Entertainment booking app Fezah yesterday announced a change in musician subscription terms. "Musicians in Uganda will now pay an annual subscription fee of UGX 350,000 to join the Fezah App," wrote Elijah Kitaka, the company CEO.
The platform has previously operated 3 subscription plans - Basic, Pro, and Exclusive. Fezah Basic was free to join, Fezah Pro was $100 per year with access to the Insights dashboard and more, while Fezah Exclusive is for "a very select set of artists".
In a Facebook chat, Elijah opened up on how research defined the changes.
"Through data, we’ve established that artists that have access to and use the data available on our dashboards perform better than those that don’t," he wrote.
"The main difference with this change," he adds, "is that everyone on the platform will now get access to the insights dashboard."
Who is the beneficiary?
The musicians. Elijah says that the change does not affect clients, nor stakeholders. "The change doesn't affect them at all. The change also doesn't affect DJs / MCs on the app. This is a change to 'Fezah for Musicians' subscription plans."
According to Elijah, the subscription is like a musician's commitment "to investing in their career" while receiving 'gigs' to work on and "timely market information" about their work.
The app works with 6 "great stages/events" on which there are dedicated slots placed for artists.
"Most importantly through our market intelligence suite, we have arguably the most useful dataset that a musician can get access to in our market today," he noted.
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Is the timing right?
Elijah asserts Fezah has invested enough in building the platform, and the time is ripe for a fixed subscription plan. "Over the last 3 years, we've taken a lot of steps to provide more value to artists on the platform."
He adds that they "now have 2 weekly radio shows that are focused on driving airplay for our musicians."
Fezah currently has over 200 artists on the platform, based on the previous subscription plans. Elijah confirmed that there are plans to go beyond Uganda and Kenya.
"We already started scouting for talent in Rwanda and we plan to launch there before the end of this year."