Unplugged Zimbabwe and Point Black Africa launch music incubator project

The Music Industry Incubator project is designed to empower musicians to ensure they understand intellectual property and copyright laws, streams of income, stage performance, image and branding, festival participation, and financial literacy. It consists of a series of online workshops, which are currently held on Twitter Spaces every Tuesday and Thursday evenings until September.

“The project was designed to address the issues that we come across regularly in our organisations,” the organisers said in a joint statement. “Upon completion, we would like The Music Industry Incubator to educate artists on the entertainment and arts industries in sub-Saharan Africa and provide artists with a comprehensive resource of free information that they can easily use to increase their earning potential.

“Provide solutions to artists who are suffering from a drastic loss of revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic and also provide artists with mentoring from industry professionals that will allow them to increase their network.”

The next stage of the project will see 20 artists selected to participate in one-on-one mentorship sessions with industry professionals. All artists will receive free access to resources and documents that will enhance their knowledge of how to increase their revenue. To date, the project has conducted workshops with industry players including Mzwandile Sibanda, Mutsai Musa, Carol Nkosi, Munya Chanetsa and artists RayDizz and Mr Kamera.

In addition, the project has a website which hosts a number of free downloadable resources with free resources including split sheets, notification of works templates, metadata tools and legal agreements.

Artists can visit the Music Industry Incubator official website to sign up for the programme.