Spotify launched in Kenya this week and it is something we have been waiting for a long time. The music streaming service is loved by people for its playlists and algorithm. That is why it has over 345 million subscribers with 155 million of those on Spotify Premium globally even before expanding to 80 more countries.
Spotify has grown over time where apart from the main Spotify app, they also have Spotify Lite on Android, Spotify for Artists and also Anchor for creating podcasts.
I had the opportunity to interview Kalle Persson, Senior Product Manager at Spotify’s Stockholm office to shed more light about Spotify’s entry to Kenya and talked more about the apps that Spotify has.
The Much Loved Algorithm
Spotify is loved for its playlists which is thanks to its algorithm and from human editors that curate these playlists. When they launched in Kenya, they had already made a Made in Kenya playlist, Gengetone playlist and much more. I was curious how they do that.
“So we have over a hundred expertly curated playlists for all of Africa. And we have been, this has been in the works for some time. We have an expert team of, you know, music experts, uh, that are really, really good at looking at different markets, different genres, different cultures, and seeing what is actually the most popular content right now, as well as finding content that suits different modes and moments.”
These playlists, according to Kalle are a mix between human and machine learning. There are more than 4 billion playlists in Spotify created by users, editorial team and artists. The strength of their algorithm is much loved around the world and he explained two of their popular playlists: Discover Weekly and Release Radar.
“Discovery weekly looks at the artists that you like and the songs that you play often and it looks at other playlists that contain the same songs and then analyze what other songs does this playlist contain. And these type of big data, um, sort of powered feature is, is definitely a pillar of our personalization strategy.”
“Release radar is very similar in the sense that it looks, it analyzes what your favorite artists are and what you listen to over and over. And then it just makes sure that you have the most recent releases from them in a single playlist that’s unique to you. And with this, you also see our sort of blend between machine powered playlist, and also the editorial expertise that we have.
“We also have a daily mixes, which is based on different types of genres that you could prefer, and they are automatically generated for you so that you can look at the different parts of your music tastes and listen to a specific genres was often on time in one single playlist.”
Kalle also demonstrated how Spotify helps you in creating playlists. When you create one, there is a feature that lets you quickly search for and add songs to it. It also suggests songs you may want to add to it which is quite cool.
Podcasts
Spotify has steadily invested a lot of capital on growing its podcast empire. They have bought podcast companies and a podcast advertising company. Spotify’s intent is loud and clear: They want to be the only source of podcasts as well as making it easy for one to create a podcast through Anchor.
“We currently have 2.2 million podcasts, and that is not episodes that’s actual podcast shows on the entire platform, he said.” “We see a lot of content being created through Anchor and that’s really great to see.”
He was confident of the uptake of podcasts in Africa through Spotify. ” We are very excited about the potential of podcasts and how consumers in Africa can experience them in Spotify with the combination of Anchor being great for distribution and creation.”
Spotify Lite
“I’m mostly focusing on markets outside of Europe and the US,” he said to me in the introduction. “I’ve been bringing to market a pretty long list of products over the years most recently Spotify Lite which are also launching in Kenya and other markets in Kenya,” he added.
Kenya is a developing market where a majority do not have expensive smartphones that can handle the full Spotify app. That is why Spotify has the Spotify Lite app for markets like Kenya. “We know Africa is a huge market. You know, it’s a continent with many different markets and consumers and different needs. We know it’s very Android heavy, obviously compared to iPhone or other platforms. And we know that internet connectivity is a problem because of the size and the manage challenges,” Kalle explained.
Kalle said that Spotify Lite had a simple goal. “So what we wanted to do with Spotify Lite was to make, um, the Spotify experience available for everyone regardless of their, of their phone and their data connection. So we built Spotify, like from the ground up to have a smaller footprint, it’s more basic than our main Spotify app, but it has the same core features of personalization, podcasts and music to create an audio experience.”
Spotify for Artists
Artists are usually paid for streams on Spotify. Each platform has their own figure and it is structured in a way that the more streams you get, the higher you get paid.
“Before coming to the new markets in Africa, we’ve been in South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and other African markets and it has been amazing to see how a lot of the local artists on this markets or local genres how they’ve been flying outside,” Nouran Hassan from Spotify explained.
Nouran also gave an example of how Amapiano was able to branch away from South Africa to other markets. “What was fascinating here is how it jumped and picked up in markets like the UK and US,” she said. Nouran added that during the pandemic, the number one streamed local playlist was Amapiano Grooves.
She also talked about the Emerging Artist program Radar. “So far, we have 4 artists from Africa, Tems from Nigeria that Kalle likes, we had a lady from South Africa, we had Focalistic, we had emerging trap artists form South Africa. So we’ve been supporting them by offering marketing support, editorial support and the art push.”
I was curious as to how the payment system works. Spotify pays between $1 per 302 streams and $1 per 229 streams as of 2019. “We do not pay artists directly, of course it goes through labels, it goes through contracts they have with their distributors,” she said. This applies to artists who are signed up in labels.
For indie artists, she explained further about how their system works. “They can go through distributors where they sign up to have their music distributed on various platforms. We also have a dedicated website for Spotify for artists that actually has FAQs for artists,” Nouran added.
Will Spotify HiFi come to Africa?
During the Stream On event, Spotify announced that they will have a higher streaming quality tier called Spotify HiFi that I was pumped about. Currently, Spotify Premium maxes out at 320kbps so I asked Kalle if we will get that in Africa.
“So our current plan is to launch Spotify HiFi in select markets in the beginning of this year. We will look forward to share more about these specific markets are and how this develops in the coming months, but its great to know that there’s a fan in Kenya.”
