Mobile music to boost Kenya's music revenue to $29 million by 2020

The growth, which represents a 9.3% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for the next four years, will also be made possible by small improvements in Kenya’s live music revenue.

Kenya’s growth rate is considerably better than that predicted for South Africa (4.4% to reach R2.4 billion by 2020) but not quite as good as that expected for Nigeria, a country that will see a 12.9% CAGR rise over the same period (to reach $86 million by 2020).

PwC’s Entertainment and Media Outlook also found out that the whole Kenyan entertainment and media industry was worth US$2.2 billion in 2015 and would grow to reach US$3.3 billion by 2020.

With the global music market reported to have achieved a milestone in 2015 as digital sales overtook all the other revenue channels to become the primary revenue stream, PwC notes that the same happened in Kenya. The company say by 2020 digital sales will make up more than four-fifths of the Kenyan music market. 

“Digital sales overtook physical sales in 2015 and will make up more than four-fifths of the market by 2020,” confirms PwC in the report.

In its 2015 report, PwC had predicted that consumer spending on live music events in Kenya would grow by 3.8% CAGR over the next five years. The report had also noted that live music would only account for 10% of total music revenues in the country.

For 17 years, PwC’s Entertainment and Media Outlook has been providing expert commentary and insights centred on the shifts in advertising and consumer spending. It uncovers how shifts in spending are shaping the future of the entertainment and media industry across 11 categories, namely Internet, television, filmed entertainment, video games, business-to-business publishing, newspaper publishing, recorded music, magazine publishing, book publishing, out-of-home-advertising and radio. 

To access the full Entertainment and media outlook visit the PwC website.