Luminate report makes link between US Afrobeats fans and Bandcamp

On-demand audio song streams rose 22.6% year-on-year (3.4 trillion vs 2.7 trillion), while on-demand video song streams went up by 31.2% (1.9 trillion vs 1.5 trillion). US on-demand song streams increased by 12.2% in 2022, propped up by popstars like Bad Bunny, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift. 

The boost in US streaming was heavily propelled by Gen-Zs, who constitute the most active users of music products. The report observes that members of this market segment spent 21% more time with music on a weekly basis, and are more willing to buy merch from their favourite artists (+30%). Gen-Zs are also listening to a wider variety of genres, most notably emerging genres like Afrobeats.

The report finds an interesting connection between listeners of specific genres and music platform preference, with listeners of Afrobeats in the US 554% more likely than the average listener to use Bandcamp, a platform that facilitates buying music and merch directly from an artist or label.

Over the years, Afrobeats has enjoyed significant interest in the US and the rest of North America, largely due to collaborations between African and American musicians. A recent example of this is Nigerian musician Rema’s track ‘Calm Down’ featuring US popstar Selena Gomez, which piqued US listeners’ interest in Afrobeats last year. The song is currently sitting on more than 220 million YouTube views. In 2021, the remix of Wizkid’s ‘Essence’ featuring fellow Nigerian Tems and Canadian megastar Justin Bieber provided proof that there is success to be made from cross-market partnerships.

The Luminate report looks at consumption of the most consumed 11 genres, where world music, driven by a big contingent of African artists, makes an appearance. World music boasts 20.1% of physical album consumption, coming in second after jazz. Conversely, R&B/hip hop is the genre that is most consumed via on-demand audio streams at 88.6%. Rock fans, like world music listeners, also seem to enjoy listening to albums that are available in a physical format.

Luminate also segments listeners into different categories under the ‘Fanalytics’ section of the report, namely into ‘the enthusiast’, ‘the devotee’, ‘the radio rocker’, ‘the ghost listener’ and ‘the cool kid’. The enthusiast tends to have a broad palette including ‘classic’ genres like Americana, holiday and jazz. The devotee, like the enthusiast, also listens to a number of genres, while still having unique interests that set them apart.

The radio rocker segment includes more white boomer ladies who prefer AM/FM radio to streaming, while the cool kid is made up of a majority of black Gen-Z or Millennial women who stream R&B/hip hop for free. The ghost listener listens to fewer genres and at lower rates than other audience segments. 

Download the full report here.