If you are keen, which I believe you are, I am sure you’ve noticed that there are some Kenyan artists who always have a new song every week or every fortnight.
Lately, I’ve been wondering whether this strategy really works vis-à-vis what we, the fans, want i.e. would they prefer to listen to one song and get bored with it before their favourite artist releases a new one?
Or would do they want their favourite artists to churn out as many tracks as possible so that they can select what they want to listen to? Sometimes I really wonder.
Truth be told, the habit of releasing many jams in a short span of time was almost non-existent before the emergence of new-age artists.
A few years back, an artist would release a song and let it marinate for some months before they drop another one. In a way, this worked to their advantage as it allowed them to study the industry and plan their releases accordingly.
But times really have changed. These days a song is recorded, the video is shot and edited within two days or less. In simple terms, the whole process is hurried and this, in most cases, leads to poor output.
The emergence of Gengetone is to blame for this because it has made us compromise on quality. The truth is that we have gotten used to consuming mediocre content to a point that we don’t even care anymore but why?
I understand that there is a lot of competition among new-age artists for instance Boondocks Gang could be worried if Ethic has two new songs and they are yet to release any.
So what do they ordinarily do? They rush to studio and release two jams in a day without giving a hoot about quality, market trends and whatnot. Who is to blame when these songs don’t get traction? It’s entirely them.
If you ask me, the old way of doing this was better. As much as there’s so much demand for new music from new-age artists, rushing the whole process is just dangerous. Enough said.
