The rise of music streaming in Africa is helping a wave of new artistes gain popularity worldwide while making a decent living out of their career.
While it’s totally wrong to impose Western music business models on Africa’s fledgling industries, it’s indeed a laudable aim to assist less developed countries to modernize their music industries.
The notion that production, distribution, and consumption of music ought to be the same in US as in Ghana or Rwanda ignores a very beautiful thing about popular music: it is heterogeneous.
Music streaming services have generated years of consistent revenue growth for rights holders in developed countries, making them the dominant source of revenue for recordings worldwide. The story is not the same in Africa but through the ACCES 2019 music conference in Accra, a leading pan-African players will exchange ideas, discover new talent and create business linkages in the streaming field today in Accra as ACCES 2019 sees a day 2.
Curated playlists and AI-powered discovery engines, the lifeblood of most music streaming services, have fundamentally changed the listening experience, enabling users to discover new artists and genres, while creating new global audiences for independent musicians and labels.
Boomplay has also become one of the most prominent music–streaming services to have launched in Africa, and now it announced its new figure for its growth claiming to have more than 53 million users, up from 42 million in April this year, when the company raised a $20m funding round.
Discussing the dynamics of the streaming era at ACCES 2019 today will be MusicTime and Simfy Africa CEO Oye Akideinde (Nigeria), Boomplay Music Ghana manager Elizabeth Ntiamoah, Believe Distribution Services label manager for world music Michèle Beltan (France), Appraise Music founder and CEO Michael Bamfo and Impact Hub Accra founding partner and COO Kelechi Ofoegbu.
The session under the theme “Algorithms and Playlists; the hitmaker of the Streaming Era?” will take place at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences on Friday 29 November from 11.35am.
View the full ACCES 2019 programme here.
Registration is mandatory and African delegates register for free.
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