International film director and content-creator Reggie Zaire says artists should reinvent themselves and find alternative ways of putting their music out there because videos are not as lucrative as they were 10 years ago.
As he was engaging with Bertha Tobias on a podcast called The Spotlight recently, the creative said music videos are dead because people’s habits had changed.
“Stop making music videos. The only way to break out a new artist is via social media, and you can’t shoot a whole music video on social media. You can’t do that and that’s where your TikToks and your reels come out. You see artists blowing up without labels now because of that,” he stated passionately.
Zaire, sonorously known as Reggie in the industry is the creative behind videos of artists like Sally Boss Madam’s Natural, KP Illest’s Okay Okay, having projects with Gazza and King Tee Dee and has worked with international artists like B-Red.
“When was the last time you’ve really turned on to watch a specific song and waited for your favourite song to play on a music station? When was the last time you did that? People just don’t do that anymore,” he said.
Zaire gave an example of Lungelihle Zwane (24), popularly known as Uncle Waffles, a Swazi-born DJ and record producer based in South Africa.
“I will say she’s the biggest female DJ right now in South Africa. What did she do for her latest project? She put all her songs on her album. All her songs made it into one music video, five minutes long. And that’s what she put out,” he said.
The architect added that Uncle Waffles was intentional with her move when she made one music video for the entire album.
“All the songs are mixed throughout. And people are starting to understand. It’s the same way where artists are to make visualisers instead of music videos,” he noted.
Zaire said artists are now also tapping into visualisers, and testing whether scenes of footage from a specific production will blow up before shooting a music video, a move he says is affordable, and guides an artist on how to proceed with making visuals.