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From Rema to Ayra Starr, Mavin Global’s Rima Tahini Ighodaro is a ‘First Responder’ for the Nigerian Label’s Stars

December 19, 2024

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African music is pop music. The long-awaited introduction of the best African music performance category at the 2024 Grammys, when Burna Boy became the first African artist to perform during the awards ceremony, is proof of its undeniable cultural dominance. And U.S. superstars like Chris Brown, Travis Scott and Beyoncé are reaching out to African artists like Lojay, Tyla and Tems, respectively, for hit collaborations. 
However, Western recognition only scratches the surface of what’s coming together on the continent. Music consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 114% in the last year, according to Spotify’s annual Wrapped data report. Burna Boy, Wizkid and Davido’s top cities on Spotify are all in their native Nigeria, solidifying Africa’s foundation to launch homegrown music to the rest of the world. And no other label in Africa has been as successful in doing so as Nigeria’s Mavin Global. 

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Founded in 2012 by legendary Nigerian producer and executive Don Jazzy, Mavin Global has been instrumental in making Afrobeats one of Nigeria’s greatest exports. With Tiwa Savage and Wande Coal as the label’s first artists, Mavin is still regarded as an incubator and launchpad for an entirely new generation of Afropop stars. Its current roster is larger than ever with 12 artists: There’s Johnny Drille with his alternative-folk sound, Ladipoe who leans into rap, and Lifesize Teddy, whose Afro-fusion blend speaks to Gen Z. 

And of course, there’s Rema and Ayra Starr, two artists signed as teens in 2019 who’ve become the label’s marquee stars and commanded the world’s attention. Rema’s 2022 single “Calm Down” from his debut album Rave & Roses is one of the most commercially successful Afrobeats songs of all time, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, with the help of a Selena Gomez-assisted remix, and became the first track by an African artist to hit one billion streams on Spotify. And Starr’s 2022 single “Rush” earned the Afropop singer her first Grammy nomination in the best African music performance category.

Both artists also released their seminal sophomore albums this year, Rema with his daring HEIS and Starr with her coming-of-age The Year I Turned 21. Rema’s gothic tribute to his hometown of Benin City was created in response to the backlash from his sold-out, headlining show at London’s O2 Arena last November. He rode a giant bat – a nod to Benin City’s most popular animal – and wore a replica of Queen Idia’s famous mask in reference to historical artifacts, known as the Benin Bronzes, that were looted by British troops in 1897 and are currently being held at the British Museum. Meanwhile, Starr’s sophomore album calls upon an international assembly of artists – from Nigerian street pop stars Seyi Vibez and Asake to Brazilian pop superstar Anitta to American R&B singer-songwriters Coco Jones and Giveon – for support as she examines her transition into womanhood and navigates love, loss and life.

But there’s been one person behind the development of both artists: Rima Tahini Ighodaro, senior vp of A&R and creatives at Mavin. Guiding artists through what she refers to as “world-building,” the Lebanese-Sierra Leonean executive leads the 10-person A&R team that works with the label’s roster to both realize and reimagine their creative vision for their music – setting up studio sessions and liaising with the label’s other departments to maximize the artists’ full potential.

“With Rema, I went on maternity leave and he came to my house to visit me after I had my baby and was like, ‘Here’s my album.’ I didn’t even know when he had recorded it!” she tells Billboard. 

Rema and Rima Tahini Ighodaro

Courtesy of Rima Tahini Ighodaro

While critics have described HEIS as having a dark energy compared to the lighter, Afropop sound of his earlier material like his breakthrough 2019 single “Dumebi,” Tahini Ighodaro argues “[he’s] more like experimenting with the old and what has always been true to Afrobeats to birth a new sound. For an artist like Rema, who knows exactly what he wants and desires to explore his potential fully, and continuously pushes the boundaries, he always needs a trusted soundboard.” 

His experimentation paid off, and HEIS earned Rema his first Grammy nomination for best global music album at the upcoming 2025 awards show. “Last year was one of his biggest years in his career and you know we missed that Grammy moment
 but there’s a saying in my culture: ‘delay is not denial,’” says Tahini Ighodaro, in reference to “Calm Down” missing the eligibility period for the 2024 Grammys. “HEIS is a project that was personal to him, he led a lot of the creativity in the music and stood by it even as it got backlash. It was a culture shock in a lot of ways, but I’m happy that he was recognized for the whole [album] as opposed to just a popular single.” 

Rema’s boundary-pushing approach also rings true for Starr, who has evolved sonically as well as conceptually. Her Afropop, Afrobeats and Nigerian folk sensibilities in earlier projects have molded the sound of a well-rounded global pop star. “Making 21 was so different from [Starr’s debut album] 19 and Dangerous because she’s grown so much as a person [and] as an artist,” Tahini Ighodaro says. “She really knows how she wants to tell her story and wants to be at the forefront of everything, making certain decisions where she might have previously, due to age and inexperience, leant into A&R guidance, when it came to working with producers and other artists and crafting her sonic direction.” 

