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Virtual Verity
| Date: |
13 July 2008 07:00 |
| Producer: |
Peta Krost Maunder
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| Presenter: |
Bongani Bingwa
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Verity (Internet musician): "You've got to live before you die; you've got to smile before you cry. You can't fall unless you fly; you can't fail unless you try."
Verity was just another 20-year-old psychology student at UCT who thought she knew the path her life was going to take. It was during a moment of quiet contemplation on the beach 13 years ago that Verity sat down and wrote a song: something she had never done before.
Verity: "I didn't think it was a poem - I knew that it was a song. And literally, these songs just kept coming, and I realised that someone had to sing it, so I thought it better be me."
And so began a rollercoaster journey into a local industry that has little time for English-speaking singers. But Verity was to be a trail blazer for South African musicians, finding a way to market her music on the Internet, without a record label, an album, or air play.
Verity: "It took some time to try and find the confidence, or the courage to do this, because it wasn't something I'd been doing since I was three, singing into my hairbrush, thinking, This is what I want to do'. So I finished studying, I took some singing lessons..."
And at 26, she recorded her first demo and moved to the United States. Her career was climbing there, but she wanted to come home.
Verity: "Something in me just realised that this is where I needed to be. And through going and singing in communities that I normally wouldn't have access to, and meeting people and seeing how music can impact them, or that a song can wake up in someone, you know, the permission to dream, or to think maybe a little bigger than they were thinking before they heard that song."
Back home, Verity's enthusiasm was contagious.
Alistair King (Advertising creative director): "She would scrape together bands on weekends to play live, which is what she loved doing, and I was humbled by how much she wanted to make music."
Advertising executive Alistair King dabbles in the music industry. He initially paid for Spring Bok Nude Girls front man Arno Carsten to make his first solo album, when, despite his group's success, record companies were unwilling to take him on.
Bongani Bingwa (Carte Blanche presenter): "For a South African English-speaking girl, with a talent for music, how hard would it be to get your CD on the shelves? Well, this is what you'd be up against: Celine Dion, Alicia Keys, Maria Carey..."
Alistair: "There's not a lot of support for local artists in that genre. Record labels generally find it a lot easier to just take an album, straight from the US, slap it on the station: they can sell 100 000 copies without any effort whatsoever, because it's someone famous, and someone who's already a big brand."
South African niche-market music like Afrikaans, Afro-Pop and Kwaito has a captive audience, so their sales are huge. It's estimated that Bok van Blerk, with his controversial De la Rey' album, sold around 250 000 units, and Steve Hofmeyer sells that number on most of his albums. Kwaito star Mandoza's latest album sold more than 25 000 on the day it was launched, while Zola's album sold 180 000.
Peter Lacey (CEO: Musketeer Records): "It's a game of numbers, really."
Music producer Peter Lacey says the South African market for all English speaking music, local and international, is less than 500 000 people.
Peter: "We regard a successful record in this country for an English-speaking singer, as 5 000 units. That's paying the bills."
Alistair: "Once you have [got] an album, it's not even the beginning. You then have radio stations [who] you need to persuade to play the songs that you've made, and that's almost impossible these days. You then need retailers to stock the album, which is a further hurdle. So the odds are stacked greatly against artists starting out."
With no record label, no album, no airplay, a gift from Alistair brought music to Verity's ears.
Alistair: "And I was in no position to pay for a full album for her at the time, but I had the sense that if I could help her€¦ somehow give her a start€¦ that maybe she would make the rest happen."
Verity: "And that was an amazing vote of confidence for me, because it got me into studio to record two professional singles."
But with radio stations less than enthusiastic, it took some tough love from her sister Kay to set the stage for an innovation that would unleash Verity's career.
Kay (Verity's sister): "I said to her, It doesn't have to be like this. You've either got to get in or get out. But you cannot spend your life sitting on the outside of this system.' And I said to her, Let's just do a thinking exercise on this.' So you look at the pros, you look at the cons, you look at the facts. And from that point we came to this idea."
