THE way music is listened to and bought every day indicates that Gqom music will be the most listened to and bought in South Africa.
That’s what Spotify’s Head of Arts and Collaboration, Mr. Henco Harmse – said when he spoke at one of the art workshops held by the company in Johannesburg this week.
Harmse said that this is due to the increase in the number of people interested in this music every year, which is proven by the increase in the number of listeners by 92% from five years ago until now.
“One more thing we noticed about the number of people who listen to music on Spotify is that in the last five years until now there has been a 450% increase in listening to music in different African countries, which is a good situation and will help artists a lot, he said.
Continuing, he said that one of the things he noticed is that piano music is also one of the musics that has been doing very well since in the last five years it has shown an increase of 98%, which indicates that it is growing repeatedly every year.
“We can’t leave out the fact that folk music is also doing wonders in the market as it has increased by 174% the way it is listened to on Spotify in the last five years until now,” said Harmse.
The Manager of the Artists Division, Music Tables and Collaboration at Spotify, Ms. Jodie Tabisher, revealed that one of the highlights while researching their statistics is that the singer Umafikizolo did wonders last year with his song “Uyocengwenwa Unyoko” which attracted more than 15 million people to listen to it.
Ms. Tabisher revealed that the pop singer Tyla is the one who has always been the most listened to and bought her music from 2023 until now, which is proven by the fact that her 2023 song “Water” has been listened to more than 100 million times.
“One thing that we have noticed and applauded a lot is the increase in the number of people listening to Rn’B music in this country, which used to rarely happen in the past years as people liked to listen to overseas artists making this kind of music, which has now turned around as they are focusing on their own artists,” he said.