Afrobeat magic dominates Spotify’s top 10
By Wangu KanuriNigerian artistes have dominated the top 10 list of Spotify with the most listeners. Nigerians took eight slots out of the possible 10 in the list that was compiled on Tuesday, June 6th, 2023 by Top Charts Africa.
Topping the list, was Rema with 39.0 million, closely followed by Libianca, a Cameroonian – American singer with 20.7m.
In third place was Burna Boy with 18.5 million listeners, then Tems came in fourth with 14m.
CKay was in fifth position with 13.8m listeners while Ayra Starr had 11.3m, and Wizkid followed with 10.2m.
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Fireboy DML had 8.50m and was at number eight. Omah Lay came in ninth position with 8.09m listeners then Ghanaian singer Amaarae was in 10th position with 6.60m.
In April, Nigerians also scooped eight out of 10 slots of most streamed African artists ever on YouTube.
While Tanzania’s Diamond took the lead with over 2.14 billion streams he was followed by Nigeria’s Burna Boy with over 2.05 billion streams.
In third place is another Nigerian artiste Wizkid with over 1.67 billion streams while in fifth place was Nigeria’s Davido with over 1.29 billion streams followed by his counterpart Ckay who had over 1.15 billion streams.
Flavour came in seventh position with over 1.10 billion streams closely followed by Psquare with over 1.09. The 22-year-old Rema is in ninth position with over 1.06 billion streams followed by Tekno who has 964 million.
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With Nigeria’s performance in almost all music sites being described as impeccable, Otile Brown in his attempts to reveal why the country has stellar performance, suggested that singing in Swahili was kind of a hindrance to the popularity of songs as the language is not spoken internationally.
In his Instagram stories, the Chaguo la moyo hitmaker said: “Some of y’all be acting like am downplaying Swahili. Lol! Swahili is my everything it made me who I am today….try to understand what I mean without being confrontational.”
Adding: “Don’t get it twisted I love, and respect Swahili and I believe in it and I will give more music in Swahili….and this conversation it’s for the entire east and central Africa, not Kenya alone you’ve been programmed kuwekea Kenya lawama (to blame Kenya)…if talking global then it’s the whole of east, we got to work to do.”
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