Why do artists have more streams on Audiomack than other platforms?

Over the past year, Audiomack’s freemium feature has gained a lot of ground in Africa.

Listen Africa

Nov 01, 2020

A few weeks ago, new kid on the block, Omah Lay announced that his 2020 EP, ‘Get Layd’ had hit 120 million streams across all streaming platforms. Interestingly at the time, about 70 million from the 120 million streams were from Audiomack and Get Layd had just 19,000 likes.

Omah Lay @Omah_Lay

WHAT HAVE WE DONE??! 🙏🏾💜

Over the past year, Audiomack’s freemium feature has gained a lot of ground in Africa. Word on the street is that Audiomack’s rise has even adversely affected Boomplay. At different points during this period, Audiomack became the most downloaded app in Nigeria both on Google Playstore and Apple App Store.

The reason is because, unlike Soundcloud, Audiomack has a remuneration plan for artists through its ad-based freemium model.

It gives African artists greater persuasion to put their songs and albums on the platform because most of their fans don’t pay for music anyways. At all at all, na him bad pass… African artists also get most of their revenue from tours, image rights and performance.

In Nigeria, streaming hasn’t really caught up as viable means of music consumption. Martin Nielsen, the CEO of Mdundo told Inside By Pulse that over 150 million Africans download music from illegal means - and Nigeria has around 50% of that number.

Yet, all the major streaming platforms combined cannot boast two million paid subscribers in Nigeria. Audiomack, YouTube and Boomplay run the ad-based freemium model that allows music lovers to still consume music from their faves in real time.

Even though Boomplay remains the top dog by number of subscribers, what Audiomack has over Boomplay is brand equity and greater brand resonance.

In the case of YouTube, a lot of Nigerian users don’t know about YouTube Music yet. Even if they knew, subscription costs N900-per-month and Nigerians don’t have a track record of premium patronage. The problem is that YouTube main is strictly video-based. However, that still doesn’t explain why Audiomack has 200% more streams than YouTube.

It certainly doesn’t explain why Audiomack has 100%-150% more streams on Boomplay streams whenever artists celebrate their streams. While in the case of Omah Lay, the 19,000 likes against 70 million streams isn’t exactly an issue, the 70 million streams is an issue.

Artists have begun to question the model and enthusiasts have questioned the streams.

So, why does Audiomack have more streams than every other platform?

Audiomack’s rising brand equity

As noted earlier, Audiomack’s freemium feature has allowed it to gain a lot of ground in Nigeria. It has greater brand equity and is more desirable than Boomplay. Its audio feature also gives it an edge over YouTube main. People can also download songs from Audiomack.

Its brand equity is also aided its strong SEO that makes its platform come up in music search.

Jason C.A Johnson, Vice President of Marketing and Branding at Audiomack tells Listen Africa that, “Audiomack is an open platform where artists can post their music on social media and anyone can get access to their music globally compared to other services where you need a subscription.

“Also, our curators are African where they are taking time to share the music throughout the platform. We are doing content and editorial with these artists which gives our audience the opportunity to get to know the artist on a deeper level.”

UI and Trending page

Audiomack’s back-end almost adequately classifies music. So when a particular song is gaining buzz on a particular genre, it’s very easy for its ‘Trending Page’ to pick it up. And make no mistake, that ‘Trending’ page on Audiomack is one of the most potent tools of music promotion in African streaming.

Singles get on that ‘Trending’ page and the streams from singles count as overall streams for bodies of work. In essence, if an EP gets one million steams on Audiomack, 50% of it could be from one single.

Audiomack’s UI, which helps it stand out is also how certain artists game the system with funny metadata. The idea is for their songs to appear whenever a genre or artist is searched for. So ‘Artist A’ could rename their song as owned by ‘Artist B’ on the back end so when ‘Artist B’ gets searched, ‘Artist A’s’ songs comes out as results.

Engineered streams

As Audiomack has risen, it’s also been battling ‘engineered streams,’ that isn’t unlike the problem YouTube faces. A few people have been ‘buying streams’ on Audiomack.

IBADAN BREED 🥇 @iYungblogger

AudioMack organic streams still up for sales Very effective 24hrs max I’m just a DM away ☎️:- 09050603456

On July 3, 2020, a Nigerian Twitter user @iYungBlogger tweeted that he engineers organic Audiomack streams within 24 hours. In the same vein, a website called Music Promotion Corp offers three plans; Audiomack Starter Package, Audiomack Best Seller and Audiomack Viral Package.

During a conversation with Inside by Pulse, Adeyemi Adetunji of Audiomack Africa said, “We’ve discovered that they do it just how anybody can game any system. We’ve been working hard to get rid and ban these guys. Everyday, we go through dozens of emails to better understand this and combat it. It’s unfortunate, but we are battling them by the day.”

Be that as it may, Audiomack might need to start a legal plan like how YouTube started TrueView to combat ‘buying views.’

