Op-Ed: Spotify Africa Released Its Five-Year Report. Where Are the Women?

When Spotify made its official expansion into more parts of Africa, including Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana, years after people from those countries had been accessing the app via VPNs, it brought something useful beyond a convenient way to stream music. Data. For the first time in a long time, Nigerian music consumers and their artists could finally quantify and track the flow of the music they loved and where exactly their streams were coming from.

Of course, this has resulted in a consumer landscape that’s turned this data into weapons to partake in stan wars and online arguments, versus utilising them to understand collective user behaviours and, most importantly, correct listener biases.

The result of this is, unfortunately, reflected in Spotify Africa’s five-year report. Released on Monday, February 23, the report examines the progress the music streaming service has made since its launch in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. Before Spotify entered these countries, it had only been available in a few countries on the continent, including South Africa, Algeria, and Morocco. This had created a lean map of how African consumers were consuming music and what exactly they were consuming.

In an OkayAfrica interview with Bolu Akindele, a Nigerian Spotify user who used VPNs to access the app before its availability on the continent, Spotify’s formal entry into the market also meant that Nigerian users no longer had to pay the subscription fee, which was as high as $9.99. “The major problem, really, was not having access to a wide range of services that Spotify offers without using a third-party payment app (or a VPN). Their presence in Nigeria also meant that I could access the service for a lot cheaper than I did for two years, that I didn't have to worry about changing location on my App Store, and most importantly, I didn't need to use third-party apps to process my payments. That's definitely exciting,” Akindele shared.

The Head of Spotify Sub-Saharan music, Phiona Okumu, predicted that data on accurate listenership would enable Afrobeats artists to make more informed estimates of where their music isconsumed. "The more a listener listens to Spotify, the more the experience can be customized for them, and that gives the editors the intel to craft better playlists for them, and that means that their representation is going to deepen and lengthen as people continue to listen,” Okomu shared.

This latest report develops an informative guide into audience behaviour, consumer demographics, and, most disappointingly, listener bias. Explained simply, people aren’t listening enough to female artists.

In the data collected from Nigeria and Ghana, no female artist made the top five most-listened-to artists, nor did they feature in the top five most-consumed songs on Spotify. The only country chart that featured one female artist was Kenya’s, with one female artist ranked among the top-most-streamed artists.

With an average listener age of 27 in Ghana and 26 in Nigeria and Kenya, it’s bewildering and depressing to note this conservative slant among a generation often associated with being progressive and diverse in musical taste. 

It’s hard to say where this problem comes from. Spotify itself has made concerted efforts to address the listening bias against female artists in African music. With initiatives such as EQUAL and commissioning editorials that examine the contributions of female artists in the emergence of Afrobeats, the streamer has maintained a steady stance against bias. So why has it persisted?

This is a difficult and tricky question to answer. It certainly doesn’t have a single response that explains it all away. All things considered, this problem meanders back to the age-old matter of sexism. As a starting point, at least.

Where are the women?

This is not the first time authoritative data has shown that female African artists streamed less than their male counterparts from their home countries. In 2022, a year that saw an immense rise of female artists like Fave, Tems, and Ayra Starr, no female artist made the top 10 list of most-streamed artists in Nigeria. And in the list of the most-streamed female artists, only five of the women were from Nigeria. This issue runs deeper than streaming numbers alone. Because the African music industry still functions within a deeply unequal society, female artists are often systematically cut off from the access and creative freedoms their male counterparts enjoy.

Tems, for instance, has spoken openly about the difficulties she faced in getting signed or even finding a producer to work with, without risking objectification. Conversely, Nigerian labels have historically signed fewer women than men, with many impressions that female artists are high-risk investments. Major labels like YBNL, Mavins, and Chocolate City have signed a combined average of three female artists, compared to the more than 17 male artists they’ve signed, respectively. If platforming and intentionally programming female voices aren't a priority for tastemakers and industry players who should have a more discerning eye, then listening to and seeking out female talent won’t be a priority for listeners either.

This kind of data can be more than a reflection of an audience’s behavior; it is often also a kind of curatorial effort. Rankings like this, backed by data and irrefutable evidence, can reinforce biases and reaffirm already established listening habits. It tells listeners who listen exclusively to male African artists that these are the voices that truly matter, and that their listening habits will continue to champion them. Even worse, it leaves zero room to convert non-biased listeners. Now that it is clear that the average Nigerian is likely listening to a male artist, will likely pay to go to the concert of that male artist, will likely convert their friends and influence their families to listen to that male artist, there’s hardly anything, from rankings like this, that will convince them to expand their taste. Nothing that tells them that they aren’t tapped in. 

Let’s get this straight. The proposition here is not to facilitate pity streams towards female African artists — that would be insulting to their immense talent and formidable artistry. The point is to call into question the unshifting directions in which listening behaviours, particularly in Nigeria and Ghana, have remained for half a decade. If the many incredible achievements and culture-shifting works that female African artists have produced within the span of these five years haven’t translated into high listenership from their home countries, what can shift that needle? What does an African female artist need to be to get a modicum of acknowledgement that their male counterparts get with little trouble? Should these listening habits continue, whose voices are we willing to systematically ignore, and which voices, without paying attention, are in danger of being systematically phased out?