Streaming platforms are not humongous in West Africa currently. However, their benefits in mass media publications, content promotion and acquisition, and marketing cannot be overemphasized.
Video and audio streaming networks are important for live orientation schemes, seminars, or lecture notes. It allows users to record long presentations without being interrupted unlike in CDs or social media platforms that only allow recordings with limited duration.
Streaming can be seen as an auxiliary route to file downloading from music blogs such as BaseNaija, hence it allows the user to obtain a file before listening to it.
The streaming media is beneficial for marketing and for entertainment. The introduction of media streaming has substituted the traditional style of content advertisement or promotion. It helps to build fame and prevent cases of copyright among content creators. From ours finding sorts the best, most popular, and easily accessed streaming platforms viz:
Spotify
This is a non-free or closed-source software programmed in 2006 by Daniel EK and Martin Lorentzon in Sweden for audio streaming.
Spotify is one of the largest music streaming media with about 422 million active users monthly; including 182 million subscribers. Its services are freemium, i.e. the basic features are free with limitations while additional features require money or premium.
As a user, you can search for contents based on the artist, music albums, and genre of the music. Activities of these searches can be edited into a single playlist.
In entertainment, Spotify is recommended for artists and music lovers…it creates a solid marketing relationship between artists and their fans. For the artist, it creates fame or boosts recognition. For instance, Ed Sheeran became the first artist to pass 500 million streams in 2015 with his song title “Thinking out Loud”.
After a month, “learn on” by Major Lazer and DJ Snake and MO had 525 million streams globally. This record was beaten shortly after by Rihanna and Justin Bieber to become the biggest artists on spotify with over 31.3 million monthly premium subscribers. Jahsen Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy, AKA xxxTentacion made 10.4 million streams in a day with his hit song “Sad”
In Nigeria presently, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Davido, BNXN, and Olamide are the five most streamed local artists on spotify.
From the paragraph above, one can clearly see the multipurpose facets of spotify to artists. It does not only boost fame but it also reveals talent, hard work, and consistency in artists.
For the listeners, Spotify gives free access to millions of contents via PC, laptops, or mobile phones.
Audiomack
Audiomack is a music streaming platform too, it allows users to post as much content as they can via its mobile app and website. Though it started in 2012, the use of Audiomack for audio streaming had been very rampant with over 2.7 million daily active users.
Audiomack playlist can be merged with spotify by premium users thus, allowing them to share the same playlist using different streaming networks.
It also gives artists and fans full access to old, recent, and latest contents.
Apple Music
This is a music, audio, and video streaming platform that allows users to create an online playlist of their favourite contents on demand and play them offline like Audiomack.
This streaming service was announced in 2015. Since then, it offers content like apple country music, music hits, and internet radio stations every 24 hours.
Apple Music allows users to stream over 90 million songs to their device on demand with preferences. Like other streaming platforms, it has its scheduled premiums for continents of all kinds except the live internet radio broadcast.
Boomplay
It was launched in 2015 as a pre-installed audio app in phones. Boom play is commonly used in western Africa, Boom Play is a streaming platform developed by Transsnet (a joint venture between two Chinese companies, Transsion and NetEase.
The music app has been ranked No.1 audio app numerous times on Google Play store in many African countries with over 1.5 million fanbases. So far as Africa is concerned, Boom play remains the highest streaming platform with over 75 million users.
It is programmed to “sense” and sort new, popular, or frequently played songs for users. It also gives music lovers the opportunity to search for more information about artists of their choice.
Note: in as much as Boom Play is the most ranked in Africa, it cannot be compared with other streaming platforms like spotify; probably due to the latter’s massive content upload and users.
YT Music
Youtube Music, the last on the list, is also a streaming platform for music lovers, contents uploaded or viewed on YT music app or site are majorly music videos. Videos are streamed based on genre, popularity, recommendations, or by individual search inputs.
YT Music app was developed in 2015 along with YT premium. Music available include mostly those posted by mainstream artists and any category of video on YT services extensively.
YT Music has subscriptions, it allows new users access to its contents on free-trier, and then scheduled premiums follow.