Rinchi
TechInAfrica – The African music streaming app, Playfre has just hit the milestone of 1 million streams with more than 5,000 registered users. It was launched by LAGbook’s Founder, Chika Nwaogu, in May 1st this year in Lagos, Nigeria. It provides more than 50 million songs for Africans than can be accessed for free.
According to Nwaogo as quoted from Nextv News, he and the team had been developing a music platform that can compete with Spotify. It is claimed as the first indigenous music streaming platform with the same experience as Spotify.
The 1 million streams is a big milestone for the music streaming platform as it was just launched barely four months. Currently, it allows both registered and unregistered users to stream songs on the platform. However, in the near future, Nwaogu said that they plan to restrict it to only registered users.
“Streaming of songs on Playfre is not only limited to registered users at the moment. We are looking to restrict music streaming to only registered users in a bid to increase to a number of registered users on Playfre in the near future.”
The platform provides more than 50 songs from 2 million artists for free. In terms of the catalog size, Playfre is the largest music streaming service in Africa. Since the launch, it has grown steadily with an average of 250 streams per registered users.
Furthermore, it is Africa’s first music streaming service to join the International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa). iDMAa is an association that has the dedication to serve practitioners, educators, scholars, and organization specializing in digital media.
“We have been speaking with prospective investors lately and Playfre will soon go beyond being bootstrapped to become venture-backed,” said Nwaogu who’s also the CEO of Playfre.
Tosin Emmanuel, the newly appointed COO of Playfre’s SongRoute said: “Playfre wants to be more than just a music streaming service but also a platform that helps African artists monetize their creatives easily and free too. We have distributed over 100 contents since the launch of SongRoute by Playfre. We hope someday to also help African acts get their content on both local music streaming services in Africa and the rest of the world.”
Playfre has operations in Kenya and Nigeria but can be accessed by people across Africa. To date, it has more than 5,000 registered users and more than 1,000,000 streams.
