Spotify has announced its entry into 80+ new markets with Kenya being one of the markets where the streaming music service will now be officially available.
This is quite significant considering that Spotify is arguably a paragon when it comes to streaming.
The streaming service was previously available in just a handful of markets (mostly in developed economies) and for you to use the service in markets where its access was restricted, you had to deal with the inconvenience of using VPN services.
Transsion’s Boomplay has been the de facto leader when it comes to music streaming in Africa and the entry of Spotify has the potential of shaking up the table.
Spotify should have some relative ease of entry into the market considering that it has two broad plans, a free one and the premium one. The free plan is, however, ad-supported, and therefore, in addition to being interrupted by ads, other restrictions make it less awesome than the premium one.
Music streaming in Africa has been on a strong growth trajectory and it’s common for African artists to hit millions of views in just a few days. YouTube is, therefore, likely to be a causality of Spotify’s entry even though it’s a different model.
One of the strong points of Spotify is its playlist feature. The streaming app has quite a solid playlist organization feature and it’s one of the reasons why I have personally been using the app.
The other feature is its availability across several platforms. This means you can use the app on your smartphone as well as any other devices that you normally use be it a PC, a Mac, or even the PS4/Xbox.
However, the elephant in the room is the payments part.
The market for paid streaming services in Kenya is still in its nascent stages. Netflix has been a pioneer in the space and has gained a bit of traction but its marketability has been restricted by the limited number of fixed internet connections in Kenya.
Spotify is likely to develop localized subscription plans and payment methods and it will be interesting to see how this will go. That said, if you are into music streaming, you should sign up for Spotify and see how the service compares to what you are currently using.
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Kevin is a tech enthusiast and the lead writer at MobiTrends.co.ke. He has been writing about smartphones and tech related topics since October 2012. About Us | Contact Us
