The vibrant music industry in our East African region and the continent at large seems to be too good an opportunity that big green just couldn’t stay away. Monday night saw the launch of Songa, a music streaming platform by Safaricom. The company CEO on many occasions has openly lamented on how artists aren’t quite getting their dues or proper remuneration for their hard work. Songa by Safaricom hopes to remedy this situation.

The service is available through the platform’s app, Songa by Safaricom on the Play Store through the iOS app should also be out pretty soon.

Catalogue

Any music lover will tell you, a platform is only as good as the extent of its library. At launch, Safaricom says the music streaming platform will have over 2 Million songs from over 400,000 artists, both local and international. While this might be a far cry from more established platforms like Spotify and Apple Music with over 30 Million songs each, it is no doubt a good place to start.

Subscription and Pricing

Unlike the ‘Gold Standard’ in music streaming, Spotify, Songa doesn’t have a free plan. After the initial 14 day-trial period, subscribers will have to part with Ksh.25 daily, Ksh.150 weekly or Ksh.500 monthly to access the platform.

It is also important to note a few things;

  • Songa is only available to Safaricom subscribers, both prepaid and postpaid. I had issues getting the app from the Play Store due to this very reason. I, however, managed to sideload it and all is well…for the most part at least.
  • The app is still in active development so it is very unstable. For the few minutes I played with it, it crashed on me more than I have had an app crash on me for years.
  • The 14-day trial is….what’s the word I am looking for? So you’re stuck with 15-seconds per track if you don’t have an active subscription.

 

You can follow up on the reception and feedback from users on Twitter under the hashtag #SongabySafaricom. You can also visit the platform’s website, Songa Music.

Android users, here is the app on Play Store. Have you had a chance to check out Songa? What are your thoughts? Share with us in the comment section below.