Boomplay head of marketing: We’re always ahead of the streaming game

Widely reported as the fastest growing music streaming service in Africa with more than 68 million users, the music platform says its success is largely due to its unique strategies such as pre-installations of the service’s app on mobile devices, its understanding of the digital music market, and a loyal user base.

Boomplay’s total revenues paid to artists grew 74.3% year-on-year in 2019. The service also prides itself on providing unique content to its users and transparency to artists, a feature that is vital for musicians, especially independents.

Music in Africa spoke to Boomplay Africa head of marketing Tosin Sorinola about the music streaming service’s achievements, the challenges facing the industry and its future plans on the continent.

MUSIC IN AFRICA: Boomplay is reportedly Africa’s largest digital music service. Can you confirm this?

TOSIN SORINOLA: Yes, this is supported by accurate and accessible information from mobile applications data services like App Annie and CooTek. Boomplay has consistently ranked as the No 1 music and audio app on the Google Play store across the major African countries. Our platform also boasts being the only African music app with more than 50 million installations on Google Play store, and a social media fan base over 1.5 million.

How do you maintain your growth rates, like adding 2 million users to your platform every month?

From offline to online marketing, we keep adding these number of users by ensuring we have the right marketing strategies in place, as well as keeping an up-to-date rich and diverse content catalogue in the app. We must not fail to also give accolades to our ever-growing loyal customer base. A lot of them have become our foot soldiers; they help us build our customer base through word of mouth and referrals.

How much of Boomplay’s success can be attributed to the app being preloaded on mobile devices?

There’s no telling Boomplay’s success story without a thanks to our pre-install strategy, especially at the very early stage. The first introduction and series of awareness created for Boomplay came through pre-installation of the app on the TECNO Boom J7 music phone, back in 2015. Due to a high demand from non-TECNO users in such a short time, we then made the service available on the Google Play store for all Android users.

How many new buyers of the devices end up converting to the streaming service?

Roughly 70% of device buyers would convert to a Boomplay user. While the pre-installation strategy helped at the initial stage, we have gone on to record more successes riding on several elements and features of our service itself, such as diverse content, catalogue and ease of use. We launched our iOS version in late 2018 and the Boomplay app now comes pre-installed on TECNO and Transsion Android devices like Infinix and itel that are shipped to the sub-Saharan Africa market. 

What differentiates Boomplay from its competitors in Africa?

Essentially, in-depth understanding of the market is key and that is one of our core strengths. As a streaming service, we understand the reasons why over 68 million users come to Boomplay. We have a team of industry and technology professionals who are constantly abreast of developments and trends. We also understand that content is king and we are in partnership with all three major labels globally as well as loads of local aggregators.

Also, our users are able to find their music, anytime, anywhere and at a very affordable rate, too. We also pay great deal of attention to consumer feedback and our platform is user friendly.

Does Boomplay see European and US services like Spotify, Apple and Deezer as serious competition in Africa?

These streaming services are not so big in Africa right now and may not necessarily be considered ‘serious competition’, since we are currently operating in different markets. However, we have noticed some moves recently with respect to content acquisition and marketing. Africa is termed the ‘last frontier of the global economy’ with a population of about 1.3 billion. Coupled with the recent international explosion of African music, these moves into the market are very well anticipated.  

The above-mentioned services have various programmes to develop and expose upcoming African talent. What are some of Boomplay’s programmes on that front?

We have programmes aimed at discovering and exposing upcoming talents, ranging from dedicated weekly in-app playlists promotions to campus exposés. We also have a section called Buzz, a lifestyle and entertainment section of the app where new and underground artists are profiled and exposed on a weekly basis. This year will see us focusing on initiatives that can help create and increase awareness for artists, whether already established or upcoming, by creating offline experiences of our digital app through pop-ups and closely knitted fan hangouts.

What noteworthy trends have you seen in the African digital music market, and how has it evolved since Boomplay launched its services?

Music streaming is on the rise and downloads are crashing. In the past, due to mobile internet/data challenges such as cost and availability, music lovers preferred downloading music directly to their device, which also increased the popularity of media storage cards in the region. Fast forward to a few years later and the disparity between streaming and downloads has become huge, in favour of streaming.

The market has evolved in many ways and while piracy still remains one of the biggest threats, not only in Africa but everywhere, music lovers are gradually getting more sensitised on the need to buy music rather than download it illegally. It’s been a long and hard journey to get here but the changes are noticeable. It is also important to note that technology and internet penetration is on the rise and this has helped our digital business greatly.

How does Boomplay deal with digital music piracy and how big is the problem for the company?

Piracy is the biggest concern in the global music industry. In Africa, it is even more pronounced because the digital music ecosystem here is still in its relative infancy. Many artists pay blogs to offer their content for free downloads and streaming because they believe this will help their songs gain exposure.

Education plays a key role in ensuring there’s a shift away from this kind of orientation, thereby placing a focus on the Boomplay offering which is much better and profitable. The Boomplay offering gives musicians the chance to expose their music to over 68 million users while also generating revenue to help them earn a living through their creative work.

Boomplay is committed to fighting piracy through our work with the government as well as publishing companies and record labels. In addition, we use services such as MUSO to scour the Internet and take down infringing materials and links. We have also recently launched an ad-supported free music download initiative aimed at acquiring new users and converting them to paid users in the long run. Though a tough task, we are so far slowly seeing a change in attitude and understanding about why illegal downloads should be avoided.

You recently partnered with independent music rights holder Merlin. What does this mean for independent musicians and labels in Africa?

It means having Boomplay as a bridge to reaching millions of music lovers in Africa and being able to get access to real-time data of their content, which will help them make smart and informed decisions about their music and business.

What future plans does Boomplay have for Africa?

As a platform, we are committed to building the most reliable and transparent music ecosystem for artists while creating unique offline experiences to give fans live access to their favourite artists. We intend to keep increasing our user base; this is aimed at providing a more financially rewarding platform for music makers. Also, our drive towards increased corporate social responsibility will see us do more to impact the entertainment industry in Africa, creating one that is better structured and well equipped.