Find a 9 to 5 job: Oskido tips artistes

Langalakhe Mabena

South Africa-based legendary music producer and DJ Oskido, real name Oscar Mdlongwa, has encouraged artistes to seek proper employment, “a 9 to 5 job”, so that they can be able to sustain their careers when the wheels come off.

Oskido shared the sentiments on Podcast n Chill by Mac G and Sol Phenduka.

He said that the “9 to 5 job” will give, especially young artistes a chance to reflect on other things in life apart from music alone, as well as giving them an opportunity to invest in other fields to supplement their career.

“When I went into the music business, I looked at opportunities that would enable me to improve myself so that I would be able to pay my rent and all that stuff.

“I started off by buying vinyls which I dubbed into cassettes (pirating), and then I would go in the streets selling them to different music lovers. This is also the same model we used when we started Kalawa as we sold music from the back of our cars.

“This opened my mind as I was able to multi-task, be a DJ while doing other side hustles. Forward to date, I encourage artistes to not only wait for music, they MUST go and find JOBS.

“Most of the artistes that I sign, I tell them to go and find a 9 to 5 job because being in the music industry is hard. As artistes we are only busy on weekends (with gigs), most of these young cats when they get into the game, they make their music a lifestyle.

Oskido

“They release a record then wait for the promoter, if the promoter doesn’t come knocking, they get frustrated and that is why you hear stories of depression from the artistic circles, because apart from music, that person is nothing, they don’t have a life and they can’t fend for themselves,” said Oskido.

He said creatives must make hay while the sun still shines.

“Sometimes it happens that the artiste becomes big and attracts gigs every weekend, that is fine. But from Monday to Friday what are they doing? Anytime, the scenes may change, some artistes will come in and others will become unfashionable enough to attract promoters.

“No gigs means no money is coming your way. And this is the period where you hear “so and so” was cheated by this record label or they are falling on hard times because they did not diversify their income.

“When you grow up you don’t have to be a burden to anyone because you made good music for them,” said Oskido.

The main topic of the episode was Oskido articulating his recent business venture, Khwale music distribution platform.

Khwale is Oskido’s totem (Mdlongwa), and the platform is meant to empower artistes on how they can make money through music distribution.
l In our next edition B-Metro will highlight how artistes can use new technology and digitalisation to make money through their music and simplify how money is shared after music distribution.*

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