Ayra Starr and Rima Tahini Ighodaro

Rima Tahini Ighodaro

On HEIS and The Year I Turned 21, Tahini Ighodaro adopted an even more hands-on approach, “giving feedback on the music, helping the artists communicate their creative vision to the teams involved and ensuring that their vision was properly executed,” she says, while simultaneously taking care of other tasks like “clearances, feature management and commissioning the right creative teams to work on artwork, music videos, photoshoots.” In the prolonged chaos of putting together an album, Tahini Ighodaro also served as a grounding force for both artists. “Sometimes the artists forget what they initially committed to or they deviate or maybe get in their heads. I was always on standby to reel them back in,” Tahini Ighodaro explains. “Creatives need a first responder.”

Six years since she started working at Mavin, Tahini Ighodaro has found that the job involves more than just developing the musical direction of an artist’s career. It’s also about empowering an artist to create their own trajectory, and she doesn’t take that responsibility lightly. “This is essentially a people business – and if you don’t have empathy, a high tolerance for working with different types of people and emotionally investing into their vision, then it just won’t work. Whatever music is made is a byproduct of how they’ve been made to feel,” she says. 

Tahini Ighodaro uses this same empathy-led approach when developing artists who go through Mavin Academy, which develops newly signed artists for two years through vocal training, live performance practice, branding, creative direction and media training at Mavin’s headquarters in Lagos, before the label officially introduces them to the world upon their “graduation.” This process of grooming and preparation, dating back to Motown’s legendary artist development department in the mid-1960s, had been a mainstay of the pop music machine prior to the current era of overnight, viral success that often thrusts young artists into the spotlight. “The Academy is centered on the intentionality of building an artist [and] their craft. Artists come and go – we call it ‘blow’ in Nigeria, when they come up off one hit or a couple of bangers,” she explains. The Academy is more than a one-stop shop for making an African superstar; it serves as a reminder of Mavin’s legacy of building a foundation at home, which is a recurring theme in Tahini Ighodaro’s life and ascent in the African music scene. “It’s about shaping well rounded artists that have something to hold on to, even after their relationship with Mavin ends,” she says. 

A deep sense of pride for the continent is something she has worn on her sleeve since she was designing and selling traditional clothes at diasporic gatherings and events at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., where she studied business and economics. “I always knew I wanted to work in Africa,” she says. “I didn’t think America needed me, because Africa is where I would feel a sense of purpose.” After graduating in 2016, she landed her first job as a senior associate at Kupanda Capital, a venture capital firm focused on incubating, capitalizing and scaling pan-African companies. “I was so excited because it aligned with how I wanted to come back to the continent.” Tahini Ighodaro says.

When she joined Kupanda, the firm was looking into investing in media and entertainment companies in Africa at a pivotal time when the music was exploding into the U.S. mainstream – think Davido’s “Fall,” which gained traction on U.S. radio and reached No. 13 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, or Wizkid’s feature on Drake’s “One Dance,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and became the first song to reach one billion streams on Spotify. She moved to Lagos in 2017 to work on Kupanda Holdings’ multi-million-dollar investment in Mavin Global (Kupanda Holdings is a joint venture between Kupanda Capital and TPG Growth). 

As a result of that deal, Tahini Ighodaro built relationships with Mavin CEO Don Jazzy and COO and president Tega Oghenejobo and its artists. While she was initially brought on to work on the due diligence of the deal between Kupanda and Mavin, she later grew interested in working on the creative side of the label and having a more direct impact on the artists’ careers. When the director of A&R role became available later that year, Don Jazzy and Oghenejobo thought she would be the perfect fit, in large part due to her empathy and ability to deal with so many different characters. “Don Jazzy and Tega could see how excited I was working on this side of the business. I always thought that this role was exclusively about music, but they explained that it’s more about having a high tolerance for working with others, as well as a good eye,” she explains.

Tahini Ighodaro’s senior role at Mavin is a positive signifier of increasing representation of women in African music, which she says is much better than it was when she first started but argues there’s still more work to be done. While pointing to powerful women – like Bose Ogulu, Burna Boy’s momager, and Wizkid’s manager Jada Pollock – as some of the few visible female executives, she admits navigating a male-dominated field “felt lonely at the time, not having a counterpart in the same industry who you could look at as a mentor or to be able to carve your career path.” When she started working at Mavin, her colleague at Kupanda Capital, Jordan Slick, also joined the label as its director of operations (she later became Mavin’s advisory and board observer). Tahini Ighodaro says they were the first women to work there, and six years later, there are three other women in senior roles at the company. “Women are in probably more than half of the executive roles at Mavin – operations, finance, legal and business affairs,” she says.

