You can watch the full Amapiano Spotify: Music That Moves campaign video, featuring artists including DBN Gogo and Kamo Mphela, here.
A rideshare driver in South Africa said, “it’s hard driving. We don’t get paid well. And we can’t organize. You can organize a thousand people in a WhatsApp group to go on strike. And maybe you can get three or four of those WhatsApp groups together.”
“Prices will surge for a week,” he said. “Customers get a little notification on their phone. Then I go to check two weeks later, and the whole thing’s still running as if nothing’s happened. And I need to pay my bills.”
There’s something similar in music in that we want to live in a world filled with music, so we must want creatives to be able to live comfortably off their work. Then the market doesn’t apportion value for music’s positive externalities to nearly the extent those externalities provide value if you add up all the smiles in the cafés where the live bands play. And that leaves a large class of musicians hobbyists or struggling.
