Africa Rhythms

Loved for its ability to evoke emotions, heal, educate, transform, unite, and entertain, music is a universal language for all. Kenyans are big on sharing music through Bluetooth and other social media platforms.

In 2012, while working at 88MPH, Martin Nielsen, and his colleagues in Kenya realized this was no way to listen to music or download it. Having taken a gap year in school where he was taking a business course to work in Kenya, he teamed up with his colleagues to create a music platform. With a little research from some musicians and users, Mdundo was officially launched in 2013. Mdundo is a Swahili word meaning music beats.

“We first did a pilot platform which was initially just for fun. Honestly, I didn’t think it would survive a year.  I anticipated failure and that I would be broke, and just go back to school. But it kept working and now 7 years down the line, it’s still running,” says Martin the CEO and co-founder of Mdundo.

Martin Nielsen, the CEO & Co-founder of Mdundo in their Nairobi office.

Mdundo is a formal platform that moves people from using peer-to-peer sharing of music through Bluetooth or WhatsApp. It offers free and unlimited access to all African music.  The idea was to build a platform for Africa where they can download or stream music for free. 

Mdundo wasn’t really anyone's particular idea, it was floating in the group. 88mph was the biggest investor and a co-founder together with Francis Amisi (Kenyan), Martin Nielsen (Danish), and Juro Sidorenko (Russian). “We had met Francis also known as Frasha a Kenyan musician by chance during different events and he helped us in getting into the music industry,” Martin says.

According to Martin, they used Kenya as the pilot market because it was a landscape they understood and were already working in Kenya. “By far I wouldn’t say Kenya was the hardest, but we experienced some challenges since it was the first time we were launching this. We had to figure out everything while we were in Kenya. ” He says.

Everywhere you go you hear music on the streets, in buses, shops, and events. “So we figured out that there are about 300,000 Africans on the internet every month and very interested in music,” Martin says. “Our idea was if we can give people access to this music through an easy way the potential is hundreds of millions of people will use our music service.”

In 2015, Mdundo opened offices in Tanzania and Uganda, and in 2018, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Cameroon, and Rwanda. 

“Our cornerstone for the business was music. So when I say we opened up in other countries, I mean the website was already available we just needed to find music that people in Nigeria loved,” Martin says.

 

Martin says that when they started, it was a lot of work because they had to explain what the big idea was, what was happening, and how they were doing it. “Now, it’s a little bit easy because the artists themselves are interested in Mdundo. The platform helps artists access new markets. So if I meet an artist in Ghana and tell them that I have a million users in Kenya, they will be interested because they want to branch their brand out. ” He adds.

A screenshot of Mdundo's partnership with Opera Mini.

An artist can sign up on the website and control everything by themselves without having met personnel from Mdundo. The same way one can have a YouTube account or Sound Cloud account. 

Mdundo platform works with a total of 60,000 African artists. They also have a total of 3.5 Million active users every month, and it’s free to use our service. 

According to Martin, their website has advertisement banners paid by major brands like EABL, Unilever, Airtel, Safaricom, and others. A musician gets half the money we make from the advertisements.

 “If an artist has 1% of all downloads on Mdundo, he gets 1% of all the royalties for that period. The best way to think of this is a lot of people listen to the radio, but no one pays for it. But radio is still a good business, so basically, that is how we think of Mdundo,” he says.

The highest-paid musician for the past few years has been the likes of Khaligraph Jones, Sauti Sol, Willy Paul those three have been very constant since we started. According to Martin, the interesting fact is our most popular style now is Kikuyu gospel music. “We found there is such a niche for that music but people interested in don’t really know where to find it,” says Martin.

According to Martin, if you want to listen to Sauti Sol music you can easily find it on YouTube. But local music like Ken wa Maria has always been on the top 100 charts because their fans are loyal, more grounded, and don’t move with trends. The biggest artist is maybe paid somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 a year.

“The more people download your song the more money you make.” He says adding that, storage is also a great challenge that most smartphone users struggle with. And thus they have not created Mdundo as an app. “An app limits the people who can access your services. An app requires space on the phone and a lot of people don’t have it so they only download an app if it’s absolutely necessary. “He says.

Mdundo’s biggest challenge as a startup in Africa is a projection that is not necessarily going to happen. But they are waiting for it to happen. “For us that requires specifically two things: the cost of data.  So what is the cost of bringing the internet because if you are downloading or streaming music you need to have a connection? Many users have no internet while urban areas still experience challenges in connectivity,” says Martin.

According to Martin, the speed at which they can get the internet spread out is a bit challenging. They are also suffering from a market where online advertising is a small niche. Most of the advertising money goes into billboards, TV, and radio while the budget that goes into online advertising even for the biggest companies maybe 20% to 0%. “The percentage may vary depending but eventually more companies will start spending more on online business,” he adds.

Top 100 music weekly at Mdundo platform.

Martin has learnt several lessons since the business started. “I think you go through different stages and every single stage has taught me something new. Looking back at one of the things I wished I had realized early was that customers were using our platform

“But advertisers and companies were not. I had this imagination that if I can create the best advertisement products, advertisers will automatically come to me.”  He adds.

About a year ago, Martin realized the importance of investing in networking with different personalities. Advertisers needed to know about our platform they wanted to have a conversation about it, needed to know who was behind it. “They want to know who we are and what we stand for. So we started doing more client gatherings where clients can come over and interact with our products and see who we are. They can tell us about the launch of their products and ask how to get the right audience.” Martin says. 

According to Martin, the interaction was so powerful. He thinks the business would have done better from the beginning had he realized early on how important it was to talk to people. Mdundo has around 22 employees, 12 based in Kenya 9 others across Africa, and one person in Europe.

Mdundo employees at the Nairobi office.  Photo Courtesy of Mdundo.

Mdundo has some explicit songs. According to Martin, they try to follow the international standard. “If you are on our platform you will find a marking on explicit songs. We don't have a need to ban anything.” 

Audio recorded in a studio also has different bandwidth than other sounds and the quality is high. “Whether the music is good or bad that is not our opinion. Often we get surprised when what we term popular is not because most are trendy, but not quality music. We make sure to have a fingerprint of all songs by ensuring we have the right owner and are copyright compliant both locally and internationally,” says Martin. 

As an online business in Africa, Mdundo envisions a bright future. Martin admits it’s not yet the most profitable market, but believes they are in the right direction.

Currently, Mdundo is focusing on West and Central African markets, where the high population in countries like Nigeria and Ghana has seen an increase in the popularity of their music. “Ghana has dancehall and reggae, which is also very popular in Uganda so they have that in common. Nigeria’s music is big and therefore wants to grow from the current around 3 Million to around 15 Million users in the next 1 to 2 years.” Martin says.