Tahini Ighodaro is also optimistic about the increased opportunity for meaningful investment into Africa’s musical legacy. In February, Universal Music Group bought a majority stake in Mavin Global, aiming to “accelerate Mavin’s strategic advancement” by focusing on two initiatives: nurturing talent through Mavin Academy and developing the next generation of African music executives through its executive leadership program. In addition to the pan-African aspirations, Tahini Ighadoro has her eyes on world domination beyond the continent. 

“The attention from the major markets is so exciting – looking at places like India, where ‘Calm Down’ was one of the biggest tracks last year, is positive,” she reflects. “We want to continue to break barriers and build on that. But the true North Star is building on our local industry [and] channeling the global momentum into solid foundations that will pour into Africa’s creative economy.”  

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Burna Boy Announces Eighth Album ‘No Sign of Weakness’ & New Single ‘Bundle by Bundle’

December 17, 2024

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Burna Boy announced on Tuesday (Dec. 17) that he will be releasing his eighth studio album, No Sign of Weakness, next year via Spaceship, Bad Habit and Atlantic Records. He kicked off the album rollout with the release of his new single “Bundle by Bundle” the same day. Produced by his frequent collaborator Telz, “Bundle […]

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50 Cent, Davido & Mary J. Blige to Join Forces for Massive Stadium Show in London

December 17, 2024

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50 Cent, Davido and Mary J. Blige have announced a special gig scheduled to take place July 3 at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The date will see the three global superstars perform together as co-headliners for the first time. Tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. GMT this Friday (Dec. 20) via Ticketmaster.

For Blige, the show will follow her spring North American headlining tour in support of new LP Gratitude. On Nov. 29, the R&B legend also celebrated the 30th anniversary of her sophomore album, My Life, which spawned the singles “Be Happy,” “I’m Goin Down” and “Mary Jane.”

Speaking to Billboard earlier this year, Blige described the record as being “pivotal” to her success, adding that its creation allowed her to find herself as an artist. “My fans have given me so much, and when I say, ‘We did it,’ I mean my fans and I,” she said.

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50 Cent, meanwhile, has another huge U.K. show scheduled for July. The following week will see him headline Glasgow’s TRNSMT Festival (July 11), alongside Irish pop act The Script. The rapper recently landed his second video in the YouTube Billion Views Club with 2005 hit “Candy Shop,” joining “In Da Club.” His last studio album arrived in the form of 2014’s Animal Ambition.

In March 2023, Davido released his Timeless LP, which peaked at No. 37 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for best global music album at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Its Musa Keys-assisted track “Unavailable” went on to hit No. 3 on the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart.

The Nigerian-American artist is slated to drop his next album, 5ive, early next year. He unveiled lead single “Funds” with Odumodublvck and Chike earlier on Dec. 5; it featured a sample of the 1997 track “Vuli Ndlela” by South African singer-songwriter Brenda Fassie.“This one is straight from the heart – my story, my truth, my growth,” Davido wrote on Instagram uponn the song’s release. “This one’s for the dreamers, the go getters and everyone chasing what’s theirs! Thank you for riding with me.”

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Gracie Abrams, A. G. Cook, Victoria Monét & More Unpack Their Year-Defining Victories

December 16, 2024

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This year was largely defined by pop stars who rewrote the rules, genre outlaws who succeeded in new territory and a rap beef that gave us a unifying anthem. But throughout the year, a handful of artists were enjoying their own major milestones — ones that not only defined their year, but their career.
From award recognition to chart firsts to major synchs and more, artists including Victoria Monét, Gracie Abrams, Natasha Bedingfield, A. G. Cook, Carín León, and Tems reflect on their defining moments of the year.

Gracie Abrams

Gracie Abrams

Abby Waisler

Last year, every single time I watched The Eras Tour — which was every time I opened — never once did it feel like there was going to be an end. When we were asked to come back, knowing that it would be to close it out, I immediately felt so nostalgic for the experience. Over the past few challenging, strange, scary years, Taylor has been a source of light for people who desperately needed it, and for developing artists, the tour has been an unimaginably significant springboard. For my career, it’s been undeniable. It’s hard to make sense of streaming numbers on your phone — I’m not someone who’s ever really been super tapped into that data — so to track the difference in audience reception quite literally in front of my eyes on The Eras Tour has been mind-blowing. I thought I was hallucinating when I first heard [Swifties] singing my lyrics back.

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What was most exciting about my own headlining tour was that I had made [2024 second album] The Secret of Us with my live show in mind. I’ve had the most fun performing “us.” in particular because on the days I’m not singing it with Taylor, it becomes this duet between all of us onstage and everybody in the crowd. And it was nominated for a Grammy! The whole reason Taylor and I wrote it in the first place was we’d just come off a dinner where she’d very sweetly said we needed to celebrate my first Grammy nomination [for best new artist in 2023]. The full circle of it all is hard for me to wrap my head around.

