Zimhost wins Best Innovation award
ZIMHOST Web designers, a 14-time award winning website design company, won the Best Innovation award at the Zimbabwe Business Awards held at a local hotel recently. This was in recognition of their brand new baby called OyOsMusic which is an online music store that allows uploading and selling of local music via Ecocash, Telecash, Pay now, MasterCard, Visa card, PayPal, 2checkout and many other payment gateways.
OyOsMusic recently partnered with Star FM after scooping the Ministry Of ICT/ POTRAZ Innovation Awards showcase held in Bulawayo a couple of months ago. This means Star FM will be focusing on advertising and promoting artistes’ new and existing releases while OyOsMusic handles the technicalities and royalties’ payment to artistes.
The initiative came as a way to try and reduce piracy and help local artistes make revenue through their local music as most artistes tend to sell on non-niche markets like iTunes, reverberation etc or rely on giving out CDs for free to gain visibility and publicity.
OyOsMusic, a proudly Zimbabwean product, focuses only on the Zimbabwean niche market meaning this is for Zimbabweans by Zimbabweans with Zimbabwean content only unlike iTunes.
Commenting soon after the awards, Zimhost marketing manager Thandeka Shumba said, “One unique thing about this product is transparency. Each artiste gets their own unique logins, allowing them to see how much they are making every second hence they see the streaming as it takes place, allowing them to know exactly what to expect at the end of the month in terms of 0royalties.”
Asked about the current membership sign on, Ms Thandeka added, “We are constantly signing up artists vigorously which include among others Sulumani Chimbetu, Pastor G, XQUE, Ngoni Kambarame, Taurai Mandebvu, Good Child etc just to mention a few. We recently signed ZARI (Zimbabwe Association of Recording Industries) which is a body that represents all recording studios in Zimbabwe thus all artists affiliated with them eg Jah Prayzah, Andy Muridzo, Energy Mtodi, Chimbetu etc.
The OyOs Music platform has the ability to turn around the whole music industry, allowing musicians an opportunity to make reasonable revenues from all their hard work. OyOs is the Revolution for online business within Zimbabwe. ◆ Zimhost Webdesigners, 1st flr, Angwa Hse, Cnr ANgwa/ G. Silundika, 0771 111 222, 04 796528, info@ site.co.zw, www.zimhost. com