A lot of musicians are now warming up to the idea of selling their merchandise - DVDs, cassettes and CDs - in the streets and malls. They are slowly shifting from the retailers, whom they used to depend on as their major sellers.

Malls in places like Francistown, Gaborone's Station Mall and The Main Mall are brimming with their CDs, cassettes, DVDs and t-shirts.

Explaining how they came to change to this mode of selling their products, pioneer Eric Ramogobye, who also runs the popularly known Ko-Setlhareng.com, a stall in the Main Mall, says that he had realised that shop owners were reluctant to sell local music as they would only select a few known names and sell them.Ramco, who is also a studio owner, says that they are in a better position to sell their merchandise, as they understand it better than the retailers.

"In a shop you will find that they are not even interested in music. They would not even bother to play the CDs. Sometimes when they play it, it's shop attendants playing music of their choice, which is often by a foreign artist. But here at Ko-Setlhareng.com we play all our artists. We also give music lovers an opportunity to listen to the albums so they can choose the one to buy," he said.

Another studio owner, who also sells at Main Mall, Tex Ramogobye, said the business is brisk on the streets. According to him, his stall, which is an open place and "people when they pass by on their way to buy groceries and other items they get to hear our music and those interested stop to buy some. We have a lot of sales specialists here and we ensure that we chat with music lovers and advise them on the latest hits," he said.

Lekoko Entertainment owner, who is popularly known for sharing the company with Hip-Hop Pantsula, Seabelo Modibe said he sells different types of music, but largely gospel and House, which are favoured by their customers.

"Even though we see different kinds of music and artists, we concentrate on our artists - Hip Hop Pantsula, DJ Trax, D-Mos (also known as Douglas Mosadi) and DJ Sly," he said.

When he started he had an option of setting up his stall at the Station Mall or Bus Rank, but chose the Main Mall as the former are too noisy. "It is difficult to play music for your clients when it is noisy," he explained.

He has a concern with local musicians who sell their merchandise at below market prices to retailers.

"They sell at very cheap prices like P10 per CD to these retailers and this is killing the music industry. Musicians should earn a living out of their products, instead of giving away their talent at such ridiculously low prices. We are trying to encourage them to stand up and reap profit from their CDs and DVDs and stop giving the whole profit to these retailers," he said.