It’s important to realize, founded in November 2012, Mdundo has over the past 8 years provided artists a lucrative platform. To distribute their music and earn revenues based on the number of downloads they receive. Music has now evolved very much and makes a big part of the online content used around the world and in the African entertainment markets.
Clearly, for you to have a vibrant reputation presence and awareness on music cloud platforms, there is a premium service. For you to be vibrant enough through on-demand platforms such as TIDAL and SPOTIFY, you’ll have to upgrade. This is due to their large online user and subscriber capacity. And, therefore, you can imagine where you will be if you are an upcoming artist.
If in that case, you’ll want some money back on your music ROI (or the Return On Investment), there is not always an easy way out. And, especially for my African musicians, Mdundo will serve you best. While avoiding all the hustle to be seen and appear on the competitive leads list or playlists.
What Is Mdundo?
Music is growing fast in the African continent and in Kenya, music distributing and streaming service is up to help musicians share their songs all over Africa. Mdundo, which is based in Kenya, co-founded by a Danish native, is helping Kenyan musicians sell their music well. Mdundo is a one-stop solution for all your music needs. And it offers you free, unlimited access to all your favorite songs.
Meaning, it gives you access to the largest library of music allowing you to listen to your favorite artists’ right on your phone. Uniquely, Mdundo is currently operating in 10 countries in Africa. And it promises to expand into more countries as its goal is to cover all of the African continents. It all began when Martin Neilsen moved to Kenya to work with 88MPH.
Neilsen saw that the Kenyan music industry lacked the streaming and distribution features. He then worked on his idea of music streaming and distribution services. This is where the company he worked for wanted Mdundo to focus on online content in Africa.
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A life without music is truly unimaginable. Whether on the web, mobile phones, or tablets, the options for music access are unlimited. And so are the streaming music services that are growing at a lightning-fast speed. Surprisingly, Mdundo which is a Swahili name that means – Beat. In that case, a musical heartbeat or throb per se.
Founded in 2012 and officially launched in 2013, Mdundo became a separate company from the original investment firm 88MP with Martin Nielsen as CEO and co-founder After the launch, Mdundo grew and signed to partner with companies such as Airtel and Microsoft. But, as Nielsen explains, growing the business wasn’t so much of guesswork.
He explains that the Kenyan music industry lacked this feature. There was a real need in the market, he says. Most musicians did not know how to distribute their catalogs to their fans in a legal and structured way. Mdundo then added an online distribution channel in the market and the growth since then has been tremendous.
Why should I monetize music?
Whether on the web, mobile phones, or tablets, the options for music access are unlimited. And so are the premium and free music streaming online web platforms. With service solutions support that is growing at a lightning-fast speed. Of course, this makes it very complicated to choose one or two from them and decide the most appropriate one. And in reality, music streaming service solutions make it easier for you to make informed decisions.
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As to which ones are the best to get a space in, especially for your devices without burning a hole in your pockets. In Mdundo, this is done on the free membership portal, in which the profit is shared with the artists. And on the premium version, the artist gets 60% of the income from the subscription service. And although the money seems to be little, there is big transparency and freedom for all artists to choose what they want.
How does Mdundo Work?
First of all, it offers two types of memberships. One which is free and another which is premium, at a price of Kshs. 199, about $1.9 monthly. However, the company makes much of its income through online advertising. “Artists are still making little money on distribution. However, we do have strong submissions from artists to the tune of around 2,000 to 3,000 new artists every month.
We have put a lot of effort into being transparent and made it easy for the artist to opt-in and opt-out,” – Nielsen says. In addition, Neilsen explains about the challenges faced while starting, well all this wasn’t a click on the button.
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He explains that Starting the service in Kenya wasn’t easy, and one of the biggest challenges was how to bill customers, and also integrating a business in other countries with different payment methods. “Trying to start a streaming service in Kenya was not easy, especially in finding ways to bill customers.