Verity: "The idea that I had was that I would sell the album via my website before I recorded it. So basically€¦ ask people to buy something that's not there yet, but help me raise the money in process."
Bongani: "Setting up a website is in fact the easy part. It's what you do afterwards that makes all the difference. The question is, How do you get as many people as often as possible to visit your website?'"
Fred Roed (Website developer): "It's very much a case of strategising: what is your message? How do you position yourself differently from the rest of the pack?"
Web marketing specialist, Fred Roed guided her online campaign.
Fred: "So we set up a website and a blog and then, you know, the third component - which is actually not web-related - is that she needed to go out and sing, and I suppose just throw the website address out as often as possible."
Verity: "Flyers, posters, letting people know about the website address, getting other bloggers to write about the website, make sure that other people have links, and then joining lots of different communities: making sure I was on My Space and FaceBook and other business communities so that everywhere€¦ everything was linking back to my website. And when I started, if you Googled Verity' I think I was on page 16, and within six weeks of starting to make sure that I was having links to my website, I was number three on page one."
And those who bought into her web journey had a very real role to play in producing her album.
Verity: "Their names were listed on my website with what limited edition number they had bought, and they got to vote for which songs I recorded, and really just join me on the journey because... you know, for most music lovers, we buy an album when it's in the stores and we have no idea the journey that the artist has been on to create it - and the tears and the joy and what goes on in that process."
Internet marketing guru, Arthur Goldstuck has been monitoring music trends for many years.
Arthur Goldstuck (Media analyst): "I'm very excited to see someone taking the initiative in that way: of using the Internet as a medium, not only to create the packaging of her album, but also to market it and to engage directly in almost a personal relationship with her fans."
For Verity, the key to finding joy in the project has been in helping others.
Verity: "It was one thing to say Ok, let's approach the music industry differently', but I thought If I'm going to ask people to support me, I don't think that should stop with me... I think it should be paid forward in some way, so that their good nature and their good intentions are having a wider impact'."
She set up the Live your Dreams' foundation that enables other artists to produce demos. But while helping others, Verity faced some tough months without sales.
Kay: "From the high point of all those initial responses and everyone rushing in, to nothing moving and nothing happening and then her feeling like she made a complete fool of herself. She put herself out there for the whole world to see and€¦ ja, desperate lows. And she's been up and down a lot, through the journey."
It took three years online, but finally it happened.
Verity: "Having sold 2 000 albums now in 25 countries, I've covered all my costs. So I'm releasing an album now that has no debt associated with it, and it's also contributed nearly R30 000 to charity."
Alistair: "Two thousand CDs before she's released it, is extraordinary. There aren't many artists in her genre, or even in the English speaking genre in South Africa, that can say they've sold 2000 CDs."
Peter Lacey who has now produced Verity's album says of the 17 local artists he has worked with, Only two others have sold more than 2 000'.
Peter: "She talks all the time about her journey - you know, this musical journey that she's gone through with her future owners. Well, my challenge to Verity is that she's only just starting her journey."
Bongani: "Is what Verity has done unique?"
Arthur: "Verity isn't unique in what she's done. She's certainly a first in South Africa, but what sets Verity apart is the extent to which she engages with her site - with her audience, and the extent to which she drives the process herself."
Bongani: "Is this the way to go in terms of marketing music?"
Arthur: "In South Africa CD sales have held up quite well because we don't have a download-environment, but artists that want to plug into the future that is beginning to arrive, are going to have to embrace the internet."
[Singing] Verity: "I don't want to be afraid any more!"
So what now for this song bird?
Verity: "I think next for me is to share this story with South Africa and with the world, because it was just an idea, it was an idea of How can I do something differently?' But the lesson for me is because I took action, because I put it out there, and asked people for support, I discovered how much is possible when you say, I can. I can do this - I can make this happen.' And it has not been a very easy journey necessarily, but it has been a very powerful journey."
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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