Spotify has announced the launch of Afrobeats: Journey of a Billion Streams, a dedicated site that will track all things related to the genre. From its origins in Ghana, its popularisation in Nigeria, its fusion with other genres as well as how it has become one of the continent’s biggest cultural exports.
Afrobeats is one of Africa’s biggest musical exports and is currently taking the world by storm. On Spotify, the genre has grown by 550% since 2017, and it was streamed more than 13 billion times in 2022, with its leading artists continuing to tick off giant milestones on the global music stage, across live events, awards and streaming.
The site will act as a repository for this cultural phenomenon, housing text, infographics and visual elements, including Spotify streaming data and results from the Spotify commissioned April 2023 Afrobeats survey. The survey, conducted by research firm Kuvora, tracks the rise of Afrobeats and its cultural impact over decades.
The site will be updated on a biweekly basis for the next 8 weeks, but will remain active beyond this as an always-on resource, with frequent updates on new Afrobeats moments. It will also include an interactive experience for fans to discover and connect with new knowledge on Afrobeats.
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“There is no doubt that Afrobeats as a genre is here to stay, and will only continue to shatter more ceilings. In 2023 alone, the genre has been played for more than 223 million hours with streams exceeding 7.1 billion on Spotify. We created this site for both new and longtime fans of the genre, who would like to have a better understanding of how and where this explosive sound came to be,” says Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, Spotify’s Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa.
Afrobeats: Journey of a Billion Streams will consist of five key pillars:
- Origins explores the genres that acted as precursors of Afrobeats as we know it.
- Evolution dives deeper into which industry players contributed to the current Afrobeats sound that the whole world can’t seem to get enough of.
- Fusion looks at how Afrobeats has emerged by melding itself with other genres, such as reggaeton, amapiano, and other hybrids.
- Cultural exportation documents the influence of Afrobeats in music, food, language, and fashion lenses, especially in countries outside Africa.
- The Women of Afrobeats sheds light on some of the key women in the industry whose contributions propelled the genre to its current status as a global sensation.
The site will also include key Afrobeats timelines over the years, interesting Spotify data, excerpts from interviews with industry experts and man on the street videos from key markets in Sub Saharan Africa.
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