Mohalenyane Phakela
LOCAL technology company Astratech has launched a website to enable local artistes to share their music online while a mobile application for the same purpose is set to be released on 17 October this year.
Using the address, www.cubic.pe.hu, Cubic enables artists to share their rich user profiles — images, impressums and descriptions — and their music using the embedded music player or any website including social networks. It will also allow musicians to access statistics for the number of plays, downloads and comments on their music.
According to the project manager Lipholo Pheko, the website was born out of the realisation that hard copy music sales were dying and it was becoming more difficult to reach international market.
“The idea came about as a result of our discovery that the number of artistes is increasing but it is difficult to get their music distributed and accessible to existing and potential fans. It is very sad to see local artistes struggling to sell a few albums to the point of offering them on credit,” Pheko said.
“The website is intended to be a platform for artistes to upload their music and for fans to have access to it,” he said, adding that the website was a free and most convenient way for artistes to market themselves while it was also user friendly to customers.
“For artistes to have their music on this website, they just need to register an account and start uploading as the website is free. From their accounts, artistes can also add their biography and other information. They also have an option to add links to their Facebook, Gmail accounts and websites.
“Any one is free to upload their music; the only thing that is restricted is uploading of music of an artiste without their permission, hence the inclusion of a built-in reporting system for songs and users that have violated copyright rules,” he said.
He said artistes could also post on their profiles, news on events they had lined up and their followers would view such posts.
“The website also provides statistics on plays, downloads, likes, comments, most played, countries where their music is most played, cities where their music is most played and when was the song most downloaded or played.
“This information appears on the profile of an artiste and the idea is to make it easy for a fan to get in touch with an artiste. The mobile application will be available for download on 17 October.”
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He said after fully establishing locally, they aimed to expand and conquer the international market.
