New music streaming service Mziiki, which is focused on providing access to African artists, is set to launch in South Africa early next year after already having debuted in 12 other markets on the continent.
Focused on providing music fans with access to both independent musicians and those signed with record labels, Mziiki was launched in June, with its backers first setting their sights on East Africa for the first phase of the roll-out.
Phase two, starting in January, will see the service launched in South Africa.
“Streaming has taken the market by storm and, just like the rest of the world, streaming has become quite big in Africa as well,” says Spice VAS Africa CEO Arun Nagar. Spice VAS develops Mziiki.
“With network operators focusing on data, streaming is becoming the preferred method for distributing of music content in Africa.”
Spice VAS Africa set up its headquarters in Johannesburg in 2012 and is active in 28 countries, serving 5m subscribers with a range of services.
Mziiki is available via apps for Android, iOS and BlackBerry 7, but because feature phones are so prevalent in Africa, it also offers a mobi site. Users of the Mziiki app are able to store music for offline listening, too, something Nagar says is crucial in Africa where connectivity can be an issue.
“For October, we had approximately 400 000 unique users, of which 100 000 were people who listened to content for a reasonable period of time.”
Mziiki offers access to a thousand African and international artists.
Nagar says Mziiki has an advertising-supported unlimited streaming model where end users get to listen for free. But Spice VAS Africa is working on an ad-free subscription model, too.
“Our revenues, and the revenues to our artists and labels, come from the ad revenues that we generate.”
Mziiki also provides ringback tones, ringtones diallers hear when they call someone.
Spice VAS Africa provides content to 52 mobile networks across Africa, and Nagar says Mziiki is fully integrated into the ringback tone platform of all these networks. This allows Mziiki listeners to add any song they listen to as a ringback tone without having to fiddle with USSD codes.
Mziiki already features a number of South African artists on its platform and is also a distribution partner for EMI and Universal Music. “When we launch in South Africa we will have the full repertoire of these labels’ music,” says Nagar. — © 2014 NewsCentral Media