The Secret of Us has had the most traction out of any of the projects I’ve put out before, and there are milestones that are fun to acknowledge. When “I Love You, I’m Sorry” ended up being the song that took off the most, I felt like it was — not that we needed it — permission to allow acoustic guitar to remain the driving force behind “That’s So True,” which came from the feeling of living with a burning, fiery rage of jealousy. Seeing the life that song is having right now is psychotic to me. The audience’s engagement has only felt stronger as these rooms have continued to, by some miracle, expand. But what I clock as my metric for success is how it feels to create a thing and then sing it with a group of people who resonate with it. I just can’t believe any of it is real.

Natasha Bedingfield

Natasha Bedingfield

Cameron Jordan

Last year, my publisher reached out and I recognized the name [in his pitch]. I was like, “Ah, [filmmaker] Will Gluck! I remember him.” My song “Pocketful of Sunshine” was a big part of his [2010] movie, Easy A. He seems to use my songs in things and they resonate. So when I wrote back [about using “Unwritten” in his new film], I said, “A hundred percent yes.”

I went to the premiere [of Anyone but You], and the actors were like, “They just kept making us sing your song!” I think he made them sing it in every scene. I remember my publisher being like, “They’re really using it a lot.” And they even came back after they edited the movie and said, “We actually want to give you a bit more money because we ended up using the song even more.” We were really blown away by how it was used and how funny it was. There’s a moment where Sydney [Sweeney] is looking up at [Glen Powell’s] butt, singing, “Reaching for something in the distance.” I mean, that’s the kind of humor that I love.

People watched the movie and they left singing the song, and then they filmed themselves singing it and put that up on TikTok. And I got a call from Will saying, “Because the song is trending on TikTok, it’s making more people go see the movie.” So it was this really amazing thing that kind of served each other.

It feels like “Unwritten” has been one of the songs of the year. I feel really touched by this, and I couldn’t have anticipated it. Last year, I was thinking, “We need to do something for the [20th] anniversary! Let’s celebrate. Let’s put music out.” And then this happened without me. It was outside of my control, and it’s just been wilder than I could have imagined.

I think it’s everyone’s song, but nobody knew that until Anyone but You. What’s so poetic about this is that “Unwritten” itself is a song that’s changing and growing, and the story about it is evolving. When I was writing it, we imagined the arenas and the stadiums and the crowd singing it. And when we were producing it, I remember being like, “How do we pick sounds that aren’t going to be dated?” “Unwritten” is like my baby, and I hope it keeps shape-shifting.

A. G. Cook

A.G. Cook

Henry Redcliffe

Charli and I were talking about doing remixes almost from the beginning. I was really pushing this notion that I have about music in general in the post-streaming era. I like that music doesn’t have to completely end at the album release; the masters that get uploaded to streaming aren’t necessarily the final version.

What’s been so nice about brat is that even the way it was rolled out, the Boiler Room set happening early on and so forth, it’s holistically been about there being different versions. We’d sometimes even talk about remixes while working on the tracks themselves. There was always this notion that at some point, there would be a high-effort extension of the album. Thematically, brat is so interesting in how it is pure Charli, not using features. But obviously there’s all that energy building up for actual collaborations to happen. We knew while making it that if we wanted to collaborate, that would go on the remix album, but we’d also give collaborators agency to make songs even more in their image.

The original tracks were operating in real time, so it was no surprise that the remix album just continued that experience [by reflecting on] those months [after brat’s release]. The confessional nature of brat also provoked a lot of the remix collaborators to match that. Especially the [“Girl, so confusing” remix with Lorde], because it was conceived right as the album came out. That set the tone for the remixes to be actual conversations.

For [the “Mean girls” remix with Julian Casablancas], we wanted to make sure he could really make it his own, that it wasn’t just “Julian’s going to jump on for a verse.” That would have felt wrong for everyone. Charli and I wanted to demonstrate, like, “We’re not precious. We’re fine to dismantle it.” There are some remixes that didn’t happen simply because we sent it to people and they didn’t know where to start or were uncomfortable making a completely different genre. But the “Mean girls” remix is a good example of making sure it didn’t just feel like a feature, but an amalgamation that would then challenge Charli and I to also put ourselves on it.

The original songs are as clubby as DJs want to make them, or not. There’s so much ammo in brat, so many intriguing moments that could be looped, taken apart. I’ve already heard people do so many of their own remixes. There are funny ones where Charli is interviewed and is like, “Yeah, I love dance music, but I don’t really like drum’n’bass.” Then there’ll be like 10 drum’n’bass remixes, almost as like a “f–k you.” I think that’s the most fun part.

CarĂ­n LeĂłn

Carin LeĂłn

Carlos Ruiz

Being at the Grand Ole Opry was culturally very significant. As a Latino, as a Mexican, as a fan of country music, to go to the capital of country and play inside the temple of country music meant a lot to me. I think we made our mark.

