Lady Du Reacts To Reports That Some SA Artists Only Get 3% Earnings. Lady Du real name Dudu Ngwenya has been making headlines recently for her contribution in the Amapiano movement. The star is currently one of the most featured amapiano vocalist in Mzansi, and according to her fans, she kills every feature. Du is also an independed artists, and not signed to any record label as she is establishing her own ‘WAWA’ brand.
Lady Du took to social media to react to reports that some artists only received 3% of their earnings. The star seemed quite upset about the reports as she voiced her opinion on social media, she wrote: “People out here giving artists 3 percent saying it’s how the industry works, ninganya Kim 🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽 yeses 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮 yho I can’t believe this nonsense. I thank God for my independence 🙆🏽♂️🙆🏽♂️🙆🏽♂️🙆🏽♂️ mina people must try come for me with my music. Listen to the first line on catalia!!”
According to lawyer reports, producer royalties are a very important part of the music industry. And almost every music producer these days will ask for a percentage of your record royalties. This percentage of record sales is known as “points”. As a reminder, producer “points” on the record involve an entirely different revenue stream than if your producer is given songwriting credit. For more on the 2 different copyrights in the recording and the song itself. For example, think about 3% of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which sold 30 million copies in the US alone (30 million times $10 per record times 3% = $9 million). And most of those records sold for far more than $10.
While there has been cases of Atists being ripped off by their recording labels, while artists are still underground, they possibly cannot achieve most without recording labels which help them in booking gigs and introducing them to a wider audience.