Nigerian music-streaming service Playfre launched earlier this year, although rather than licensing music directly, it was more of a curatorial/social layer on top of YouTube, from which its music is sourced.
CEO Chika Nwaogu has been talking to VentureBurn about the startup’s plans, which include the goal of raising between $500k and $1m of funding. “It will be mainly used to promote Playfre across the continent, get more music editors to create localised playlists for their countries and genres, set up offices in these locations and actively help African artists monetise their creative contents,” said Nwaogu.
Playfre has already set up its own music-distribution division, SongRoute, which it says will help African artists distribute their music on Playfre as well as other streaming services in Africa and internationally. However, Nwaogu isn’t hiding the fact that this is very early days for his company: just over 3,000 people have signed up to use the service, which has made “a little above $1,000” in its first three months. However, those people have streamed more than 600k tracks in the last two months – an average of 200 tracks per user – so the signs of engagement are there.
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