Chinese giant Tencent eyeing music streaming market in Africa

The Chinese company, which also owns a 10% stake in Spotify through an alliance deal, launched Joox in 2015. Tencent's majority shareholder is Naspers, a South African multinational group that owns approximately a 31% stake in the company.

Joox is the most downloaded music streaming app in Asian markets including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong, among others.

The music service was launched in South Africa as a pilot for the African market in 2017, but Tencent now wants to bolster Joox's presence on the world’s second largest continent. The next country could be Nigeria, which has the biggest music market in Africa and is the continent’s most populous country.

With about 645 million mobile monthly active users on its online music services, Tencent’s strategy of targeting emerging markets for paid music services has been a successful one for the company. Its monthly active users across Asia have increased 533% over the past five year period, according to Bloomberg.

“There are a lot of local labels and artists that are big in Africa, but the whole digitalisation journey is not even there,” Tencent international business general manager Poshu Yeung said. “Rather than go fighting for the pie, it’s better to build a pie.”

But the mobile tech giant is not the only company that has its eyes on the African music streaming market, which is currently led by fellow Chinese-owned platform Boomplay.

Beyonce’s father, Mathew Knowles recently invested in Nigerian-owned music streaming service MePlaylist.

Africa’s mobile user base is among the world’s fastest-growing and its mobile user population is estimated to grow to 623 million by 2025. The digital music market on the continent is also largely untapped.