CAIRO, Egypt — Boomplay, a Chinese music streaming service, is rapidly growing its subscriber base in Africa, aided by its parent company’s quick rise in the continent’s smartphone market. Boomplay is working with a major American music label to improve its content. Furthermore, rising income levels and extensive smartphone use in Africa are aiding the service’s penetration among African users. Transsnet Group, a subsidiary of Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Transsion Holdings, debuted the Boomplay service in Nigeria in 2015, with monthly, weekly, and daily subscription choices. Boomplay has a defined goal of focusing on the African market and establishing itself as the continent’s leading digital music platform. Boomplay is presenting itself as a forum for African musicians to introduce their work to the rest of the world, in addition to offering a large variety of African recordings to attract local listeners. Boomplay stated in March that it had reached an agreement with Universal Music Group of the United States to expand the license of UMG’s catalog on its service from seven to 47 African countries. South Africa, Africa’s most developed economy, and French-speaking countries in the west, such as Ivory Coast, are among the newly added countries.
Lagos is Nigeria’s largest city. In Africa, the use of cellphones is quickly increasing. courtesy of Getty Images
Boomplay presently has over 50 million active monthly users. The widespread adoption of Transsion smartphones is the driving force behind the service’s rapid expansion. According to IDC, phones manufactured by the corporation in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, under brands like Tecno captured 48.2 percent of the African smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2020, following by Samsung Electronics of South Korea with 16.1 percent. Transsion’s strong presence in the African market is likely due to the company’s adoption of technology that meet the needs of African consumers, not just because of its low prices and marketing strategies. For its smartphone cameras, for example, the business boasts on its website that it has developed an algorithm that analyzes dark skin tones in its database to improve the quality of still photos and movies of local people. In the midst of fierce rivalry among music streaming services in Africa, one 28-year-old Nigerian man stated Boomplay is the most popular among young people and streams a lot of new songs. In February, Spotify, based in Sweden, revealed plans to expand its service to 40 African countries, while Apple, based in the United States, announced plans to expand its Apple Music service to more African countries in 2020. Locally developed streaming services, such as Mdundo, which debuted in Kenya, Eastern Africa, are also active, fueling competition. The GSM Association, which represents the interests of mobile network operators around the world, predicts that by 2025, the number of users of mobile internet telecommunication services in Sub-Saharan Africa would have risen to 475 million, up from 272 million in 2019. According to the United Nations, Africa will be home to a quarter of the world’s population by 2050, owing to the continent’s rapid population growth. In contrast to an aging Asia, the number of young customers who want to listen to a wide variety of music will continue to rise in Africa. When combined with the continent’s rapid adoption of smartphones, the market for music streaming services appears to have a lot of space for expansion./n
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