Can album sales be trusted?

Bruce Ndlovu
This year, Zimbabwean music heavyweights Jah Prayzah and Alick Macheso adopted new but similar strategies when distributing their new albums in light of the rampant plague of piracy that has bedevilled Zimbabwe since the turn of the millennium.

While Prayzah struck a partnership with Zimpapers to use its vendors as distribution points, Extra Basso used Nash Paints as his chosen network of distribution.

Both strategies were hailed as wise innovations by observers, with many hailing the artistes and their management teams as thinking up new ways to grapple with the debilitating influence of piracy on the Zimbabwean music industry.

However, despite being hailed for their innovation, the move by both artistes probably sounded the death knell on Zimbabwea��s hardly existent major music distributors.

Back in the heyday when such music retailers like Spinalong were in vogue, music lovers knew where they could get their latest dose of musical heaven from their favourite artistes.

With such a centralised system, fans knew that they could get the music of their favourite artistes all under one roof.

However, the advent of the 21st century has thrown all rules of music distribution out of the window and it now seems ita��s each man for himself.

This also raises the question of who keeps track of the album sales of artistes.

With no check or balances that would come with a centralised system which gives more accurate information of how much an artiste has sold, impressionable fans are now at the mercy of artistes who can claim to have sold any figure without verification.

For example, some questioned how Alick Macheso claimed to have sold over 100 000 copies of his album a day when he has been struggling to pull decent crowds to his shows before and after its release. But with no concrete information from which to confront the artistea��s management on his claim, fans had to swallow the numbers given to them without scrutiny.

This is not the same in other countries, however. When South African rap superstar Cassper Nyovest claimed that his debut album Tsholofelo had reached gold status in a matter of months after its release two years ago, his fierce rival AKA demanded to see evidence that he had achieved the feat of selling 20 000 copies as he claimed.

Nyovest had to come back with an official gold certification from Recording Industry of South Africa, which confirmed that his album had indeed gone gold. In the United States, Nielsen Soundscan, a sales and information tracking system that monitors all album sales from artistes, makes it easier for that countrya��s Recording Industry Association of America to make pronouncement on album sales.

City artiste Jeys Marabini who recently released his own album said that the figures released by artistes should always be taken with a pinch of salt, because some had a tendency to inflate their numbers so as to build up their own hype.

a�?Back in the day when the likes of Grammar were the sole manufacturers of CDs maybe we could get a more accurate picture. Now there is no way to verify how true these claims are so you go along with whatever the artistes say.

Needless to say this way of doing things leaves a lot to be desired,a�? he said.