Afrobeats star Tiwa Savage has a message for her fans: “My new single, called 49-99, is out now. Make sure you get it on uduX.” The Nigerian pop sensation — dubbed “The Beyoncé of Africa” — was promoting a new Lagos-based subscription streaming service, a local version of Spotify, which aims to encourage Nigerian music at home and also push it into the global mainstream.
On the single’s launch day, uduX gained 1,000 new subscribers. “Some of these artists have a huge following, and in Nigeria that’s cash. Let’s get the African artists to take this as their product, their own, and make them be the one selling it to subscribers,” says Chidi Okeke, uduX’s creator, adding that the whole idea is “to bring value to the music ecosystem in Nigeria”.
For N500 ($1.3) a month, uduX’s tens of thousands of clients can access millions of songs from Nigerian artists, including stars like Wizkid. “In Nigeria, you don’t have a place you go to and you see all the music you want to listen to. That’s what we want to do, and to use technology to generate revenues for artists,” Mr Okeke explains. The service was launched in April in Nigeria and is looking to expand into Ghana.
Africa was once ravaged by music piracy but smartphones mean it can now get round this problem by streaming. Lagos has become the industry’s most valuable start-up ecosystem.
The up-tempo, dance-till-dawn music that is a soundtrack for tens of millions of Nigerians is making Africa’s most populous nation a major centre for the music-streaming business.
Wizkid: bringing Afrobeats to the world © Getty
Nigerian singer Bisola Aiyeola believes that new streaming services will provide a wider fan base, wider reach and more money for artists. “We are still catching on, tons and tons of people are just getting to join,” she says.
The country ‘s smartphone users are expected to go up from 53m to 144m by 2025, according to GSMA, the mobile phone industry trade body.
One of the pioneers of music-streaming in Nigeria is Boomplay, a Chinese-backed service which claims to have “the largest online African music catalogue in the world”, with 5m tracks. It launched in Nigeria four years ago and also has a strong presence in Kenya and Tanzania. Earlier this year, it secured $20m in investments from Maison Capital and Seas Capital, both based in China, to expand its customer base of more than 46m subscribers.
Telcos also want a piece of the musical action. After snapping up music-streaming business Simfy Africa last year, MTN, Nigeria’s largest telecoms operator and a subsidiary of the South African group, launched its own, called MusicTime. According to the company, it is a time-based music streaming service, which allows customers to purchase music time using airtime — 120 minutes of music a week for N45 (12 cents) or 300 minutes for N100 (27 cents) — at the press of a button. “There will always be the raw material here, the music that is ingrained in our culture, and people are willing to buy music if you make it easy,” says Iredumare Opeyemi, head of legal and music service partnerships at MTN group in Nigeria.
Bisola Aiyeola says streaming will connect her to a wider fan base
Some of these streaming services have already agreed licensing deals with major global music companies, such as Universal Music Group, that want to move into digital streaming in Africa.
African music became internationally popular in the 1970s when Nigeria’s Fela Kuti created Afrobeat — a jazzy, funky mix of Nigerian and American musical traditions which was deeply political and took aim at repressive governments.
African music is everything for the African. We use music for death, we use music for life. It is a way of life and life is musical
In contrast, today’s Afrobeats — a fusion genre from Nigeria and Britain with a Caribbean twist — focus on romance and living the good life. Both, however, have space on Nigerian streaming platforms. “When you have a population of 200m people, where everybody likes music, it automatically translates into a very high demand,” explains Idris Olorunnimbe, founder of The Temple, a music talent management company in Lagos.
One of his staff, David Nice, is about to release his first Afrobeats single. The 19-year-old wants his music on the streaming platforms “to help me get where I want to get”.
Femi Kuti, Fela’s musician son, has some words of advice for him. With these new apps music may “go far, everywhere” but music is “not about fame and fortune”, he explains, before a performance at the family’s nightclub and concert hall, “The New Afrika Shrine”. “African music is everything for the African — we use music for death, we use music for life, we use music for farming. It is a way of life — and life is musical,” Mr Kuti says.
