Music streaming is a growing industry phenomenon and South Africa has only just caught up with services like Spotify and Apple Music.
Why are Spotify monthly listeners important for an artist?
To get a better understanding of an artist’s streaming dominance, Spotify has a cool feature that gives you an accurate estimate of the number of active monthly listeners an artist has.
According to Hypebot, Spotify monthly listeners is the sum of active users who stream an artist’s music over a rolling window of 28 days.
“We use a rolling window of 28 days because the number of days in a calendar month can vary and because people listen to music differently depending on the day of the week. This means an equal number of days of the week are included — so, the same number of Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, etc.” Spotify UK
What matters more, total streams or monthly listener data?
Monthly listeners is a very important metric in music. It tells the industry how hot an artist is and while it is not an accurate depiction of an artist’s influence, it does give a good indication of his or her fanbase.
At the end of 2019, Spotify released its Wrapped Up streaming rankings and it came as no surprise that Kabza De Small, the leading producer of the Amapiano wave, topped the Most Streamed South African Artists in South Africa list.
In a moment, you will see why the total number of streams garnered by an artist speaks very little about the size of their fanbase. This is the Top 10 list of Spotify’s highest-streaming South African artists in South Africa:
- Kabza De Small
- DJ Maphorisa
- Nasty C
- Prince Kaybee
- Spoegwolf
- Black Coffee
- Joyous Celebration
- Sjava
- Snotkop
- AKA
Considering the fact that monthly listener data counts unique user streams, a look at the latest figures from this metric shows a very different picture of the leading streaming artist in South African music.
According to our research, Black Coffee is the biggest streaming artist in South Africa, by a long stretch.
The veteran Deep House DJ is followed by Kabza’s compatriot and mentor, DJ Maphorisa. Surprisingly, Kabza’s current monthly listeners place him in fifth position.
In Hip-Hop, Sjava leads the way with Nasty C trailing closely behind. It is clear that, on a digital scale, alternative vernacular-rich and new-age Hip-Hop is dominant in a fragile market.
South African artists with the highest monthly listeners on Spotify
This is the list of South African artists with the highest monthly listeners on Spotify.
- Black Coffee – 1 289 571
- DL Maphorisa – 516 083
- Sjava – 373 757
- Nasty C – 355 661
- Kabza De Small – 240 977
- Ladysmith Black Mambazo – 206 456
- Prince Kaybee – 171 976
- Elaine – 152 614
- AKA – 130 747
- Samthing Soweto – 124 062