Alternative soul singer, Emmanuel Bezhiwa Idakula has stated why it is always difficult to get sponsors for his genre of music.
Bez who made the disclosure in an interview with The Nation, said major brands make the mistake of assuming the genre is not a crowd-puller because it is slow.
He, was reacting to a question which bordered on why fellow alternative singer, Asa did not get sponsors for her last concert.
“What people and brands get wrong is that they listen to your music and then they think about how you perform it, and the number of people that you can pull. If they feel that the music is boring or slow or it’s just for you to chill, they might not put their money in it because they feel they want people to party,” he said.
Explaining further, he said : “For them it’s a game of numbers. They want the artiste who brings more crowds. But for somebody like Asa, she’s a huge artiste. She sold out the hall and many other artistes have performed there and they didn’t even sell out the hall, even with sponsorship.
“The brands need to understand that it is about your market. You won’t tell me that twenty thousand people don’t want to watch me perform, it’s impossible.
My whole social media followers are over five hundred thousand. At least even if you say ten percent of them, which is fifty thousand, will attend my show.
The question is how do we get them to know that I am performing, how do we make sure they can get the ticket in a way that they can afford it? Sponsors need to understand that a lot of marketing goes into this.”
The singer also revealed that he plans on holding his sophomore concert this year.