I’ve always been close to country music, listening to Johnny Cash, George Strait and the newer generation of artists who are so good and are breaking parameters and doing things differently, just as we are with Mexican music. I love what artists like Luke Combs and Post Malone are doing, but if I had to choose a single country act, it would be the great Chris Stapleton. He’s given us a lot of love.

In fact, the last time we performed in the South, we sang “Tennessee Whiskey,” and I said, “Respectfully, for me, the best country singer, technically and artistically speaking, is Chris Stapleton.” Then we realized his wife was there, and she got up and came to the stage to see us. It made me realize music really has no borders. We have a country project set for next year, mostly in English, with a lot of collaborations.

We’ve been making other inroads with country music this year, and one day my manager, Jorge Juárez, and I were on a flight and he said, “We’ve just been confirmed for the Grand Ole Opry.” As if this was normal. My first words were “You’re kidding me!” Because I know how hard it is to play there. Many American artists never get to do it. It felt like confirming the biggest stadium ever.

It was the culmination of all those dreams I had as a kid of playing in a mythical and legendary space. Playing there allowed me to be me and to be that person that since childhood has loved country music, especially because our Mexican music is so influenced by country. I think it’s the only place where I’ve cried onstage. It’s something money can’t buy — and a memory I’ll take with me till the day I die.

Victoria Monét

Victoria Monét

Dalvin Adams

I really liked the process of getting into the Grammys. I was doing a lot of prep physically, like watching my food intake, lots of workouts. A really special moment happened where I took [my daughter] Hazel with me to a fitting with Versace. It was my daughter’s first time on a red carpet, and she [was going to] be matching with me. Versace allowed us to pick a specific brown and bring that theme of [my album] Jaguar to life.

[Winning the best new artist Grammy] was one of the biggest goals that I had for the year. You know how much it takes to get recognition in this industry or bring a vision to life and what kind of marketing it took to get there, what kind of focus and dedication and sacrifice. [But I have this] yin-yang mentality like, although this means the world to me and I appreciate it, I can’t make it my be-all and end-all to determine whether or not I’m good — because the other [nominees] were also amazing and they didn’t get it, and they’re going on with their lives and doing amazing, incredible things.

I have [my Grammys] on a banister upstairs; it’s kind of become an awards banister. There are a few plaques there and a framed tweet about the Grammys that I tweeted in 2015, almost like a manifestation. It puts a pep in your step to know that you did the right thing, but also you have so much more work to do, so just keep going and remain grounded and know that all of these things are a blessing.

You want to continue to do what you love even if the accolades don’t ever come again. There were many years where I thought I was great and I didn’t have those awards on my banister. It was just knowing, because of my work ethic, greatness comes that way. And when the recognition and attention come, you want to make sure that doesn’t become your driving force. Those are extras, but it does feel really nice.

Tems

Tems

Adrienne Raquel

Once I have a vision, I’m always trying to do everything to put my vision in place. But that can also sometimes turn into perfectionism, which I learned to let go of while [making my debut album, Born in the Wild]. You [have to] be as authentic as possible and allow yourself to flow in the music — letting go of anything that you think you’re supposed to do, be or show.

I’m not thinking too much about genres or rules: “Oh, you have to make Afrobeats.” My “why” is different. My “why” is to release my thoughts. It’s an honor to be able to make music that you want to make and for people to be able to connect to it — and for someone to recognize that is also really great.

[At Coachella], Wizkid was around and we asked him if he’d come out [to perform “Essence”], and he was really down. Justin [Bieber] happened to also be around. He hit me up that morning and said he’s down to come out if I needed him. And I was like, “Yes!” It was amazing. Everybody was going crazy. The crowd was screaming, the floor was shaking. It was a vibe, like a huge party.

[In November], we had just arrived at midnight in Melbourne, Australia, so I wasn’t thinking too much about the Grammys. I was extremely tired, so I went to bed hoping to get a little bit of rest before my show the next day. Around 5 a.m., my phone started vibrating on my bed. It’s calls and people shouting, “Oh, my God. Congrats!” I’m like, “Bro, what’s going on?” They’re like, “Bro, three Grammy nominations!” It was worth being woken up for, especially for the people that have worked on this album — not just me, but my friend and my producer [GuiltyBeatz], [and] Spax, [who] also engineered it.

There are so many people that worked sleepless nights and really did their best to help me out, and it’s beautiful to see them have the recognition. All it takes is a Grammy-nominated project that you were a part of for your life to change. That’s what I really care about the most.

This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.

