by Ify Obi
Since 2017, Afrobeats has enjoyed significant growth by 550% on Spotify. The genre was streamed over 13 billion times in 2022, with Gen Z making up 35% of its listeners.
To shed more light and give broader context to the genre's journey, the streaming giant has launched Afrobeats: Journey of a Billion Streams. The dedicated website will serve as an archive of Afrobeats' key data through text, infographics and visual elements, including Spotify streaming data and results from the Spotify-commissioned April 2023 Afrobeats survey.
Some of the data points include; The Top Female Afrobeats Artists, Afrobeats Emerging Markets, Age Group Listening to Afrobeats and more.
“There is no doubt that Afrobeats as a genre is here to stay, and will only continue to shatter more ceilings. In 2023 alone, the genre has been played for more than 223 million hours with streams exceeding 7.1 billion on Spotify. We created this site for both new and longtime fans of the genre, who would like to have a better understanding of how and where this explosive sound came to be,” says Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, Spotify’s Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa.
The site will be updated on a biweekly basis for the next 8 weeks but will remain active beyond this as an always-on resource, with frequent updates on new Afrobeats moments. It will also include an interactive experience for fans to discover and connect with new knowledge on Afrobeats.