Mdundo celebrates 10 years as one of Africa’s leading music service platforms
Streaming is a hotly debated topic within the music industry, mainly because of headlines about low pay-out rates of streaming providers, which ultimately leads to low revenue for artistes. However, there’s no denying that music streaming is a rapidly growing market.
Mdundo, which is one of Africa’s leading music service platforms is celebrating 10 years in active music service across Africa, with 20.3 million monthly active users across Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.
The music platform currently boasts more than 100,000 African musicians having an account on Mdundo.com.
The music streaming platform has turned a decade old after years of transformation into a leading music service company. The company provides musicians with a real-time dashboard to control and manage their catalog as well as withdraw earnings from the service.
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Founded in 2012, the service has a strong focus on creating locally relevant solutions to benefit African musicians and mass-market music consumers.
When it was founded, the service initially sold music on ‘scratch card vouchers’, similar to airtime purchases from corner shops but later it became a free service funded by advertising sales.
The initial advertisers on the service were Airtel, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft but today the service works with many pan-African FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands and banks across the continent.
While celebrating the milestone, Mdundo’s CEO, Mr Martin Nielsen said that the platform has proved over time to be very convenient and beneficial to local artistes who can easily access their royalties through the service as earned.
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“This is an exciting milestone for Mdundo. Our platform currently has 20.3 million monthly active users across Africa with 4.9m in Nigeria, 3.7 million in South Africa, 2.8 million in Kenya, and 2.4 million in Tanzania. More than 100,000 African musicians have created an account on Mdundo.com,” said Mr Nielsen.
“The accounts allow artistes to manage and control their catalog and withdraw earned royalties. Mdundo has made payouts of Sh 100,000,000 to African rights holders in the last 10 years,” he added.
According to Mr Nielsen, Mdundo is expecting to pay a minimum of Sh 100,000,000 in the current financial year to rights holders.
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“Our digital music ecosystem has had significant growth over the last 10 years. Music partnerships have provided Mdundo’s premium product to 150 million customers through MTN Nigeria, MTN Ghana, Vodacom Tanzania, and MTN Airtel,” he said.
He went on to say that partnerships extended to African record labels which have played a big role in their ever-increasing numbers of streams.
“We have also been able to partner with leading African record labels such as Mavin Records, Africori, emPawa, MAD, Slide Digital, Zeze Africa, Tamasha Records, CCA, Lynx, Entertainment, Black Market Records, and Kings Music. Mdundo also has licensing agreements with leading global record labels which include Warner Music Group, Universal Music, and Believe Digital.”