Tanzanian Artists Exposed for Buying YouTube Views
By: Gerry Gerry Phanuel
Posted on Tuesday, July 6, 2021
Tanzanian artists are known to produce pleasant love songs, popularly known as Bongo Flava. The genre developed mainly as a derivative of American hip hop and traditional Tanzanian styles such as taarab.
This together with incorporated combination of reggae, R&B, and afro beats influemces, forms a unique style of music. Lyrics are usually in Swahili or English. The most popular artists in this genre are Diamond Platnumz, Rayvanny, Zuchu, Alikiba, and Harmonize.
Their popularity is credited to how much airplay they receive and, most importantly, YouTube views. YouTube is arguably the most important platform for content creators, and as such, artists really value the number of subscribers and views they have. It seems that the race for views has become so intense that some artists opt to buy them.
Nigerian singer Naira Marley has called out on Tanzanian artists as the most notorious when it comes to buying YouTube views. In a post he shared on his Instagram account, Naira called on his fellow artists to stop buying YouTube views. According to Naira Marley, the easiest way to identify fake views is to compare them to the likes.
‘’Stop buying YouTube views. we can tell by the likes. I’m not even talking about anybody from Nigeria o. I’m sure nobody in Nigeria will ever.’’
These comments prompted netizens to investigate the matter further, and indeed some of the artists were caught pants down. Looking into Harmonize, his latest hit Sandakalawe garnered over four million views in less than a week but had only twenty-nine thousand likes.
Alikiba’s latest release, Salute, which features Rudeboy, got over two million views in a week and has only seventy-seven thousand likes.
Similarly, Diamond Platnumz released Kamata, which got over three million views in less than a week but has only eighty-three thousand likes.
Considering the factor of views against likes, it seems like Tanzanian artists might be buying YouTube views. What is your take on the matter?
