A NYCE WAY TO MAKE MONEY

Two entrepreneurs have designed a new way for performers to be paid

The two men behind an innovative shift in the business of making and selling music in SA have gained recognition for many things in the local music sector, but a love for attention is not one of them.

Between them, Kingsley Khumalo of Nyce Entertainment and Lindsey Arends of AMG World Media do business with some of SA’S biggest established and rising recording artists. These include rappers JR, Cassper Nyovest, Emtee and Gigi Lamayne, crooners Sands (of “Tigi Tigi” fame) and Afrotraction.

But the dislike that Khumalo and Arends have of the limelight has allowed them to orchestrate a change in the music industry’s models without attracting the attention that is often the lifeblood of the artists they work with.

The duo, who have a 16-year working and personal relationship, developed a model to put control of music careers in the hands of the artists. Khumalo takes pride in paying artists the proceeds from their album sales, and paying them on time, in the same way some conventional record bosses might enjoy buying champagne or jewellery. He has an artists & repertoire (A&R) executive’s knowledge of all his artists’ sales, though he is neither a major record label executive nor an A&R one in the traditional sense.

His and Arends’s sales of records are clocked with recording industry body Risa. This includes sales through traditional record stores, through an informal network of shops geographically close to their target audiences and as a part of concert ticket prices.

This distribution model is beneficial in two ways. First,