Saturday, May 23, 2009

Music education

SAMRO has approached MBAC partner Jon Shaw to set in place a new course to help educate SAMRO members about the music business. As Gilli Moon says, artists must wear two hats (especially indie ones): musician, and business person.

Education is the cry of the hour.

For more please check out www.mbac.co.za.

Friday, May 8, 2009

South Africa has 2 new Idols so now it's twice as irritating...

Due to a technical glitch, the latest winner of Idols SA, Sasha-Lee Davids, was actually beaten by around 200,000 votes in last Sunday's competition by Jason Hartman.

In a media interview, when asked how she felt, Sasha-Lee explained that what she wanted was the recording contract (M-Net has decided to declare both joint winners and double the prize money, while both will also get contracts from Sony BMG). Davids went on to say that it was the contract that she was after. Sadly, spoken like a true amateur... The South African media wasteland is literally strewn with the corpses of past Idols finalists who really have not had very successful careers, when compared with their American counterparts.

In the Idols vein, a recent article in the Saturday Star explains that real success actually means looking beyond the recording contract to the future by having the business savvy to see Idols as a means to an end, not the end in itself. Despite the hype, Idols is not a one-way ticket to Superstardom Nirvana, with untold riches, millions of adoring fans, massive CD sales and endless A-list gigs - it's merely a starting point and an opportunity.

For anyone who wants to really achieve sustainable success in the music industry, that's an important lesson to learn...