10 Anti Piracy Ideas for the ZIM ARTIST

Whether you agree with them or not, here are some things I do in my career to avoid being affected by PIRACY that has eroded many careers of Zimbabwean artists. I once spent 7 days living on first street in Harare doing an ANTI PIRACY protest and that time on the street allowed me to reflect and develop a system that has helped me as a comedian today.

PERFORMING OUTSIDE ZIMBABWE
It is important to export yourself as much as possible, so your content is seen by as many people as possible which increases your market in the event your content leaks via Jack Sparrow or you go viral. This increases your outside bookings.

RELEASE SHORTER CLIPS OF PERFORMANCES TO PROMOTE SHOWS
Only release shorter versions of your work but loaded with commercial content to promote shows so that as content circulates at least it results in ticket sales or show attendance.

SELL ADVERTS TO SPONSORS ON YOUR CONTENT
Sell advertising space on your content. Nowadays your video or sound byte has an icon or COVER SLIDE, use that to earn additional Advertising revenue from potential partners. For example release a video or track from your page, collect stats and approach companies to advertise on the next video.

RE DEVELOP RELEASED MATERIAL FOR CORPORATE CAMPAIGNS
When you get a corporate that wants you to write a song for a campaign they want to do, don't write a new song, use an old one and redo the lyrics. Make sure you use and exploit what you have as opposed to developing prototypes for clients.

TV DEALS
Instead of just focussing on getting viral content try to get signed to TV deals instead. Get on famous shows with your material. There are many Jazz or music shows for musicians and in my case if I get on Comedy Central Africa​ shows instead, I get to enjoy the fruits of my content as well as get the reach I need. Even getting into an agreement with ZBC to package your content as a show on TV and sharing advertising revenue when it's broadcast or giving them broadcast rights to a live TV recording of a LIVE show.

SPEAK TO YOUR FANS
Always communicate with your fans about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Your fans will always respect the need to buy tickets or pay for your content if they know how important it is to your industry. For example my fans know about my #BUILDTHEDOME project which means if I release a DVD compilation to sell to raise money to build a comedy club more will respect the need to buy an authentic copy.

DON'T REPRODUCE WITH YOUR OWN MONEY
Do not ever use your own money to reproduce copies of your work. You would rather partner with a magazine to be bundled with their issue or attached to a promotion like ECONET (get a ECOCASH CARD and an Ammara Brown CD). Ecocash pays to duplicate the CD and ad an advert as well as sell their product using a recognised artist (yes its an idea that works, have done it before)

DO COLLABORATIONS
When you do collaborations with artists from countries with functioning economies, financing shows is easier and you can leverage your career by being on shows with your foreign friends. They finance the productions and you add value by being there for them, win win situation.

RELEASE CONTENT YEARS AFTER ITS RECORDED
Don't release content as you do live shows, have a standard delay time, mine is 18 months. Which gives me time to perform the hell out of my content and only release the old stuff when I feel I have new material I am touring.

DON'T GET YOUR FANS USED TO FREE STUFF
If you get into the habit of releasing material to your fans for free all the time in order to get famous then they will not ever learn to pay for anything when you are now well known. If I sell 64 inch TV's for $1 of course I will be popular, but popularity is only sustainable if there is money to keep it going.

Feel free to discuss and argue, its always good to talk, I am just advising you on what has been working for me and has kept me in an industry in Zimbabwe that has chewed up and spat out those that did the opposite of what I have shared.