Gospel is Kenya's favourite genre – report

The report, which was released on Sunday, was conducted earlier this month with the aim to shed light on listenership in terms of genres, factors that affect consumption and the media via which music is accessed.

“There has been concern by Kenyan artist and music producers that end consumers and mediums such as radio, TV stations and DJs don’t appreciate and consume enough of music produced by local artist,” the report says.

Viffa Consult notes five key factors driving Kenya’s lack of interest in local music. They include lack of educative content, lack of quality, lack of spiritual depth, lack of originality and the use of vulgar language.

The survey says most Kenyans do not listen to local music, with 21% of the survey's participants indicating that local music takes up between 1 and 10% of all the music they listen to. Two percent of the listeners indicated that local music takes between 71 and 80% of the total music they listen to.

The reports shows that gospel music is the most popular genre, followed by hip hop and bongo flava. Other genres that are included are reggae, rumba, R&B, vernacular, Nigerian, Afropop and kwaito.

The majority of Kenyans spend between one and five hours listening to radio. Fifty-nine percent indicated that they do not attend live performances, while 36% attend events often and 5% very often.

The Internet is the most common medium used by Kenyans to consume music. The report notes that 80% of Kenyans stream music between one and five hours a day. Some 49% of respondents stream local music very often.

The frequency of downloading local music from file-sharing websites was highlighted as low. Fifty-two percent of listeners indicated that they do not download at all, 33% said they downloaded often while 15% downloaded very often.

The report also revealed that the majority of Kenyans do not purchase local music. Only 5% of those interviewed buy digital-format music very often while 2% said they bought physical copies of music, mostly in CD format.

Additionally, the report lists the five key reasons as to why Kenyans listen to local music: nourishment, originality, relevance, good quality and patriotism.

Read the full report below (attached).