Africa’s largest music streaming and download service, Boomplay Music, has secured $20 million in Series A funding as it looks to enter more sub-Saharan countries.
The company, which currently has five million music tracks and videos on its platform – the most extensive online African music catalogue in the world – also looks to continue building up its database with a huge emphasis on African artists.
The latest funding comes from Chinese investors Maison Capital and Seas Capital, with other undisclosed investors.
Boomplay’s CEO, Joe He told Billboard that the company plans to use the funds to focus on content acquisition, recruitment and product optimization, as it moves into production, recording artists and the live concert space.
“Our vision is to become not only a music streaming service, but we aim to be the number one player in the whole music ecosystem for African music,” He revealed.
A display of the BoomPlay Music App. Photo credit: Tecno Spot
Without disclosing its valuation, the company’s Head of International Partnerships, Phil Choi confirmed that it was up on its previous round and that the company has raised $25.5 million to date.
“The board feels it’s better to be a stable company and work at a slower pace rather than taking on more funding and going too fast,” Choi said.
Boomplay launched in Nigeria in 2015 and is owned by Transsnet Music Limited – a joint venture between Chinese phone maker Transsion (makers of Tecno, Infinix and iTel) and Chinese consumer apps giant NetEase.
The streaming platform, which operates the Boom Player app, is adding an average of two million new subscribers per month, a mix of paid and free subscribers with the latter seeing ads when they use the service.
Its rapid expansion on the continent has seen it signed up over 44 million users, some 85 percent of which are on the African continent (primarily Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania) and boasts of 5.6 million daily users.
Although the service still benefits from Transsion’s large market share, it has also published mobile apps for Android and iOS that tap users on a wider range of smartphones, Techcrunch notes.
More so, it is tapping an international growth opportunity, specifically by marketing itself to Africans that have emigrated to other parts of the world and continue to listen to music from the continent.
Comments