Olova: a good Sign for Zim Music in 2016?

Last year was quite the year. We labelled it as a quite uninteresting year in our view but we cannot overlook the strides that were made last year by a lot of artists. Sharky, Calvin, R Peels and T Gonz among some of the artists who had a reasonably good 2015. We didn’t post much, but then again spamming isn’t our thing but we did create a music blog riddim towards the end of the year.

Now as 2016 kicks off things seem to be going well. In the first two weeks we have already had a couple of hot drops: T-One, Tehn, Schingy and Boi Mac have given us a good start to 2016 with the hope that it will be a hot year. Obviously there are the annual wishes we want to come true: Junior Brown’s, Tehn and Marcques’ (can you sense our bitterness at not getting an invite to the Marcques|Mile listening session) albums may actually come out this year.

The real spark for us for 2016, though still brand new is the Olova Music app. This app first came through at the Shoko festival of 2014 and seem to bring hope of monetizing the local music industry. When it first came out we decided to take a back seat and watch. The idea itself is genius and the story is very close to philanthropy as the group responsible are not making any money off the thing. It is free for artists to sign up and most of the music on it is for free though we are pleased to see that some artists have put their music up for sale. We bought a couple of tracks to test it out. Quite easy, Ecocash and Telecash so you won’t need a MasterCard.

Olova Music released their second version of the application on the 31^st of December and we have to say, we were blown away by it. Especially giving a comparison with the first version. As PUSHzw we will definitely be watching to see this wonderful application grow on our music industry. The Olova Music App (Olova 2.0 BETA) is a breath of fresh air and visionary intelligence for the music industry. We are slightly embarrassed to not have posted about them when they started but really acknowledge the foresight of bloggers like McPotar and Sp3kktrumn who were on it when it came out.

Improved User Interface: One thing day one fans and haters of the Olova app will definitely agree on is that the first Olova was functional (that is polite talk for ugly). While the first Olova was good to have and to use it was not particularly nice to look at and that is something they changed this time around. The New Olova looks nice and clean and is their biggest sign of growth. That and the new look website.

Music Streaming: Unlike on the first Olova where we were forced to download songs without sampling them, with the 2.0 Beta that is a thing of the past. All the music on Olova can be streamed for free meaning that now we can listen before we decide what we want to download. Kudos to the Olova team for listening on this one because it was a sore point, But then again when the first Olova came out we didn’t have $1/250mb Econet bundles. The timing seems almost perfect.

Newsfeed: Yes, they put a newsfeed in the new Olova. So technically what this means is that us listeners can now comment on songs in the Olova library and these comments can be found on one newsfeed within the app. So even if I hadn’t heard about a song but the comments say it is good, I may be tempted to listen. This feature will be very good for artistes and I wonder if it will make us bloggers obsolete. I guess this is what they meant when they said Making music Social.

Charts: With the 2.0 Beta Olova have given us in – App charts based on the number of Plays, number of downloads as well as the number of ‘Likes’. If a lot of people are sampling it or downloading it there must be something about that song worth listening too right? Also our view is these charts could be our next big basis of measure for Local Artists; I mean the iTunes charts are a big deal so why can’t the Olova chart be the same. I’d love to count on our radio charts but every so often they really sound biased. Who better to trust with our charts than an unbiased (we hope) application?

Artiste Profiles: Oh it is as cool as it sounds. A simple long press on an artist and you reveal the view profile option. Now you can read about your artistes past accolades and maybe they have juicy info on beefs too. I hope this feature comes with similar music.

Improved STS: The STS (Scope The Scene) was the jewel of the first Olova. An event calendar for all that happens in our busy country especially with the rare Hip Hop events that you don’t want to miss in case you aren’t around for the next one. The STS is improved, the information more concise the view more pristine. The Olova team has been working hard no doubt.

BOOKS: Just when you thought better looking was all they could give us the Olova team have introduced an extension to their portfolio of available media. This will come as good news for local authors as Olova is giving them a chance to make their ebooks easily available and easy to purchase for consumers. This could become a really good move by Olova, other than mazwi we do not have too many other options for local authors.

Of course we still have our reservations like every other person but overal the Olova 2.0 Beta is so far the best thing out of our 18 day old year. We look forward to seeing what happens throughout the year. More partnerships like the one they have with Boi Mac who has boldly promoted both Olova and his new music. Something the first generation Olova artists did not do.  The purchasing process itself seems to be semi – automatic and took a whole of thirty minutes for our recharge codes to come but we were more worried about it not coming at all.

While Olova could be the future of Zimbabwean music, the artists will have a big part to play: since Olova’s inception in 2014 it has had about 30 artists on the application but we have personally never seen more than 5 of those post about where to get their music. Only Noble Stylz was most visual in his push of his Masofa Panze 2 and the Olova app. Dj Krimz and some other artists from Ikonik also pushed. I wonder if our artists expect their music to sell itself.

A new year and great moves as the year begins! So let’s Download the Olova Music App on the Playstore or the Olova Website and keep our fingers crossed that they give us the ios version sooner than later.

Remember to Push Ur Sound Hard