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How Audiomack Became a Streaming Power Player in Africa

December 12, 2024

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While Afrobeats has been hailed as Africa’s biggest cultural export, its growth on the continent is also cause for celebration.
The 2023 and 2024 IFPI Global Reports revealed Sub-Saharan Africa was the fastest-growing region in the world, with this year’s report documenting a 25% rise in music sales largely driven by increased adoption of paid subscription services (up by just under a quarter). And no other streaming service has been as innovative and effective at expanding their reach on the continent as Audiomack. 

The company has been applauded for bolstering artists with user-friendly promotional and analytics tools while providing fans with a solid discovery experience, and its unparalleled work in Africa has been critical in the rise of Afrobeats and other genres on the continent. Audiomack opened its first African office in Lagos, Nigeria in 2020 and made three key hires, including Charlotte Bwana, who officially joined the company as head of media and brand partnerships and has since risen to vp of marketing, EU, Africa & MENA. 

Bwana had been living in Nigeria at the time and working in Audiomack’s ambassador program, where she met with and onboarded artists onto the platform and continued expanding its Afrobeats division through social media marketing, idea generation, playlist curation and outreach to major labels, artist managers, booking agents and more. Once travel was allowed after the pandemic, Bwana “literally backpacked across Africa – Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa – doing Audiomack masterclasses, meeting artists and teaching them Audiomack one-on-one but also about the entertainment business,” she tells Billboard. “Somebody said to me, ‘A lot of companies are companies in the cloud, but you are a company that exists, we can actually meet you and shake your hand and call you on the phone. The difference between you and many other streaming companies is your availability.’” 

Trending on Billboard

Bwana emphasizes that that “human touch” element has significantly helped scale Audiomack, which is the No. 1 music streaming app on Apple’s App Store in 22 African countries — including Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe — and the No. 1 music streaming app on the Google Play Store in Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. According to the company, in Nigeria alone Audiomack boasts 15.3 million monthly active users and 4.9 million daily active users and has racked up 58 billion total Afrobeats streams since 2020. 

While the streamer hasn’t added more offices on the continent outside of its Lagos headquarters – which now has 12 people across its social media, graphic design, curatorial, business development and content operations departments – it has deployed ambassadors in additional countries like Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Those ambassadors help Audiomack better navigate the African market with “ideas of which artist is popping, which sound is buzzing in this territory, what the scene is like [and] what artists should we be focusing on,” Bwana explains.   

Audiomack has also had to focus on tackling two key issues that hinder the platform’s mission to democratize streaming on the continent – the first being accessibility. “In Africa, before we talk about affordability of music, we have to talk about accessibility. A lot of people couldn’t access music in the first place, and Audiomack opened that door
 and reshaped the landscape of the African music industry,” Bwana says. 

In 2021, the streaming service partnered with MTN Nigeria, the fastest 5G network in West and Central Africa, to introduce the Audiomack+MTN Data Bundle program. Through the program, the company offered the more than 76 million MTN subscribers tailored data bundles, allowing them to stream unlimited music and access Audiomack content without the hassle of data charges. This year, the partnership expanded with the Audiomack+ subscription program, which offers MTN subscribers seamless access to premium Audiomack content – including uninterrupted streaming and offline downloads – through three flexible subscription plans. “We have a monthly subscription, a weekly subscription and a daily subscription, because we figured that people sometimes just buy premium for the day,” says Bwana, adding that 41% of Audiomack users use MTN. “They don’t need it for a month, or they can’t afford to pay that for the month. But if a big artist drops an album today, and they just want to listen to the album, they just pay for premium for the day.”  

Still, Africa’s low internet penetration rate poses a problem for users without MTN coverage. According to the International Telecommunication Union’s Facts and Figures 2024 report, just 38% of the continent is able to use the internet, while only 11% have access to a 5G network. Bwana notes that offline downloads are “everybody’s favorite feature” on the app, with Audiomack reporting 1.9 billion offline downloads since 2020. “You’re able to listen to the music on the go whenever you’re not connected,” she says. “This is a premium feature for many DSPs, and for us, it’s a feature that you still can access on the ad-based tier.” 

Charlotte Bwana

Courtesy of Charlotte Bwana

This gets to the second major hurdle Audiomack has been tackling: payment. While the company is making sure its different subscription models are suitable for African users’ limited internet access, it’s also ensuring the payment methods are just as convenient. “In Africa, [there are] 54 different countries, and you’re working with many currencies. As you’re scaling a business, you have to figure out how to accommodate the entire continent,” says Bwana. “Seventy percent of the population [in South Africa] is banked, so they have access to credit and credit cards, and they can pay for stuff online. Then you go to Kenya, where everybody uses mobile money. With every country that I’ve been to, not only am I talking to the artists to market them and create content, but I’m also talking to telcos and fintechs and trying to figure out payment systems so we can make it seamless for people to pay for music.”   

