African Music Streaming Startup Secures Investment From Father Of Beyoncé & Solange
An African music streaming platform known as MePlaylistTM has earned attention and bagged investment from Mathew Knowles, the father of global music icon, Beyoncé Knowles and music sensation, Solange Knowles. The size and nature of the investment were not disclosed.
Founded by Nigerian, Olakunle Oladehin, who describes himself as a “seasoned entertainment insider, MePlaylistTM claims to be a 100 percent African solution to music consumption and promotion.
With increasing mobile phone usage in Africa and the global prominence of African acts like Diamond Platinumz, Davido, Tiwa, Wizkid, Yemi Alade and Burna Boy, convenient and reliable platforms with expansive catalogues of streamable musical content are far from the norm on the African continent.
Many streaming platforms are known to prioritize commercialisation efforts in high-income countries, paying less attention to low and middle-income countries.
This has created a gap between Africa’s rich musical content and the need to reach fans through channels that make monetisation and exchange of value easier and convenient.
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It is with a view to solving these problems that MePlaylistTM was birthed. The music streaming platform claims to present music content to users in an intuitive and data-friendly fashion, projecting African acts to the world and vice versa.
As Olakunle put it, “Our focus is to put our users and their music consumption habits first; our platform has been designed with the understanding that people are mobile and constantly in need of new content, so from our interface to our catalogue options, we are making the MePlaylistTM experience the best in the market.”
Olakunle further emphasized the increasing importance of user-generated content (UGC) to give more visibility to music that matters. In his words, “MePlaylistTM has been designed to be an intelligent music app that applies artificial intelligence to give each user a unique experience.”
As seen in a press release, MePlaylistTM boasts a unique administrative royalty distribution, multiple plan types, and subscription currencies, high-quality audio, plus DDEX standards for ingesting and reporting usage.
These amongst others are believed to have attracted global music stakeholders to the platform, among whom is the head of the Knowles family — making it possible to partner with music distributors globally.
Mathew Knowles is perhaps best known as the father of Beyoncé Knowles and Solange Knowles but what many may not know is that he has also earned his stripes as the leader of a successful music record label — the same label that saw the famous Destiny Child enter the limelight.
Under his leadership, Music World Entertainment Corporation catalogue label boasts major names like Chaka Khan, Kool & The Gang, The O’Jays, Solange, Michelle Williams, and countless others.
Commenting on his association with the African streaming platform, Mathew who is also an MBA/a PhD holder, a public speaker, #1 best-selling author and a university professor currently teaching at Prairie View A&M, said,
“MePlaylistTM is Africa’s own answer to the popular music streaming platforms, but it takes streaming a step further by personalizing the experience for each consumer based on their consumption patterns and the technology available to them. This and the population of Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora is why I am proud to have invested in MePlaylistTM.”
According to a year-end report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), revenues from streaming services grew nearly 20 percent in 2019 to USD 8.8 Bn, accounting for 79.5 percent of all recorded music revenues.
This means the streaming music services’ share of total music revenues is bigger than ever.
MePlaylistTM Founder, Oladehin, believes that everyone will find their favourite kind of music on the app and anticipates that pre-launch subscription figures will shoot up significantly in the coming days as more Nigerians experience the seamless features of the MePlaylistTM app.
“Whether you are looking for the next Wizkid, Burna Boy or Tiwa Savage song or your taste is more Obesere and King Sunny Ade, we have something for you on an app that makes the music more interesting for you,” he said.