Compelling perspective

In a chat with George [not real name], a Nigerian music enthusiast and tech professional who refused to be named, Listen Africa got another perspective.

George said, “I think Audiomack might be having all these streams because they operate a similar model to Facebook. You know, when you watch 10 seconds of a video on Facebook, it counts as a stream. I gathered that Audiomack might be having all these streams because even the remotest action might count as a stream.

“And I get it. African artists are quite sprung with the idea of ‘million streams.’ Audiomack is just giving it to them [laughs].”

Do the streams matter?

This has been an ongoing issue because Audiomack streams don’t exactly equate great revenue. TIDAL pays the highest, Napster pays 12,500 for one million streams and Mdundo has a 50-50 split with artists, Audiomack freemium is rumoured to pay under $10 for 5,000 streams.

Z @djboothEIC

Hi Eazi. Your distributor, Vydia, delivers and monetizes your music on Audiomack. If you have not seen payment from them, I would urge you and your team to speak with Vydia directly. To be clear: you *are* earning royalties on Audiomack.

Don Eazi @mreazi

This one na audiomack o money no dey dia! Anyway still thanks I appreciate!!! https://t.co/nWvHo2eEtX

In fact, Mr. Eazi recently had a Twitter back and forth with Brian Zisook, the Vice President of Content Operations at Audiomack about payment. In a way, the criticism is valid. It certainly doesn’t help Audiomack that its platforms lay claims to the highest streams for any African artist.

Why does Audiomack pay so low?

Audiomack now has a premium service that charges a competitive price. So, that means its payment to artists is about to improve drastically, but problems will still persist because the larger number of Nigerians/Africans who use Audiomack will still consume music from the freemium, ad-based model - at least, over the next few years, they will.

That means even though an Omah Lay might have premium listeners from 70 million streams off his next EP, a significant amount of those listeners will consume on the freemium end and payment might still not be the best even though it will be significantly improved.

The reason is simple; Audiomack’s freemium model is ad-based and it might not be fair to expect Audiomack to pay out the greatest money on that model.

Ad-based models have become a troubling idea for even media companies. Platforms like Guardian UK, Vox and more are asking for contribution from readers for sustenance. In the same vein, Audiomack is not Spotify. The ads it will get will probably not be on the level that even a TIDAL can lay claim to.

And considering the fact that Spotify - the biggest streaming platform in the world - is struggling to be cash-flow positive, it’s only reasonable to assume that Audiomack itself isn’t making the greatest money in the world.

In essence, it would be harsh to keep hammering on Audiomack to improve its payments to artists when it could be detrimental to its operations. The definition of business is to pay as you earn. If Audiomack was earning a lot of money, it would pay artists great money because like most of the other platforms except Deezer, it pays artists on a market share model, not a user-centric model.

This means that the amount its able to generate from users - both from ads and subscription - will determine the amount it pays to artists based on their streams. If it doesn’t have a lot of users, it won’t generate a lot of funds and that means artists might not make a lot of money.

A significant amount of listeners of Nigerian/African artists jump on the freemium side of Audiomack. In that regard, it’s only trying to do right by the artist. That’s probably not generating a lot of money like premium services would. Critics might need to slow down on the Audiomack as regards payment. Evidence suggests it’s doing the best it can in a crazy African system.

In that manner, Audiomack might also need to reconsider the fact that African artists get most of their streams from its platform.

While those streams are precious to African artists who show them off and plaster them in EPKs to negotiate deals with companies like Platoon, OneRPM, Ditto and so forth, the issue of payment will always arise. But maybe those African artists should also consider taking their music off Audiomack freemium and limit it to Audiomack premium.

But slight problem; African artists get most of their streams from Audiomack freemium and that also gives Audiomack a lot of brand equity. So, it will be hard…

#ListenAfricaExtra - Here are additional bits of content from the past week;

Watch new Facts Only with Motolani Alake as he reviews Carpe Diem by Olamide;
Joan Omionawele spoke with Gospel legend, Tope Alabi;
Excel Joab of Boombuzz speaks with Candy Bleakz on Buzz Discoveries;
You can catch up with Motolani Alake’s work this week HERE.
Fu’ad Lawal, Editor-In-Chief at Zikoko starts a newsletter, Vistanium.
Veteran Culture Journalist, Ayomide Tayo launched the first installment of his newsletter, Naija Times.You can also get his podcast, 234 Essential HERE.
Veteran Journalist and Tech professional, Chiagoziem Onyekwena also manages GetDotAfrica, a weekly newsletter on happenings in African Tech.
Davido Adeleke, Head of Communication at Eko Atlantic started Communique, a newsletter.
Veteran Nigerian Journalist and Director of Marketing at OPay, Osagie Alonge is back with a new podcast titled, A Music In Time.
You can catch up with veteran Nigerian Journalist, Jide Taiwo’s newsletter History Made for some mind-blowing stories about Nigerian music.

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