The South African Music Industry is a saturated and uneasy market, if you ask the likes of Arthur Mafokate , Dino Bravo, Zola 7 and even Khaya Mthethwa, they all comment in the same line of words. The players in the industry are demanding and not so flexible as people would imagine.
Many musicians or artists gave up the big dream of finding a worthy record label for the entertainment talent search gurus who have provided alternatives for aspiring artists to compete and also gain some level of publicity, from the likes of X-factorSA, SA’s got talent to IdolsSA and now a new player in the ranks called theUltimateShot,SA.
The UltimateShot, South Africa apparently started this year and seems to have been welcomed fairly than others who tried entering this tightly competitive nich of the industry in 2006 and 2012 consecutively but failed woefully. The projects takes advantage of the internet as its outsourcing pool for auditioning talents and allows the public to vote anonymously. The project coordinator mentioned that the opportunity given to artist is not only in the form of wining the 10,000 price but learning how to create and manage a fan base in their career.
We also had a chance to check the website to see the standard and test the functionalities , so we met up with MaphorisaInitiatives, the company responsible for developing and managing the site for this project. We discussed how they conceptualised the brand, the orientation and the relationship with AltoMax knowing the reputation MaphorisaInitiatives holds in the marketing bracket in South Africa. We also believe the project might have benefited from choosing the right company, especially one that is know to engage in developmental projects as such. The project is managed by a record label called Altomax Recording and owned by Mr. Benjamin Ogojiaku, a british graduate from Nigeria.
The company is already active, as it signed up the local dance stars “Mathata Boys”, a group of feet light local dance celebrities in Soshanguve, the company that says it’s interest is in raw local talent was in Soshanguve on the 28th of November to host an event for the signed artists in Soshanguve. I was there to meet the owner and interviewed him to know what made him sign dancers into his recording label and his motive and plans for this talents and his record label :
We believe the project did well in its first season with over 65 videos uploaded for votes in the first round of the first season and close to 2,ooo votes that qualified Simone Govendor to become the first winner of the theultimateShot,SA. We have seen many projects of this nature and most do not usually go this far, we are hoping that the vision this company has for talents in South Africa is rooted in the desire to grow talents and not just another company that would play business with them.
