My mind has equal parts been buzzing with nerves and excitement for the work cut out for us at The Jollof Diary. At our core, we’re working to enhance the art of music business storytelling through meaningful data; steering clear of fluffs or sentimentalities. I like to think magic can happen when we uncover stories concealed within the depths of data, especially from emerging markets like Sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA regions.

It's currently 2:00 a.m. here in Lagos, Nigeria, and these thoughts have led me to the Luminate midyear music report which I delved right into. The report explores listening trends and how they have defined the state of the music industry in the first half of 2023.

PS: Luminate is the data resource behind Billboard and other Charts

If you’ve heard from me long enough, you surely know of my deep appreciation for numbers and data. So, I’m compelled to share some fascinating insights as they also pertain to Afrobeats, making it all the more worth it.

120,000 New Music Daily???

First takeaway is that an average of 120,000 ISRCs (new music audio files) were added to music streaming services every day in Q1 2023. Mad!, because recently, I estimated it to be 100,000. So, if we consider these numbers as a daily average, by the end of this year, about 40 million new tracks would have been uploaded to Spotify and other music streaming services. That's a 17% increase compared to the roughly 34 million tracks in 2022.

Global & US Streaming Performance

According to Luminate’s report, the total number of on-demand song streams (combining audio and video) experienced an impressive growth of 30.8% in the first half of 2023, reaching a staggering 3.3 trillion streams globally. For comparison sake, in the first half of 2022, there were 2.5 trillion on-demand song streams.

If we focus specifically on on-demand audio song streams worldwide, they rose by 22.9% year over year, totaling 2 trillion streams. In the US, the largest music market in the world, on-demand audio streams grew by 13.5% to reach a whopping 616.5 billion streams. Additionally, on-demand song streams (including both audio and video) grew by 15% year over year, accumulating a total of 713.5 billion streams.

PS: "On-demand streams" is an entertainment/music consumption at your convenience, with the flexibility to play, pause, rewind, or skip as you please (basically your normal behaviour with streaming apps). As opposed to being tied to a fixed broadcast schedule like traditional TV or radio.

Afrobeats in the US

In the 'Snapshot of Genres Around the World' slide, the report highlights three genres that are experiencing global growth: 

• Regional Mexican Music
• Afrobeats
• J-Pop

Per Luminate's findings, Afrobeats generated a staggering 2.5 billion on-demand audio streams in the US in the first half of 2023 - a 34% increase from same period in 2022. It trailed behind Mexican music which generated 10.4 billion streams - a 50% increase from same period last year. Then J-Pop generated 662.4 million on-demand audio streams in the US during the first half of 2023, showing a growth rate of 29.6% compared to the previous year.

These streams are primarily propelled by specific artists in their respective regions.

From Afrobeats' 2.5 billion streams, Burna Boy stood out with an impressive 255.8 million streams, accounting for around 10% of the total. Not only did Burna Boy make waves in the US, but globally he amassed a staggering 1.1 billion on-demand streams.

Tems generated 183.4 million streams in the US, making up around 7.3% of the total on-demand streams. On a global scale, Tems accumulated 303.8 million streams across various platforms.

Wizkid closely follows with 181.2 million US streams, representing roughly 7.2% of the total Afrobeats streams in the country. Wizkid's global numbers soared with an impressive 532.9 million on-demand streams. 

For Afrobeats listeners in the US, the distribution reveals some interesting patterns as approximately 27% of these listeners are estimated to be from the Gen Z demographic, while about 63% are likely to identify as LGBTQ+. Additionally, another 63% of Afrobeats listeners are likely to be non-black. 

While Afrobeats keeps carving its place globally, Isn’t it interesting to see the diverse range of listeners exploring the music?