Last year, Audiomack partnered with Flutterwave, Africa’s largest payment network, to leverage its expertise in secure and reliable payment processing so artists can “monetize their art effectively,” Audiomack CEO/co-founder David Macli said in a press statement. Audiomack can reach even more users in Africa via seamless payment options, including bank transfers, local cards and mobile money. This year, the company also partnered with Carry1st, Africa’s leading mobile games and digital content publisher, to tap into its proprietary payment solution, Pay1st, so consumers can purchase their subscriptions using local payment methods including mobile money, popular digital wallets and bank transfers. “A lot of people on Audiomack are Gen-Z, they’re in that age where they’re discovering music but they’re also gaming,” says Bwana. “We were thinking of how do we bridge the gap between music and gaming, and also, how do we make sure that the artists are earning more royalties and being discovered even by the gamers.” 

Outside of accessibility and affordability, artist discovery is another one of Audiomack’s priorities. The platform has been identifying the continent’s rising stars before they gain global recognition through Keep the Beat Going, an annual campaign that focuses on amplifying artists’ profiles and introducing them to new global markets through billboards in major cities, playlists, digital ads, creator workshops and more. Since its launch in 2022, Keep the Beat Going has highlighted 72 artists from Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, including Ayra Starr, Burna Boy, Rema and Uncle Waffles. 

Aside from artists, Audiomack is also keeping its fingers on the pulse of new trends coming out of the continent. Bwana believes Nigerian street pop is the “next big thing,” as evidenced by Asake and Seyi Vibez’s success on the platform. The latter is the most streamed artist in Nigeria, accumulating 1.4 billion plays on Audiomack since 2020, while the former is a close second with 1.2 billion plays. To date, Asake’s 2023 album Work of Art is the most streamed Afrobeats album on the platform with 476 million plays, while his hit “Lonely at the Top” from the album is the most streamed Afrobeats song on Audiomack with 87 million plays. 

“We have a lot of people achieving their first hundred thousand or million streams on Audiomack,” says Bwana. “[We’ve] accommodated both listeners and artists, and this is what really sets us apart from a lot of the other streaming platforms.”   

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Sony Music Removes Catalog From Boomplay

December 9, 2024

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Sony Music pulled its catalog from the streaming service Boomplay on Monday (Dec. 9) due to late royalty payments, Billboard has confirmed. Several other prominent labels and distributors also confirmed to Billboard on Monday that they have not received recent royalty payments from the service. Additionally, a monthly payment report published by the distributor Symphonic […]

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Davido Announces Fifth Album ‘5ive’ & New Single ‘Funds’ With Odumodublvck & Chike

December 5, 2024

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Davido announced on Thursday (Dec. 5) that he’ll release his fifth studio album, aptly titled 5ive, in 2025. “This one is straight from the heart – my story, my truth, my growth,” he wrote on Instagram. And the Nigerian-American superstar’s album rollout is well underway since he will be releasing the first single, “Funds” with […]

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Afrobeats Fresh Picks: JayO, Wizkid, Juls, King Promise, Lil Kesh & More

November 27, 2024

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In a year of some of the brightest African music stars dropping some of the best work of their careers, this month saw Nigerian superstar Wizkid throw his hat into the ring.
“Mama call me, ‘Ayo Balogun, they can never find another you,’” Wizkid sings on the heartfelt closing track “Pray” from his sixth studio album Morayo, which translates to “I see joy” in Yoruba and is dedicated to and named after his late mother. The 16-track project finds the Starboy balancing that joy and grief over impeccable genre-hopping production. And following his 2021 debut album Sounds of My World, Juls, a key hitmaker behind Afrobeats heavyweights like Wiz, Burna Boy and Mr. Eazi, draws inspiration from his travels around the world to unify the Black diaspora through his expert fusion of South Africa’s amapiano, Ghanaian highlife, Jamaica’s dancehall, U.K. rap and more on his sophomore album Peace and Love.

But that’s not all. There have been plenty of great tracks released this month, and several that mix and match genre, instrumentation and tradition in ways that bring out new and innovative sounds, really emphasizing the fusion element of the burgeoning Afrofusion movement — new songs from Fave, Nasty C and Lekaa Beats, King Promise and E’Major all fit the bill in different ways.

Trending on Billboard

We’ve highlighted 10 of our favorite new songs by African acts that have come out roughly within the last month. Check out our latest Fresh Picks, and kick off Thanksgiving break with our Spotify playlist below.

Fave, “Lose My Mind” 

The rising Afrofusion star (real name Godsfavour) remains anchored in her faith on “Lose My Mind” from her second EP Dutty Love. The gospel-tinged record is powered by producer Hylander’s skittering drums and Fave’s unshakable conviction that God will keep her sane and on a steady path. “‘Lose My Mind’ is really just one of my many odes to God. He’s such a wonder,” she told Wonderland. 

