Malawian firm establishes digital music store

As Malawian artists continue seeking better ways to sell their music, with an unregulatedlocal market flooded with pirates, a resident company, Sky Payments, has introduced an online music revenue-generating platform called My CD Bag.

With several sources already offering local music downloads and streaming, predominantly for free, mycdbag.comallows artists to have their content up on the site for a penny.

“The SkyPayments team consists of musicians and music enthusiasts, especially African music, and we all feel the grievance when we see how hard it is for our friends and fellow artists to sell and promote music.

“Most are young and needed a platform like iTunes where their music can be heard internationally and promoted for free online with the aim of getting more fans and actually making money,” says the firm’s marketing manager Celina Nayagam, a musician herself.

According to Nayagam, best known as 3C in the music circles, the pan-Africanmusic websiteaims todistribute music to the world without restriction of location.

“The platform has no restrictions to nationalities, however, our main initial focus are African Artists all-over the world.”

She observes that most popular music streaming platforms are made for the western world and have so many restrictions that in the end prevent most African countries to join even if the means to subscribe are there.

“We are trying to open the African music industry to the world from a smaller perspective which understands the actual problems faced from the bottom,” she adds the Sky Payments marketing executive.

While the first version was started seven years ago, the platform was very slow and did not do much. It has however been refined, with emphasis on simplicity and content exposure.

My CD Bag provides two ways in which artists can earn the returns generated from their content, singles or albums.

“Money is delivered to the artists via SkyPayments Accounts, PayPal or Mobile Money,” discloses Nayagam. “The artist can request for daily or weekly statements to keep track of their revenue at their own discretion.”

To get music on My CD Bag artists are required to sign up. There are no restrictions on which artistcan upload content on the platform, according to the developers, who have only set terms and conditions to be followed.

For users, who are the fans, there are many ways to pay for subscription, just like any other online site. Nayagam reveals the first month is free, after which, the user will be asked to pay the subscription fee to continue using the platform. Supported payment gateway as of now is PesaPal with the soon additions of PayPal, SkyPayments and local mobile banking.

The firm says there are many features ready to be introduced and some that are still underway testing.

“We want to bring an experience better than any music streaming site through our mobile apps. We will be launching on Android first and other platforms later. Inclusive, family streaming plans will be coming soon as well as offline streaming to save on data bundles,” says Nayagam.

Visit www.mycdbag.com to learn more about the platform.

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