Mdundo CEO Martin Nielsen predicts more African musicians on global charts

In a recent interview for Music Business Worldwide’s World Leaders series, Nielsen says he foresees a future where 15 to 20% of all music on the global charts will be by African artists. 

The conversation touches on a wide range of factors that are shaping the business direction at the streaming platform. Nielsen pointed out that with an increased uptake of music services across the continent, it is only a matter of time before Africa’s music influence on the global music ecosystem becomes indelible – spelling a bright future for the African industry. 

He says that with internet penetration expected to reach 500 million people in Africa by 2025 and with the continent’s population set to double from 1.2 billion to 2.5 billion by 2030, an opportunity lies in providing locally relevant content to a big and diverse audience.

“The continent is extremely segmented – not only is every country different but each customer segment within the country has different listening habits that needs to be catered for,” Nielsen said. “At Mdundo, we’ve experienced great growth by tapping into local consumer habits.”

He said the developmental strategy of growing the African market would entail solutions that “will increase penetration and grow the pie of music consumers and revenues.”

About how Mdundo came to be, Nielsen said the company’s main mission was to provide the African mass market with a legal alternative to access music when pirate channels seemed to be the only attractive options.

“We were seeing how streaming services were changing the music industry globally by offering an attractive alternative to pirating sites. We saw the same opportunity in Africa, but the solution would have to be significantly different to fit the mass market in Africa due to different consumer behaviours and needs,” he said.

Established in Kenya in 2013, Mdundo reached 20.3 million monthly active users (MAUs) in June 2022 and is expected to hit 25 million at the end of the 2022-23 financial year. The company says it is aiming to reach 50 million MAUs and a healthy revenue outlook by 2025.

Nigeria is Mdundo’s biggest contributor of users with a total of 4.9 million, followed by South Africa (3.7 million), Kenya (2.8 million) and Tanzania (2.4 million).