Malawi Music website in ‘downloads-gate’

Lately, a number of top musician in the country have been boasting of massive downloads of their singles from Malawi’s leading music downloading website, www.malawi-music.com. However, investigation shows that music downloads have lately been forged by the administrators of the website, giving selected musicians more downloads at some time.

A screen capture of the website taken on Saturday, October 18 showed Gwamba’s song “Mama” featuring Blaze topping the list with 13,216 downloads. Another screen capture on the same website taken on Saturday, October 25 showed Piksy’s single leading with 13,975 seconded by Excess’s “Ndimangovomera” with 10,021 downloads with Gwamba’s single that was on top on October 18 pushed to number 3 with 10,008 showing a deduction of 3,208 downloads. One would expect an increase in Gwamba’s single, but in this case, it is the other way round.

Yet another screen capture taken on Sunday, October 26, 2014 shows Gwamba’s single pushed down again to position four with 9,240 downloads showing a difference of 781 downloads from a screen capture of October 25, 2014.

Orderly, Gwamba’s single was released on October 9 and Excess’ Ndimangovomera was released on October 16 while Piksy’s single was released on October 20.

Going by the screen captures over the period, one can notice that the music downloads have been falsely modified to give them fake massive downloads at the expense of other equally good songs.

Efforts to reach Kenny Klips, one of the adminstrators at Malawi Music Website proved furtile as his phone could not be reached when tried several times.

However, one of the artists who spoke on anonymity that artists pay money in order to be promoted on the website and faking downloads is just part of it.

“Last time I wanted to submit my music to this website, I was charged K40 thousand as a commitment fee if I wanted my music to be on top. I couldn’t afford that much and my music was not uploaded on the release date. It’s very distubing how other artists enjoy music downloads on the website and I can’t say no to the issue of fake downloads. It simply doesn’t make any sense,” explained the artist.

Early this year, Skeffa Chimoto of “Chinamuluma Chakuda” fame had to take down his music from the website, saying his music was not for free and he never signed any agreement with Malawi Music Company.

“Music is my career and I expect to make money out of it. I was surprised when I heard that my music was being distributed for free on this website and I had to request them to take the singles down because we never had any music distribution contract signed between us,” said Skeffa Chimoto.

Malawi Music downloading website is also popular for its female voice signature that starts erotically at the beginning of every song uploaded on the site.