Singer John Blaq has opened up about the financial challenges that prevented him from further promoting his hit song Commander beyond Uganda, despite its growing popularity in West Africa last year.The song reportedly gained traction across borders, attracting attention from new audiences and boosting its reach on music streaming platforms such as Spotify and Boomplay. However, according to John Blaq, sustaining that momentum internationally proved too expensive for him.Speaking in a recent interview, the singer was asked how far he had gone in promoting Commander to maintain its growing popularity in other markets. He explained that the costs involved eventually became overwhelming, forcing him to scale back his efforts.“It was very costly for me, and you know Uganda is a third-world country. We just hustle, just the way you see how our music fans hustle with life, from whom we get our money. We can’t hike our performance fares, and if you request for Shs6 million per show, no one will book you. So you end up giving up on the push.”John Blaq further identified limited funding as one of the biggest obstacles preventing Ugandan musicians from successfully marketing their music beyond the country’s borders.According to the singer, even collaborations with international artistes often struggle to achieve their full potential because Ugandan musicians lack the financial resources needed to promote the projects in foreign markets.“That’s the main, or one of the reasons why when we do collaborations with international artistes, they just remain here because we usually don’t have the budgets to push them on the other side, because they have never refused us to cross to their countries.”He added that international promotion requires substantial investment in travel and other promotional activities, something many Ugandan musicians cannot afford without the backing of major record labels.It’s Unfair – Vyper Ranking Backtracks On Music Battle With Kid Fox, Cites Limited CatalogJohn Blaq noted that while international artistes can travel between cities and countries to market their music, many Ugandan musicians lack the financial support necessary to undertake similar promotional campaigns.He also pointed to Tanzania as an example of a country that, in his view, has done more to support its artistes in reaching wider audiences, arguing that Uganda needs to invest more heavily in its music industry if local talent is to compete internationally.“We need a very huge budget for our country because it’s the same thing Tanzanians are doing for their artistes. They get one or two and push them to the top, but here we’re still joking and playing around. If it were a football match, we’re yet to even warm up. Even the federation needs a federation to bail it out. We need big, big sums of money to push this industry to the world.”The post Lack of funding is holding Ugandan music back internationally – John Blaq appeared first on MBU.