A lot of music releases from the Kingdom of Eswatini fly under the radar largely due to a lack of understanding of the Eswatini music market and a visible lack of a properly planned roll-out strategy for music releases.

Market research is a pivotal function of most successful record labels as it allows the labels to discover the target audience and get opinions and feedback from consumers about their interest in the product. An effective market research also helps to minimize the risks of investment and identifying potential threats and opportunities in doing business.

Ever wondered how record labels determined release dates for music? Or even how they can predict the amount of expected sales from a music release? These can only be predicted by experts in market research, which usually fall within the marketing department of major record labels and media houses.

Market research goes hand in hand with the marketing plan, otherwise popularly known as the ‘roll out’ plan in industry terms. In traditional media; these would include publicity runs on television, radio and newspapers. Nowadays there’s a plethora of platforms that have been availed by the global digitalisation of the media, these include podcasts, YouTube reaction videos plus sponsored social media posts amongst others. An effective marketing and roll out strategy is pivotal for the success of any music release, in Eswatini the most recent memory of a solid roll-out strategy was witnessed in 2021 during the release of Lyrikal Busta and Sean Cast’s collaborative EP Prayers of a Hustler.

In April of 2022, Eswatini received another music release from a groundbreaking artist popularly known as P.I.C who is signed to Upscale Live. However the release of P.I.C’s The Gap Year EP seems to have been flawed by an ineffective roll out plan, aside from appearing on the local newspaper, to date there’s been no visuals released in promotion of the project. There hasn’t been much talk about the project within the local music circles, how can such a classic be overlooked, it’s as if it wasn’t even released. When the project was released, it was available on major download and streaming platforms such as Spotify and Tidal, but it was not available on one of the leading streaming services in Eswatini; Soundcloud. Soundcloud and Audiomack are at the fore of streaming services in the country for one main reason, they are free.

As we have said before, in a country with soaring poverty and unemployment, it is only a few people that can afford to pay for streaming services such as Spotify. An efficient market research would have made the record label aware of this and they would have double checked every link to confirm availability of P.I.C’s EP in Eswatini. Granted music cannot be free as musicians and the labels have to make a profit from the business of publishing and releasing music but if few people are aware of the music then it also implies that there will be less chances of commercial exploitation of the music; resulting in little to no profit at all. The Gap Year EP finally made its debut on popular video streaming service YouTube a few weeks after its initial release without much fanfare.

We strive to improve every aspect of the Eswatini music industry, particularly the Hip-Hop genre. This article was aimed at highlighting the importance of market research and marketing in the music business. Marketing amplifies an artist’s hard work and talent to thousands, even millions of potential fans hence it is pivotal for the success of any music release.

Not every artists is going to have the backing of a record label, independent artists can also carry out their roll-outs independently by promoting the narrative of a song or artist, an organic growth of audience can be achieved. Dj Citie‘s latest music video for his single called Mvutjini recently reached close to 5000 streams within three days of release, these numbers were achieved organically because of the song’s narrative on Mvutjini, an area located in the outskirts of Mbabane.

The relatability of the song to Mvutjini residents or people familiar with the area was bound to keep viewers glues to their screens. This also brings to light another aspect of music that makes an artist’s music more relatable; subject matter. Lyrikal Busta and Sean Cast’s Bacede was most likely well received by the local Eswatini audience largely because the song’s lyrics and subject matter was quite relevant to the unrest in the country at the time of release.

The takeaways from this article on how to roll-out a music project include; conducting market research prior to releasing music, having a marketing plan, a pre-planned publicity run, and relatable subject matter / lyrics. Artists can also try to grow their audience through engaging with their potential audience on social media prior to releasing music.