Africa-focused music streaming platforms you should know

You may be familiar with Spotify as pioneer in music streaming and Apple Music that comes second to it in terms of subscribers.

However there are African-focused music streaming platforms that are growing the music industry on the African continent.

The music industry is growing and streaming music in Africa alone is set to generate close to US$500 million by 2025. This is almost five time more than in 2017 according to Statista Music Streaming – Africa.

Boomplay was instigated in 2015 by Transsnet Music Limited and primarily focuses on African and urban music content. The platform has currently over 5 million music tracks and videos with 42 million active users on monthly basic. With Boomplay, users can either use the free or the premium option.

Boomplay logo

Burna Boy has of recent become the first African to reach 200 million streams on Boomplay whereby 85% of the users are African residents mainly in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania.

Burna Boy from Nigeria

Mkito is a Tanzanian online music app that was launched in 2014 by Sune Mushendwa. The co-founder said that the app was started out of necessity with CD sales having almost disappeared.

Mr. Mushendwa said that there was a need to create a central platform that would cater for the masses and generate revenues for artists when the service was launched.

On Mkito, users have a limited of music downloads for free every month and after that they are required to pay to continue to enjoy the service.

Audioafrica is a music streaming platform that offers global music with African roots. Launched in 2017 by Appsfrica in Boston Ma in the United States of America. This platform is free for the first 60days and after the free trail, users are required to subscribe.

Mdundo was founded in 2012 as an Africa-focused music streaming platform based in Kenya. The platform can be accessed free of charge for download and streaming if you don’t care about advertisement. However if you like ads-free premium services you can pay as much as $0.034 per day.

The Pan-African music streaming platform recorded 16.4 million users during the third quarter of the year 2021. The service announced that most of its growth was recorded in Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.

uduX was initiated in April 2019 by Chidi Okeke in Nigeria and with only $1.19, users can access the premium option on the platform. The service has licenses with all three Majors, Sony Music, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group.

The platform has additionally partnered with MTN Nigeria which has over 60 million subscribers on the market. This partnership with the telecommunication giant in addition to that of three majors has enabled uduX to stream Wizkid’s “Made in Lagos” concert from London to more than 238,000 Nigerians from the comfort of their homes.

Nigerian Musician Wizkid

uduX is one of the platforms that are innovating new services and building partnerships to better serve its users.
Although the platform is not only originally a video streaming services, it believes that video is richer than audio and is intending to bring much experience to its users with live concert streaming services.

The Nigerian platform has successfully tested the live concert streaming service with Wizkid’s concert in London and intends to build on that experience to bring more live steaming concerts to its users.

Other music streaming platforms that are worth mentioning are Mziiki which means music in Swahili, Songa by Safaricom, Playfree, Audiomack Africa and Smubu.

African artists have over the years suffered to monetize their music contents but now times are changing on their favors.

Even though the African based music streaming platforms are contributing to the revenues of African artists, Diamond Platnumz believes that Apple Music and iTunes offer considerable amount of money.

However it is not easy to be eligible to join the American platform as Diamond is among few African based artists that have been qualified to join Apple Music and iTunes.