THE PLAYLIST: AFRICA’S TOP 20 MUSICIANS
“Alexa, play the most popular song in Africa at the moment”
“I’m sorry I don’t understand your request at the moment.”
“Alexa, why not?”
‘Because all music coming out of Africa seems to be popular at the moment!”
N OW, WE WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED IF ALEXA actually said that, would we? The truth is that the African continent seems to be where all the action is when it comes to art and artistry at the moment, and everyone from Beyoncé to Usher to David Guetta want in.
When you think of African music, the thought of affiliating the continent’s industry with just American rock bank Toto’s 1982 classic Africa has long gone.
We are now seeing African artists take the global stage, literally, storming on to it with new music, introducing new sounds, genres and energy, and educating the world on the true meaning of what being African is, without the baggage, without the long-held views and regressive stereotypes.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ (PwC) annual report, Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019-2023, focuses on the media industry in some of Africa’s biggest economies: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Tanzania.
Alinah Motaung, PwC South Africa Entertainment and Media Leader, explains to FORBES AFRICA that it shows that there is hunger for content, and continued advances in technology, new business models and ways of creating value will drive the industry’s growth for the next five years and beyond, especially in Africa However, there have been major shifts in the industry.
“The common driving force behind these power shifts was the change in customer behavior propelled by newly-acquired habits and the impact of the pandemic,” Motaung says. “However asymmetric the pandemic’s impacts on the entertainment and media industry, the forecast for revenues at an industry level remained robust… For entertainment and media companies around the world, the past 18 months have been a period of remarkable uncertainty and challenge.
“The well-known forces that were changing our world — digitization, globalization, disruption, shifting consumer habits and demographics — were amplified by a powerful new one, the first global pandemic in a century.”
The report notes that digital music streaming (Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube) in all regions seems to be on an upward curve. In South Africa, revenues are set to increase at 20.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to a total of R815 million ($49.9 million) in 2023. Revenue in Nigeria is also set to “rise” by $17.5 million and in Kenya by $5.2 million.
“No one African country is like the other and what we have seen, for instance, is that Nigeria is fiercely proud of the music that it exports,” Phiona Okumu, Head of Music for sub-Saharan Africa at Spotify, says to FORBES AFRICA.
“Afrobeats has grown significantly on Spotify In South Africa, Amapiano started out as an underground genre where music was shared amongst artists and producers via applications such as WhatsApp. It has since become one of the most popular genres on the continent and has gained great momentum internationally.”
“Starting off in 2017, we saw South Africa leading the way in terms of digital music streaming revenue as compared to Kenya and Nigeria. 2020 then saw Nigeria’s total streaming revenue beat that of South Africa and is forecasted to grow exponentially until 2026 with South Africa and Kenya continuing at a steady growth rate,” Motaung adds.
In Tanzania and Ghana, there is still a big focus on recorded music which will contribute the respective countries’ growth. In Ghana, recorded music is set to grow “further” with over $9.4 million in 2023. For Tanzania, the music market is expected to increase at a 6.9% CAGR over the next five years being worth $6 million in 2023.
Lwazi Mngoma, Creative Director and Entertainment Curator at OGO Creative, a strategy-driven agency with its heart in multi-scale live production, states that African music is once again at the epicenter of global music trends. OGO specializes in creative ideas, strategy, content creation, event production and project management.
“The captive audience garnered by Amapiano and Afrobeats during the Covid pandemic helped the two long-standing genres create new superstars and provide a sound that has influenced global [stars] like Chris Brown, Drake and evenBeyoncé,” Mngoma says. “The seemingly African way of tying genres to dance moves has further increased the two genres’ visibility and influence.”
“Afrobeats has grown significantly on Spotify. In South Africa, Amapiano started out as an underground genre where music was shared amongst artists and producers via applications such as WhatsApp. It has since become one of the most popular genres on the continent and has gained great momentum internationally.
According to Motaung, social media has also played a significant role in promoting these increases that has been seen on digital streams especially.
Evidence of this is Master KG’s global hit Jerusalema which now has more than 500 million views on YouTube.
PwC believes that the route Jerusalema took to worldwide popularity after its release in December 2019 is an example of the new pathways to success for African artists - using social media and new types of distribution platforms. Spotify is entering local African new markets, to help “ensure that sounds and stories that once remained local can reach a global audience”.
Platforms like TikTok are also changing the music industry. In October re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time since its 1977 release.