M-Pesa, the mobile payment service, was pervasive at the time the company started and the hope was that it could be used as a mode of payment for Mdundo’s services.” “The billing options were few if you looked continent-wide,” Nielsen says. “It is only recently that we got the M-Pesa push SDK (software development kit).
Equally important, M-Pesa has not been focusing online but on retail merchants, and if you go outside of Kenya there are even fewer options.” Going international may not be so fast in the African continent with different payment systems.
“When we started, I expected the billing system to mature much faster. We hear of startups solving the billing issues, but we still have the challenges we had five years ago. It is a challenge for anyone doing e-commerce on the continent.”
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Although some of these challenges have been solved with the evolving technology in payments and money transactions, Mdundo still has a few challenges. Mdundo still faces a challenge in generating revenue through online advertising. “We do still find most advertisers go into the traditional channels and there hasn’t been a big shift to online marketing. It is still under-invested from companies across Africa,” he adds.
How do I join Mdundo?
As an artist or even a musician, you can easily utilize various music streaming services online like Mdundo to make an income. It’s one of the finetuned ways to vibrantly and lucratively create a new following base. This allows you to increase your music brand awareness as well as getting various allocated deals and signed in label records.
To simply put, Mdundo has the same structure as SoundCloud, however, the difference is that Mdundo actually pays artists. So, if you’re a musician, songwriter, mix-DJ, or even beats creator, Mdundo is your music partner. Especially if you’d like to make some money through online live streaming and listening services.
Bearing in mind that not all platforms available are as free as this music platform. The sign-up and leaving Mdundo is simple as demonstrated below in 5 simple steps;
1. Signup Process
In the first place, Log on to www.mdundo.com click on the I am a musician button, and go through the sign-up process. Not forgetting, Terms and Conditions are also provided on the page so as an artist you will get to understand better what they offer.
2. Leads Promotion
Secondly, as an artist, once you have signed up, it is your sole duty to ensure fans are aware that they can access your music on the platform. By providing download links on your various social media pages. For example, to download from one of the jmexclusives clients (Gloria Muliro) simply, follow this link. And as can be seen, the end path of this link showcases the user account number. Upon registration with the Platform. However, they do not market your artistic profile. For one thing, their sole purpose is music distribution. And they have a news site, in which as an artist you can make use of.
3. Money Distribution
From opinion pieces to new music, all that can be shared out by simply sending an email to [email protected]. And in order to provide payouts, the application makes money on various display advertisements. The ads are placed on their main website and voice advertisement inside the songs (like Youtube). And this is the money that is equally shared with artists at the end of the 2 quarters.
4. Loyalty Price
As of now, an artist will get a total of Kshs. 4 per download. However, this is not rigid, since the price can change based on the factors over the billing period. But, you’ll have full access to all the statistics of the number of downloads you get once you log into your profile. And as an example, if you click on the statistics section, you can select the billing period you want calculations for. In that case, you’ll get to see the breakdown of all the money you have earned.
5. Leaving Mdundo
If, for instance, you wish to terminate your contract, you can simply go online to your profile and delete your music. Or alternatively, send an email to [email protected] explaining your desire to leave the platform. So, be that as it may, mdundo.com is the largest music distribution platform in Kenya and second-largest in Africa, so far hosting a total of 4400 artists.
In Conclusion;
As for now, Mdundo still has some challenges which have slowed it down from attaining its goal to cover the whole African Continent but with the rising music industry in the African countries, it has a productive ground. The company’s goals for the coming months include going further and expanding in more African countries that lack streaming music services. “
Over the next couple of months, we will scale across the continent,” Nielsen says and promises. In addition to the music platform listed above, you’ll find more useful and related research topic links below. And if you’ll have additional topics or contributions, you can leave them in the comments section or even Contact Us. Don’t forget to donate and support our research projects.
To see more recent music by our main Mdundo artists, click here, and to download the app on your mobile phone, please click here to get started right away.