JayO, “High Heels” 

JayO adds extra pep to your long-legged step in “High Heels” from the British Nigerian singer-songwriter’s debut EP WHOSDAT. “The way you look in them high heels/ It’s keeping me on my toes,” he cleverly croons about a woman whose spellbinding composure makes JayO struggle to keep his. Ideally, you would strut to JayO and RZ’s scintillating syncopated beats while wearing your favorite stilettos.  

Wizkid, “Bend”  

Wizkid reflects on love, the loss of his mother and his musical legacy on his new album Morayo. On the highlight track “Bend,” Wiz taps into a nostalgic flow and commands us to dance with his enticing “Bend your body, kọ jó” hook on the Afrobeats club banger. Helmed by Made in Lagos executive producer P2J (who also produced the majority of Morayo) and Gaetan Judd, “Bend” invites you to get lost in its carefree rhythm characterized by bustling percussion.    

Juls feat. Nkosazana Daughter, “Muntuwam” 

The British Ghanaian hitmaker celebrates his 10-year musical career with a sonic odyssey across the Black Atlantic on his latest album Peace and Love. Crashing waves and chirping seagulls bookend its closing track “Muntuwam,” where Juls dips his toes in private school piano, a soulful amapiano subgenre that accentuates the South African sound’s jazz roots, and enlists popular South African singer-songwriter Nkosazana Daughter’s to add an authentic, breezy flare. “The meaning of the song is ‘the love is right in front of you, I’m here when you need me,’” he told Wonderland. 

Nasty C & Lekaa Beats feat. Tiwa Savage, “One Time” 

One month after dropping their genre-bending joint EP Confuse the Enemy, Nasty C and Lekaa Beats ran it back in the studio for the Reloaded version. Tiwa Savage blesses us on the smooth track “One Time,” where the South African MC has Hennessy to thank for an unforgettable night that the Afrobeats queen promises will not happen again, with the sweeping violins in Lekaa’s production heightening the drama.

Lil Kesh feat. Fireboy DML & Ayo Maff, “Vex for You”

Lil Kesh has made a name for himself with a series of brash, high-energy songs, particularly in the past few years, so this one is a change of pace for him: more contemplative, laid back and emotional, with an introspective and almost desperately romantic hook. Ayo Maff and Fireboy both slide in easily with the vibe — thematically, it’s right in Fireboy’s wheelhouse, for one — and help round out Kesh’s latest.

King Promise, “Keep It Sexy”

King Promise has a knack for picking the right beats that both provide a high level of musicality and help support and accent his great vocals, and this latest single is no exception. Produced by Killbeatz, the all-Ghanaian collaboration blends in local highlife and hiplife sounds but has broader aspirations, and Promise’s melodies once again help set him apart from his peers. A fun Western-themed music video adds a different element, too, but it’s really the production that helps make this song stand out.

Wizkid feat. Asake, “Bad Girl”

Following on the heels of their latest link up — “MMS,” off Asake’s latest album Lungu Boy, which was just nominated for a Grammy for best African music performance — two of the leading lights of Nigerian music come back together for another joint track that brings out the best of both of them, with Asake and Wiz doubling each other’s lines on the hook. The two vibe so well together that they trade off effortlessly, which helps make this one feel like a true collaboration rather than two stars sending each other verses. From Wizkid’s latest album, this is a standout on an album that is full of them.

E’Major, “All the Love”

E’Major’s brand is truly fusion in every way: the mix of styles, instrumentation, percussion, flows, harmonies and melodies that he employs varies wildly from song to song, giving him a malleable quality, able to pull off anything he puts his mind to. His latest, “All the Love,” fits right into that canon, and lyrically serves as a love letter, with his vocals at times slipping into near-falsetto and back, bringing a joy into the song that also runs through his catalog.

Kizz Daniel & Adekunle Gold, “Pano Tona”

Another big star collaboration in a year that has been full of them, the song is largely helmed by Kizz Daniel, with a verse that emphasizes his individuality, before Adekunle Gold comes through with one that drips with braggadocio. There’s a magnetism to this song that demands repeated listens — one of the reasons this has taken off since it dropped just a few weeks ago.

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Wizkid Releases ‘Morayo’ Album: Stream It Now

November 21, 2024

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Wizkid has released his sixth studio album Morayo on Friday (Nov. 22) via Starboy Entertainment and RCA Records. Morayo, which translates to “I see joy” in Yoruba, is dedicated to his later mother Juliana Morayo Balogun, who passed away in August 2023. “Best album I ever made!! Now listen! It’s only up from here!” Wiz […]

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Tyla Drops Acoustic-Guitar Driven Ballad ‘Tears’: Listen to the New Single

November 20, 2024

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Tyla dropped her new single “Tears” for Coke Studio 2024 on Wednesday (Nov. 20) via FAX and Epic Records. Produced by Stargate, the acoustic guitar-driven ballad strikes a chord with anyone who’s going through it and needs a shoulder to cry on. And the “Water” hitmaker sticks to her aquatic theme. “I’m a river you […]