Boomplay, the largest music streaming and download service in Africa, hosted its first Music Forum on Tuesday, 21st of May, 2019 at Villa Rosa Kempinski, Nairobi on the themes ‘Focus on Digital Music Distribution and The Future is Streaming’.
Speaking at the forum, General Manager Boomplay Kenya, Martha Huro talked about changing trends in Production and Digital Distribution, weighing in on Boomplay’s current and future strategies.
She stated, “Over the past years, Kenyan artistes have been churning out unique sounds but with very low listenership from our people here and in other countries - this is obvious from our weekly and monthly data based Boomplay charts”
Adding “There’s so much work to be done on our part and we hope that by the way of education through forums like these, we are able to eventually get Kenyans to play songs by Kenyan artistes more.”
Huro proceeded to talk about Boomplay’s interest in helping to grow an industry that truly works and highlighted some issues faced by artistes, which affects the expected music release consistency.
Some of the issues highlighted are lack of finances and proper A&R, to which she announced that Boomplay would invest $1 Million US Dollars towards production and distribution of Kenyan Music.
In a statement, she said that ‘’this will help to facilitate collaborations between Kenyan artists and other African acts across different regions and prompt the consistency of music releases in Kenya.”
Amongst other key stakeholders in music business, the Boomplay Artistes Forum was well attended by artistes, music producers, promoters, distributors and Boomplay executives: CEO, Joe He, Head of International Content Acquisition and Partnerships, Phil Choi, Director of Content Admin & Customer Service, Dapo Asekun and Global Head of Public Relations, Ms. Tosin Sorinola & among others.
Speakers at the forum weighed in on topics ranging from What Makes a Good Producer [Eric Musyoka], Intellectual Property, Publishing and Legal Protection [David Katee- IP Lawyer] to the role of Music Labels [John Andrews – GM AI Records Universal Media Group and Sam Mutuku - Digital & Production Manager East Africa].
Kenyan artist, Nameless took on the artistes panel to discuss Music Piracy & Experience as a Kenyan artist, alongside fast-rising songstress Vivian, top gospel music acts, Evelyn Wanjiru & Bahati, with Pacho Entertainment honchos hit makers: Cedo & Naiboi.
The PR & Branding panel discussants, Anyiko Owoko [Founder Anyiko Public Relations] and Elizabeth Karuru [Head of Content Acquisition at Boomplay Kenya] discussed extensively, the importance of presenting a good brand image, as well as guides on how to package your music for digital distribution by ensuring elements such as artworks, promo pictures, metadata and others are of great quality.
The Nairobi edition of Boomplay Artistes Forum, which was hosted by Willy M Tuva, is the start to a series of industry events by Boomplay that will hold across Kenya and beyond the region.
All the forums will have a series of panel discussions integral to improving the music industry.
About Boomplay
Boomplay (developed and owned by Transsnet Music Limited) is the fastest growing music app in Africa with a huge and expansive catalogue of over 5 million songs and thousands of videos. Boomplay currently has over 4.2 million users in Kenya and 46 million users globally as of April 2019, with a month on month growth of over 2 million users.
Users can stream songs and videos online free of charge, subscribe to one of the daily, weekly or monthly plans to save songs and videos to play whilst offline or purchase content to own it.
The Boomplay app, which won the “Best African App” at the 2017 “AppsAfrica Awards’’ is available on Android, iOS and Web. Boomplay aims to build the largest and most reliable digital music ecosystem for artistes and content creators in Africa.
In the last year, Boomplay has signed deals with label majors; Universal Music Group and Warner Music, giving its users access to an extensive catalogue of music globally.
