Swangz Avenue musicians pose for a photo recently. PHOTO/ COURTESY
If you have been looking at people and different artists' social media pages, you will notice that many have been sharing banners that show the artists they listened to and how many hours they spent listening to music in 2024.
Well, that is called Spotify Wrapped for people listening and streaming music through the streaming platform. Spotify introduced Wrapped in 2016 at the end of November, where they release individual data of subscribers for them to see which songs they listened to more than others and also get to relive the moments close to their hearts musically. Basically, Spotify Wrapped is one way of reviewing one’s year through music.
Spotify Wrapped typically includes the five musicians, songs, and musical genres that a Spotify user listened to the most throughout the previous year. Producers of content on the platform, such as artists and podcasters, also have access to a version of Spotify Wrapped, which includes the number of times their content has been streamed that year. In addition to individualised data, Spotify Wrapped also includes information about activity on the Spotify platform as a whole. While Spotify Wrapped is commonly referred to as an annual collection of data, only activity from January 1st to October 31 is counted for any given year.
Spotify Wrapped is shared widely on social media each year and has led millions of people to promote Spotify on their social media accounts.
Thus, last week, when Spotify released this year’s edition of Wrapped, the season was on from subscribers to artists and podcasters, and there were many updates that were about Spotify.
The trend
With Uganda still picking up the habit of streaming music, there were clearly many people bothered by the many Spotify-related banners on WhatsApp statuses and social media accounts such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
New school artists such as Kohen Jaycee, Azawi, Izabel UG, Jenesis Kimera, Kavali King, and Joshua Baraka, among others, shared their wrapped details.
However, Spotify doesn’t only release data for subscribers and creators; they also release collective data for countries.
Daily Monitor exclusively accessed Spotify Wrapped data, which summarised Uganda’s behaviour on the streaming platform. Unlike the past years, however, when the data detailed most streamed Ugandan songs outside Uganda and most listened to Ugandan artists outside Uganda, this year Spotify kept a lot of information to themselves.
According to the document the platform shared with this media house, the trend of Ugandans listening to Nigerian artists over local artists is still with us. 80 percent of Uganda’s top 10 most streamed artists are from Nigeria, with names like Asake, Burna Boy, Ayra Starr, Davido, Rema, and Fireboy DML taking up key positions. Of course this is a trend that has been noticed in East Africa for the past few years; from Kenya to Rwanda, most of the countries rarely have their local artists in the most streamed, but Nigerians.
Clever decisions
However, many Ugandan artists have started understanding and appreciating how streaming platforms work thus have begun promoting music on these platforms to their fanbase.
Other artistes have learnt how to engage the audience and tapping into new markets through collaborations; Joshua Baraka for instance collaborated with Nigerian artists Fave, DJ Neptune, KrizBeats, Tiphe, Twitch 4Eva, Qing Madi and Simi, that’s alongside collaborations with South African singer and songwriter Nkosazana Daughter, Ghanaian singer and songwriter KiDi and Kenyan composer Bensoul among others.
Most of these collaborations seem very calculated, and they reflect on his numbers across the streaming platforms. Diigi, alongside Kenyan artist Mr. Tee, for instance, hit a million views in three weeks on YouTube and surpassed a million streams on Spotify. This year, Baraka became the first Ugandan artist to hit 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
The remix of Dalilah alongside Qing Madi and Simi managed more than three million streams on Spotify, while the original did a million views on YouTube.
Then there is Azawi, alongside Joshua Baraka, the two have taken over Eddy Kenzo’s spot as the local artiste with the most listeners. In the past years, Azawi was never big on collaborations, though at the turn of last year, she has collaborated with labelmates at Swangz Avenue, Elijah Kitaka, Vinka, Zafaran and Winnie Nwagi.
Swangz Avenue takeover
The artists of Swangz Avenue have done an amazing job of collaborating within themselves and outside which reflects on their numbers in a way. For example, even when Kitaka’s Dawa has been one of Uganda’s biggest songs, one of his most streamed songs is Elevated, a collaboration between him, Azawi, Bensoul from Kenya and Mike Kaihura from Rwanda. Elevated may not have been bigger than Masavu but performed better than the later and it’s probably because both Kenyan and Rwandan fanbases of Bensoul and Kaihura could stream it. In the same way, Vinka’s most streamed songs this year are collaborations Chekecha alongside Winnie Nwagi and Karole Kasita and Believe alongside Dax Vibez.
The power of strategic collaboration lifted Swangz Avenue artists to dominate Spotify’s top five places as the most streamed Ugandan artists in Uganda.
Azawi is on top of the list as the most streamed local artist, followed by Vinka, Elijah Kitaka, and Winnie Nwagi. Joshua Baraka is the outlier in the fifth position.
It is very unprecedented for artists from the same management company to dominate all positions of any chart, but this goes down to show the investment and probably professionalism the record label has brought to the industry over the years.
The label also dominated the most listened-to local albums, with Azawi and Elijah Kitaka dominating the top three spots with African Music, Bedroom Essentials, and Sankofa, respectively.
The detail
However, even when Baraka is fifth, he pulls off better numbers than the four artists above him, mainly because his music is also consumed in at least many other markets. Such as Nigeria, where some of his collaborators, especially Qing Madi, had one of the most successful years of her career.
Qing Madi’s American Love was the second most streamed song in Uganda, topped by Asake’s Lonely at the Top. Unlike the past years where Uganda’s most streamed songs were all foreign, this year, one Ugandan song, Masavu, manages to squeeze itself into the mix of Nigerian songs.
Baraka is the Ugandan with the biggest number of monthly listeners, but Lucien and Moise, whose monthly listeners are 360,000 and 255,000, respectively, both had 13 million annual streams. Baraka had 12 million.
If you don’t know Lucien and Moise, it is because they are both electronic dance music artists whose music is exported to festivals and carnivals where it gets more love.
