Boomplay: 70% of our streams come from African content

Huro was speaking this week at NY:LON Connect, a global music summit that will run until 28 January. She took part in a mini panel discussion titled The Growth Opportunities for Regional DSPs, and the music exec gave insight into the trends and strategies of the pan-African streaming service.

“Seventy percent of our total streams come from African content,” she said, and suggested that this was guiding Boomplay to sign up key local artists and catalogues.

She also spoke about piracy as the biggest barrier to growing the music streaming market on the continent. “Our greatest competition is piracy, actually,” she said. “It’s not each other as DSPs. Most of the continent, they get their music for free, so [they think], ’Why should I buy music when I can get it for free from illegal sites?’”

Huro added that African authorities have been relatively slow to crack down on piracy sites. However, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s approval of the Kenyan Copyright Amendment Bill in 2019 was a sign of progress.

DSPs operating in Africa have raised the issue of piracy for some time. Last year, Tosin Sorinola, Boomplay Africa head of marketing at the time, told Music In Africa that piracy was more pronounced in Africa because music streaming on the continent was still in its infancy. “Many artists pay blogs to offer their content for free downloads and streaming because they believe this will help their songs gain exposure,” she said.

More recently, Sorinola said there had been a shift towards more streaming on the Chinese-owned DSP.

“We've been very encouraged by the increases in streaming on our platform, which means music lovers are gradually acknowledging legal platforms and supporting their artists through streaming. International big players are also getting more exposure to the African market, so we've seen the majors setting up local offices and international associations like IFPI [the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry] also building local teams,” Sorinola said.

Africa-based DSPs such as Boomplay and Mdundo in Kenya partnered last year with digital anti-piracy platforms MUSO and AudioLock, respectively, to tackle digital copyright infringements.