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SWAMA URGES LOCALS TO USE SPOTIFY

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MBABANE – The Swaziland Music Association (SWAMA) has urged local tech startups and emaSwati to tap into the soon to be launched Spotify platform in the country. 

This is because giant music streaming platform Spotify will soon be available in the country as the Swedish company is expanding its reach across the globe. The free and premium plans will be available across all the markets.  The streaming service will also offer individual, family, duo and student plan options in select-markets, which Spotify doesn’t specify.

According to the Spotify website, in each of these new markets, Spotify will offer its full global catalogue. The company added that it will continuously work with local rights holders and partners to expand its catalogue to include more local offerings globally.

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Also, full podcast catalogues of the global streaming giant will be launched in a majority of these markets. For the other markets, Spotify will work closely with local partners to introduce more podcasts from its catalogue, as well as Spotify’s proprietary creator platform, Anchor.

SWAMA Public Relations Officer DJ Tizalami said the organisation welcomed all digital platforms from outside and within Eswatini that would make the transition to the digital dispensation a reality, particularly to the arts sector, given how informal it has been over the years. 

“Platforms like Spotify, among many others will certainly promote music and arts from Eswatini to a global audience resulting in the sector tapping into the vast international markets, and that gives our artists better leverage as we are generally a small market on our own,” he said. 

He mentioned that while the organisation welcomed this great move, SWAMA implored local tech startups and emaSwati to also establish their own digital stores that will be made available to the world markets and use same to export local arts as well as to aggregate arts from all over the world and sell it to the world markets. 

“It is imperative, therefore, that we embrace advanced platforms, while also building home grown ones that solve our immediate problems and provide realistic, profitable and sustainable solutions,” he asserted.

Other things which will be offered by the company will include a personalised experience to users through its home screen and further browse and search features. Once the streaming service is launched in the country, Spotify will be made available on mobile and desktop web players while the company works with local partners to introduce the service on more platforms including TV, speakers, wearable’s and cars in the coming months.

 “Having more listeners on our platform creates more opportunities for artists and podcasters to make a living the their work. And more creators, the more audio content for our users to discover,” said Alex Norström, Spotify Chief Premium Business Officer. 

“This creates an essential flywheel between creators and listeners that is the foundation of our business and in the end; it is what will propel the audio industry forward,” he said.

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The expansion includes markets across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and when combined, these markets include more than one billion people. With these launches, it essentially means that local musician’s songs and content creator’s stories which have for the longest time remained locally will now have access to a global audience of fans across nearly 180 markets.

And as part of its ongoing commitment to building a truly borderless audio ecosystem connecting creators, listeners and content; this move represents the company’s broadest market expansion to date.

According to the company, it will be working closely with local creators and partners in each market to deliver a tailored experience that meets their unique needs, with scaled language translations and specialised payment formats. In addition, Spotify’s expansion will likely accelerate the discovery of more genres like afrobeats, amapiano, k-pop and reggaeton that have earned a place in the global music scene.

“The existing rich music cultures in each of these markets will now be able to reach Spotify’s global audience. All this untapped music energy and access to our innovative creator tools will help propel artists to new heights and empower them to turn their passion into a profession,” reads an excerpt in the company’s statement.

The streaming platform currently has more than 340 million active users and 150 million subscribers using its ad-free premium product across 93 markets. This expansion will take the streaming giant to 178 markets globally. 

The new markets in Africa will include Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and lastly, Eswatini.

Meanwhile, local content creators have expressed their excitement towards the news of the streaming platform. Phindokuhle Sithole, a local content creator who has a podcast called ‘Jobe Flavoured’ which has over 870 subscribers on YouTube, said the advantage of Spotify coming to the kingdom was that their podcast content would be readily and evenly available to someone with a mobile device as long as they have data.

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“This means that our content will be more accessible to locals and even in other countries where they were not reachable before,” he asserted.

Another podcaster and deep house music producer, Phiwokuhle Gama aka Wolf De Dj said he was happy with the developments and said he believed more people would get to listen to his music as he also doubles as a music producer.  

“This essentially means that our content will get much more exposure and more people will be aware of our content and music reaction wise. I’m also excited because this means my music will get to be accessed in other countries as well,” he said.

Also echoing the aforementioned statements, was DJ Davas, who said this would definitely increase the reach for his music. He mentioned that prior to this since 2011, he had been all along using a digital distributor called Wax Tune which distributed his music to over 30 platforms. 

He went on to add that this was a definite opportunity for local musicians and content producers to promote their work as we were now living in a digitally driven era.



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