Mdundo: 10 Years of Promoting Local Content

Before the pandemic struck, African musicians mostly found success and fame through live performances, followed by radio spots and music festivals.

Live performances offered a special thrill for music lovers, but they were also for a long time, one of the only avenues for selling music directly to their audience.

However, as Africa’s mobile users found it easier to hold meetings, play games, view on-demand videos and listen to music via their internet-enabled phones the market dynamics shifted.

Now at least 13 countries with mean mobile internet speeds of more than 25 mbps can enjoy high definition videos, with audiences spending up to 13 minutes viewing, per play, according to the latest figures.

We held an exclusive Interview with Martin Nielsen the CEO and Co Founder of one of the leading music streaming sites in the continent Mdundo on the future of the industry.

1. In the last two years, Kenya has seen an influx of music streaming platforms. What in your opinion is driving their entry?

Mdundo’s focus is to provide easy and legal access to more than 500 million people across Africa by the year 2025.

As a brand, our service has so far attracted over 17 million monthly active users across Africa with Nigeria being our biggest market.

2. What are the factors that have led to the soaring popularity of on demand music streaming platforms?

From a Mdundo perspective, we have seen growth in our subscriber base being influenced mostly by the increase in online content consumption and acceptance of digital music services.

We are experiencing a strong interest in local African content by our subscribers – with over 80% of music streamed being African.

We believe that our combination of strong local content offering with a focus on a low-internet usage solution are key pillars in our growth strategy.

3. With the new players entering the Kenyan market, how is competition for Mdundo?

As one of the top players in the market, our focus remains delivering the best possible service to our subscribers through a locally suitable solution to music consumption.

Based on our business strategy in the last two years, we have seen remarkable growth across all our markets from a growth of five (5) million monthly active users to an expected 20 million monthly active users by the end of June 2022.

4. Last month, there were reports of illegal music downloads affecting the industry. How is this affecting Mdundo’s operations?

As a leading Pan-African music streaming service, our foundation is built on creating a legal platform for people to download and listen to music.

In the last 10 years, we have heavily invested in the state-of-the-art technology that curtails piracy.

We have ensured that the million downloads taking place within Mdundo do so in an environment and fashion that benefits the content owners.

We have observed a massive transformation among consumers who are now moving away from illegal services and towards legal alternatives as these become more available for the African consumers.

5. With new platforms being invested every day, would you say that the continent is overlooking music streaming platforms for advertising?

 As Mdundo, we are having great success attracting and delivering advertising campaigns that have an extremely high impact on our partners’ brand health.

In 2021, we recorded great returns in advertising and revenue sales by offering localized solutions to the different markets. 

For many brands, our unique audience and complementary analytics tool provides a significant incremental reach every year to ensure that our partners reach their sales targets.

6. What opportunities are there for brands when working with music streaming platforms?

We are experiencing over 45% brand growth across our advertising partners due to our extremely influential format as well as the incremental reach we offer our customers.

Mdundo has extensive analytics for free to all marketing professionals through our Mdundo for Brands platform. We publish extensive data on the African consumer as well as their consumer habits, media habits, and demographics.

The Mdundo service has a massive reach across Africa with more than 17m monthly active users across Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, and Kenya.

7. What is your strategy for the market in the next coming year?

Since our listing in 2020, we have quadrupled our numbers thanks to numerous favorable factors, key being our supportive subscriber base.

Moving forward, our focus remains to grow Mdundo’s popularity, our subscribers base and revenue across Africa through a locally relevant service and a strong focus on telecommunication partnerships like our partnership with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria and Vodacom in Tanzania.

We’ve communicated in our Q3 report that we will provide further information about our future strategy towards the end of June 2022.