It’s not often that Apple Music reveals specific numbers related to streaming performance, so when they do share figures, it usually signifies something significant is happening. According to the latest data shared by Apple, the rate of growth for African music streams on Apple Music has quadrupled compared to the overall increase in streams across the platform.
This year-over-year growth in African tracks streamed seems to align with another impressive statistic – Shazams of African songs have doubled annually compared to general Shazam lookups. Countries like France, the UK, and US have been pivotal in driving this Shazam spike for African music specifically.
The catalyst for Apple Music’s announcement was the runaway success of Burna Boy’s recently released album ‘I Told Them…’. Since its late August drop, the project broke Apple Music records by garnering the most first-week streams globally for an African album. It also reached #1 on Apple Music charts in an impressive 69 nations. Remarkably, 10 songs from the album penetrated the worldwide daily top 100 streaming chart.
Burna Boy is no stranger to Apple Music, having been selected as an ‘Up Next’ artist of potential back in 2019 through their artist development initiative. Last July, the platform even aired a live recording of his packed London Stadium concert performance. Apple is one of several major streaming services applauding African musicians’ achievements – Spotify revealed 13.5 billion Afrobeats streams in 2022 alone, while Audiomack celebrated Burna Boy surpassing 1 billion plays on their platform.
