In Part 1, I wrote about how Nigeria's Yahoo Boys funded Afrobeats without demanding creative control, while Zimbabwe's mbingas wanted their names in every song. But there is another layer to this story. Even when Zimbabweans try to build actual music infrastructure, the structures collapse.
This is Part 2 of my series on who funds Zimbabwean music. Today I am telling you why our labels keep failing, including my own.
Military Touch Movement: The Dream That Died
When Jah Prayzah launched Military Touch Movement in 2017, it looked like the future. Here was Zimbabwe's biggest artist creating a proper label structure. Andy Muridzo, Ex-Q, Tahle Wedzinza, Nutty O. Producers like DJ Tamuka. Real infrastructure.
By June 2020, it was dead.
What happened? The same pattern that kills every Zimbabwean music venture. Artists complained about unfavorable revenue splits. Copyright disputes surfaced. Andy Muridzo and Tahle Wedzinza left after rumours about the label's business practices spread through the industry.
Jah Prayzah himself admitted the criticism had become unbearable. "I have become really sceptical about recruiting new artists under MTM as this in many occurrences has tainted my brand," he said when announcing the closure.
By the time he made that announcement, Nutty O had already deserted. Jah Prayzah was announcing the death of something that had already been dead for months.
The pattern: No clear contracts. No transparent accounting. Artists feeling exploited. The founder's reputation taking damage. Collapse.
Chillspot Records: Success That Became Scandal
Chillspot started beautiful. Three friends from Mbare, DJ Fantan, DJ Levels, and DJ Ribhe, turning a room in Matapi flats into a recording studio. By 2013, they had built something real. The riddim system worked. Artists got exposure. Zimdancehall had a centre.
But success without structure becomes exploitation.
When Enzo Ishall blew up, reports emerged that his earnings were being split four ways. Not between him and three collaborators. Between him and three executives. The man making the music that was making the money was getting a quarter of it.
DJ Levels defended this publicly. "Anyone is free to start a record label they feel will handle the artists better," he said. That is not a defence. That is an admission that the model was extractive.
Then came the scandals. DJ Fantan's domestic violence charges. The COVID violation arrests that put the whole crew in jail for six months. And in November 2024, DJ Ribhe facing rape allegations involving a minor.
Chillspot did not fail in the traditional sense. It succeeded in building a machine. But the machine was built to benefit the machine operators, not the artists. And when the operators themselves became liabilities, there was nothing left.
Teemak Promotions: My Own Failure
Now let me tell you about my own failure. Because I cannot write about collapsed music ventures without including mine.
Teemak Promotions was supposed to be different. I had worked with artists. I understood the problems. I had capital backing from Max Harvest, later Max Capital. The vision was clear: build artist careers without the exploitation, without the ego, without the strings.
It collapsed.
Here is what actually happened, with no excuses.
The Capital Problem
Max Harvest, my primary funding source, collapsed. When your business model depends on external capital and that capital disappears, your business disappears. I had not built revenue streams that could sustain operations independently. I was dependent on investment, and investment is never permanent.
This is a fundamental flaw in how we structure music ventures in Zimbabwe. We treat investment as income rather than runway. When the runway ends and you have not built an engine that generates its own fuel, you crash.
The One Person Problem
I was one young person trying to do everything. Artist management. A&R. Marketing. Distribution. Accounting. Strategy. Operations.
The vision was good. The systems were inefficient. I confused being busy with being effective. I thought working eighteen hour days meant I was building something. I was actually just exhausting myself while the important structural work remained undone.
You cannot build a label as a one person operation. Labels are systems. Systems require delegation. Delegation requires trust. Trust requires the right people.
The Wrong People Problem
This is the hardest part to write.
My circle at the time included people who were more interested in the appearance of success than in the work required to achieve it. Friends who advocated for flexing, for looking successful, for the lifestyle signifiers that come with being in the music industry.
When you are building something, you need people around you who will help with the task at hand. Who will show up for the unglamorous work. Who will tell you when you are making mistakes rather than validating your ego.
I had people who wanted to be at the parties, not people who wanted to build the infrastructure that would make the parties possible.
This is not me blaming others for my failure. The failure was mine. I chose who I surrounded myself with. I allowed the wrong influences. I prioritized relationships that felt good over relationships that would have been good for the mission.
