This article is brought to you as part of a new partnership between two of Africa's foremost news and information platforms for African tech startups, Ventureburn and Techpoint Africa.
Global free music streaming platform, Audiomack recently announced its expansion to Nigeria, specifically in Lagos.
Audiomack expands to Nigeria
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To this effect, three Nigerians that have been on the team were selected to oversee the operations. Adeyemi Adetunji was appointed as head operations and commercial partnerships; Charlotte Bwana on business development and media partnerships; and Olive Uche on content strategy. This makes Nigeria the 55th country to have Audiomack’s presence.
We opened an office in Lagos, Nigeria.
https://t.co/L4l36zhWyR — Z (@djboothEIC) July 16, 2020
Before now, Audiomack has been showing interest in Africa for a while. According to this report, the company claims its plays have grown more than 1 600% over the past 14 months in Africa, while it has been a sponsor for Afrochella and Afronation in the past year.
Apparently, the free streaming platform has been favourable towards Nigerian artists in particular. And this is deduced from Techpoint Africa‘s chat with Omoregie Osas —Reggie! — a Nigerian rap artist. He says Audiomack’s choice of Nigeria is not surprising because many Nigerian artists perform a genre it generally supports — Afrobeats.
“Audiomack is one of the few streaming platforms that recognises Afrobeats as a genre. So, they have playlists, chart countdowns, and many more dedicated to the genre.”
For Reggie!, this is simply another global platform recognising Nigeria as a major hub for Afrobeats. And he thinks “it’s only right they start there,” he says.
Interestingly, the attention on the Nigerian music industry lately has been encouraging. While the likes of Apple Music, Deezer, and Shazam have been in the green-white-green space for a while, Google-owned YouTube Music only joined in March.
Reggie! attests to how Audiomack has improved engagement and followership on his content even though he only joined the platform about a year ago.
Being a free platform, artists can simply upload their content on Audiomack website, conversely, there’s the option to upgrade to premium so that they can get paid.
Reggie! surmises that an artist’s choice depends on what they want from the platform. For him, his presence there is for generating followership and engagement.
It is quite clear that the Nigerian entertainment industry is still plagued with IP-related violations. Hence, using free streaming platforms to generate attention while in the process of creating content they would like to get paid for seems like a good shot.
While keeping in mind how this global attraction might be affecting African streaming platforms like Boomplay and MusicTime!, it still remains that music consumers in the country seem to know where to look for their preferred content.
The original version of this article appeared on Techpoint Africa on 17 July. See it here.
Featured image supplied by Audiomack.
