Jah Prayzah’s hit video records half a million YouTube views in a week, races towards new record for local music

Zimbabwean superstar Jah Prayzah is currently enjoying the success of his latest album Mdhara Vachauya .

Some of the attention that the record has been receiving has been because of the album’s first single, Watora Mari which features Tanzanian superstar, Diamond Platnumz .

This song has been supported by a great video which was uploaded on Jah Prayzah’s YouTube channel on the 12th of August and has since recorded one of the fastest (if not the fastest) views count on YouTube for a Zimbabwean music video.

In its first week, Watora Mari recorded just over 500,000 views and 11 days later it has  been viewed 759,929 times.

That total is passed by a video like Ammara Brown and Tytan’s video for the hit song Mukoko  which has 895,000 views right now (it also appears to be the most viewed Zimbabwean music video on YouTube right now  Taps Mugadza’s video for “Hello” is actually the most viewed Zimbabwean video) but  Jah Prayzah has managed to record these views in less than a fortnight.

If the video (or rather the song and the album) maintains the same momentum it is likely to reach the 1 million views mark soon – a milestone that has eluded local artists that are using YouTube extensively including the Zim dancehall artists that usually have strong view counts.

Jah Prayzah’s video does show, though, that well produced Zimbabwean content has a substantial audience online.

Granted, Watora Mari has also benefitted from the collaboration with an African superstar, but the effort placed in recording a great song and making a high-quality video also appears to be bearing fruit.

It also opens up the discussion of opportunities to monetize content via YouTube with its remuneration model that only makes sense when an artist registers views in the millions.

All these factors need to be considered by local artists trying to explore the global audience delivered through technology.