Die strategiese bestuursingesteldheid van sangers in die Afrikaanse musiekindustrie

Abstract

Globally, music industries are being severely affected by technological, economic and socio-cultural changes, while the functioning thereof is constantly changing in terms of competitiveness and barriers to entry. As a result, various industrial role players such as singers, record companies, songwriters and artist managers are finding it increasingly challenging to survive, grow and to be sustainable in the industry. Although the Afrikaans music industry makes the largest financial contribution to the overall South African music industry, when compared to other music industries, it seems that most new singers who enter the Afrikaans music industry fail to be sustainable and to grow for longer than five years. Some of the reasons given for new entrants' limited life cycles are due to the oversupply of singers in the market, intense competition and a small number of consumers who buy Afrikaans music. In this study, Afrikaans singers were considered as business entities as they, like any other entrepreneur, sell products and services to a market in the form of music and community service. Just as the sustainability and growth of businesses often depend on the ability of business managers to understand the nature and essence of strategic management and to think strategically, the same assumption can be made for singers in the Afrikaans music industry. Consequently, the ability of singers to be sustainable and grow in the Afrikaans music industry depends on their strategic management mindset. An extensive literature research revealed that little scientific information is available in reliable literature sources on the extent to which singers in the Afrikaans music industry are familiar with the essence of strategic management and the benefit it may have for the success of their music careers. This study is therefore aimed at determining whether established singers in the Afrikaans music industry have a strategic management mindset, whether they make deliberate efforts to manage their music careers strategically, and whether their strategic management mindset is a contributing factor to sustainability and growth in the Afrikaans music industry. With the extensive literature review conducted in this study, it came to light that a strategic management mindset has to do with the ability to think strategically while developing a vision and mission, being aware of internal and external environmental changes, as well as the use of strategic thinking during the development and formulation of strategies. Consequently, a strategic management mindset is related to strategic thinking during the execution of a strategic management process. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the strategic management mindset of singers in the Afrikaans music industry. To achieve this goal, an extensive literature review as well as an empirical investigation were conducted. During the empirical investigation, an exploratory research design and qualitative research approach were used to collect data through semi-

structured personal interviews. Semi-structured personal interviews were conducted with 11 established Afrikaans singers who earned income from 2016 to 2020 and who introduced a new product into the Afrikaans music industry. ʼn Combination of purposeful sampling and snowball sampling were implemented as non-probability sampling methods. ʼn Data saturation point was reached after the ninth participant, after which two more interviews were conducted to enhance the quality of the data. The empirical results showed that singers are strategically focused on dreams and aspirations as components of a vision, but that they do not have an overall picture or vision for their music careers. In terms of singers' strategic management mindset on a mission, it was found that singers think strategically about the components that make up a mission, as well as the impact it has on their own sustainability and growth in the Afrikaans music industry. The results regarding singers' internal environmental mindsets showed that singers are aware of their internal tangible and intangible resources and that they take active action if they do not have a specific resource themselves. Furthermore, it was found that singers understand how the Afrikaans music industry functions as an industry and that they keep abreast of changes that are taking place in their macro environment. The results revealed that singers implement various generic and alternative strategies that make a valuable contribution to their own sustainability and growth in the Afrikaans music industry. Based on the empirical results, it was recommended that singers should have a strategic management mindset to be sustainable and grow in the Afrikaans music industry. Following limitations encountered in this study, several recommendations were made for further research studies. Among other things, it was recommended that the study also follow a quantitative research approach and include a larger sample. It was also recommended to focus not only on singers in the Afrikaans music industry as a study population, but to focus on the South African music industry as a whole.