The Patterns That Kill Us
Looking at MTM, Chillspot, Teemak Promotions, and dozens of other failed Zimbabwean music ventures, the patterns are clear.
No Real Contracts
Handshake deals. Verbal agreements. Relationships based on trust rather than documentation. This works until it does not work, and when it stops working there is no foundation to fall back on.
When Enzo Ishall left Passion Java's camp, there were no legal documents. When artists left MTM, contracts were disputed. When I worked with artists at Teemak Promotions, documentation was inconsistent.
The Zimbabwean music industry operates on vibes. Vibes do not hold up in court. Vibes do not clarify revenue splits. Vibes do not protect either party when things go wrong.
Founder Ego Over Artist Development
Every collapsed label had a founder whose personal brand became more important than the artists. Jah Prayzah worried about how MTM was tinting his brand. Chillspot executives extracted income from artist success rather than reinvesting in artist growth. Even I, despite my conscious efforts to stay in the background, made decisions that centered my vision over artist autonomy.
The best labels in the world are invisible. You know the artists, not the executives. In Zimbabwe, the executives want to be as famous as the artists. That fundamental ego problem corrupts every structure we build.
Extractive Rather Than Generative Models
A functioning label generates more value than it extracts. It invests in artists, the artists grow, the growth creates returns that fund further investment. A virtuous cycle.
Zimbabwean labels extract value as it is created. Four way splits on artist earnings. Immediate profit taking rather than reinvestment. Short term thinking that kills long term potential.
Chillspot could have been what Mavin Records became for Nigeria. A sustainable institution that develops generation after generation of talent. Instead it became a machine for converting artist labor into executive lifestyle.
Dependency on External Validation
We build our ventures to impress rather than to function. We announce before we establish. We flex before we profit. We perform success before we achieve it.
This creates fragile structures. When the performance cannot be maintained, when the external validation disappears, there is nothing underneath. No sustainable operations. No loyal artist roster. No genuine industry relationships. Just the shell of something that looked impressive on Instagram.
No Corporate Backing, No Sustainable Revenue
Here is the brutal truth that nobody wants to admit: even when you do everything right, the Zimbabwean music market cannot sustain a proper label.
Look at Nash TV. Tinashe Mutarisi built something that actually worked. Systems. Professionalism. A media platform that gave artists exposure. He invested his personal money. He ran it like a real business. He did everything the collapsed labels failed to do.
And it still did not work.
The revenue the business generated could not pay back what he put in. Zimbabwe does not have the streaming revenue that sustains labels elsewhere. We do not have the corporate sponsorship ecosystem that funds South African music. We do not have the diaspora remittance culture that Nigeria has built around its artists.
Nash did everything right and still could not make the numbers work. And then the scandals came. Not business scandals. Personal ones. And when your personal brand is your business, personal scandals become business destruction. Corporate Zimbabwe, already reluctant to associate with music ventures, had another reason to stay away.
This is the fundamental problem that underlies all the other problems. You can fix the contracts. You can build real systems. You can hire the right people. You can avoid ego traps and extractive models. And you can still fail because the market itself cannot generate enough revenue to sustain what you build.
Nigeria's music industry works because Nigerian artists can make real money from streams, from shows, from brand deals. South Africa's works because there is corporate infrastructure, radio that pays, venues that pay, brands that sponsor. Zimbabwe has none of that at scale.
We are trying to build music businesses in an economy that does not support music businesses. Every label that fails is not just failing because of internal problems. It is failing because it is trying to build something the environment cannot sustain.
What Would Actually Work
In Part 3, I will examine what is actually working in Zimbabwe right now. Nash TV. ZERO 53. Bridgenorth Music. Master H. The models that might point toward a sustainable future.
But let me leave you with this.
The failure is not inevitable. Other African countries have built functioning music infrastructure. The failure is chosen. We choose short term extraction over long term building. We choose ego over service. We choose vibes over contracts. We choose the appearance of success over the work required to achieve it.
I chose those things with Teemak Promotions. I am not writing this from a position of superiority. I am writing this as someone who made every mistake I am describing, who lost money and opportunities and relationships because I did not learn these lessons until it was too late.
The next generation of Zimbabwean music entrepreneurs will face the same choices. I hope they choose differently. I hope they learn from MTM, from Chillspot, from Teemak Promotions. I hope they build something that lasts.
Part 3 coming soon.
