what the current ZMW to USD rate is.
E-commerce is still an industry in Zambia that is honestly younger than young. We’d argue in fact that it’s still gestating. It will be so until we have a competitive and fully inclusive set of solutions when it comes to online payments for Zambia. Meanwhile, those of us in this industry need to make decisions that reflect the future that we want to see. ZMW for the win.
More & More Music
We’ve finally made good on bringing a bunch of music from the past to the Mvesesani Store. It really has felt great to be able to allow people the opportunity for nostalgia. The music from the Sakala Brothers, the Mondo Music and Sling Beats eras will always be the music that defined a generation. It was a shame that a lot of that music had been unavailable up until now. Being part of making that Zambian music available to the Zambian public & the world on a Zambian platform means a great deal to us.
There’s more music coming! We promise! Obligatory “follow us on social media” plea here: we’re on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram you can keep up to date with what new music arrives in the Mvesesani Store there.
Print Ads! Mama We Made It!
Early in the Quarter, my co-founder Jeremy did a recorded interview for Fresh TV talking about Mvesesani. We haven’t seen it yet but we’re advised that it did in fact air. We’d be embedding some link to YouTube or something so that you could see it too, but we‘re waiting for the guys at Fresh TV to make a copy of the segment available to us first.
What we have done & are able to actually show you is manage to secure some print advertising for the first time!
The ads ran in the debut issues of both the Urban Xpress flyer magazine and the Comic Book & Literary Arts magazine. The total print run of the two having been in the region of 2500 so that’s great from our perspective; thanks so much to Mwila & Duncan for the hook up. (particularly Mwila who also happened to have been a model for one of the ads, we’re out here making you a celebrity mate! 📸)
While we’re on the subject of media; we’ve had a LOT of really amazing support from some of radio’s finest since we’ve launched. It really has been awesome to have people that are a key part of the music industry show us love and support through talking about us on radio, giving us time to talk about Mvesesani & even through messages & calls of encouragement. So thanks to all the radio stations that have been kind to us, but a special shout out to Luchi, Roxy, Mutale, Mbachi, Bugsy, Steve, Hope, Whytehed & TZ. Extra special thanks to Chishala for letting us hit Flava 3 days in a row, you sir, a King!
Metrics & Pretty Number Pictures
We started tracking a metric that we honestly had just neglected to bother tracking this quarter & that’s preview plays. Those numbers may make an appearance in a later report.
Otherwise, the following are presented without comment.
Until next time
Mvesesani is on social media, follow our story on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. Our corporate website is at about.mvesesani.com if you want to find out more about our company and you can support the work of Zambian musicians at mvesesani.com.
Thanks for reading!
