Afrobeats has moved up the global music ladder in recent times and sparked a musical and cultural revolution that isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. West African pop music has risen rapidly, as seen by its substantial financial contributions to the music business.
In 2022, the Love, Damini album by Burna Boy received over 1 billion streams on various platforms. Wizkid is also not left out of the recent breakthrough; his Essence featuring Tems became one of the Nigerian musical pieces to feature in the Billboard Hot 100 top ten list, and the Made in Lagos album continuously featured on the Billboard World Albums chart to break a record of 77 weeks. Rema teamed up with Selena Gomez for a remix to Calm Down, which not only propelled Afrobeats, further but also ensured the genre got its first billion streams on Spotify.
The latest report by PwC shows that currently, Afrobeats generates about $2 billion for the $26 billion worldwide music economy. This means that Afrobeats’ contribution is 7.69% of every music business. Nigerian artists earned ₦11 billion from Spotify only in the year 2022, making the economic influence of the genre ever more powerful as artists rise through major platforms and performance stages across the world.
However, there’s growing concern that much of the revenue generated by Afrobeats doesn’t stay within the local ecosystem. While the genre is enjoying unprecedented global success, only a small portion of the wealth it generates is reinvested in infrastructure to support Afrobeats’ long-term growth and sustainability.
As Afrobeats carries on to garner unprecedented recognition in charts, turn up the volumes at these international festivals, and release kickass hits and bangers, its stakeholders are demanding more Indigenous support. Some of the stakeholders have pointed out that for Afrobeats to grow even bigger and maximise the opportunities being pegged to the genre, there must be increased direct investment in the home-based industry that deals with music.
