Ben Kandukira well known as Big Ben has gone all out with his new initiative in catering to his fan base by releasing a USB, which has seven previous albums, music videos, a full live concert and photo gallery.
The singer, songwriter told Entertainment Now! that many people do not have CD players in their cars or houses anymore and need USB flash drives/memory sticks to play their music wherever they are. ‘’In turn, they copy and share amongst each other. You see, we will keep losing to this digital problem but there are a few that still feel that they need and must pay for local music. I am thinking about those people. In fact, the idea was given to me by a fan a few years ago and I have since been planning to do it but just never fully committed,’’ he explained.
The performing artist feels that Covid-19 has led people to improvise and come up with new ideas but we should not give all credit to Covid-19. Sometimes artists just have things to do and only get to it when they have less shows and other engagements.
In terms of pricing, the USB will cost you N$350.00 something Ben feels it is reasonable given the fact the stick gives you 16 GB of space, which you can use for other purposes also. ‘’We had our first batch from the manufacturers and we ran out of stock within 48 hours. We actually underestimated the demand and clearly underpriced it. However, we are not oblivious to the fact that Namibians must hold to the little they have left after some heavy lockdown related loses. We will be careful not to over price ourselves out of sales,’’ he narrated.
Another local musician ML recently released her album on a USB, which might be the new format to encourage fans to support the arts industry. ‘’I have not searched enough but I assumed that this might have been done elsewhere and it probably did not work due to the costs and lack of technology to stop people from copying. The same problem exists until now but in mitigation, it makes sense at a small scale when weighted against the unstoppable peer-to-peer sharing culture. Fans themselves request for this since I have in any case never really done a good job with distribution,’’ he ended.
Big Ben is currently working on new material, which will be out as soon as the country fully opens up.
– slunyangwe@nepc.com.na