This is a pilot issue for Digital Content Africa, which will launch shortly as a fortnightly e-letter that will cover all forms of digital content and services but with a particular focus on film and music.

The Top Story in this pilot issue looks at how online and social media have become a key part of the music business in Africa in two different ways. Firstly, online distribution is beginning to create new markets for previously unheard music. Secondly, as with film, social media is becoming an integral part of promoting African artists to the digital-savvy generation who listen to them 

Liberia’s music industry is not big but it is alive and well and kicking. LIB Hipco music and artists are keen to export their music outside of their small country in search of international recognition and other ways to generate revenue. Isabelle Gross met with Martin Fagans, a young producer of the radio program LIB Weekend Thing and Kaifa KY Yamah, the founder and CEO of LIBWEB Radio to discuss their experiment with simulcast on air and online of a radio program promoting the country’s entertainment activities beyond this small country’s borders.

Before the commercial launch of the international fibre cable called ACE, the overall international bandwidth consumption of the country was around one STM1, today more than 5 STM1s have been lit and capacity on them is running out fast. On the last mile access side, the launch by mobile operator Cellcom of mobile data services based on HSPA+ technology recently upgraded to DC HSPA+  has provided to Internet users enough bandwidth (up to 42Mbps download speed) to have a good experience when accessing rich content like YouTube video streaming.

A month ago Liberian Internet users got even more choices as mobile operator Novafone (ex-Comium) has also launched a 3G data offering. The third mobile operator MTN/Lonestar is poised to rollout similar 3G mobile data services before the end of this year.

Good quality and affordable international capacity as well as the last mile with high speed data access are a prerequisite for anybody wanting to broadcast audio and video content produced in Liberia to the rest of the world. For Martin Fagans, the producer of the entertainment radio show LIB Weekend Thing, “the jump from traditional radio broadcasting to online radio broadcasting has so far been a discovery journey. It has showed me how the Internet has extended the audience reach of my program while at the same time enabling me to promote LIB Hipco music beyond Liberia’s borders”.

The radio programme LIB Weekend Thing started to be broadcast at the beginning of August on FM radio D15 located in Logan Town, a suburb of Monrovia. The show brings a mix of entertainment news, live interviews with artists and a top ten songs countdown. Because there is no audience monitoring system in place in Liberia, it is impossible to know how many people are listen to the show. According to Martin Fagans, a way to measure the success of a radio show is when there is an increasing number of listeners calling in during the broadcast of the program.

The first step to promote the radio show beyond radio D15 footprint was with the posting of a recording of the program on SoundCloud, an online platform where artists can post their music, videos and share them with their audience. In addition to this, a little bit of Facebook promotion helped to raise the interest for the program among some Liberians in the diaspora.

The breakthrough came with the partnership with Kaifa KY Yamah of LIBWEB Radio. Kaifa who started LIBWEB Radio in 2009 explains that “I started the online radio mainly to promote Liberian entertainment to the world and to get people to know Liberia and the talents that we have. My motivation was that I had people that were always telling that I can take Liberian music and entertainment to another level”.

LIBWEB Radio is based in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA and is available worldwide via TuneIn , an online platform hosting over 70,000 radio stations. On Saturday, August 31st while the radio program LIB Weekend Thing went on air on FM D15, it was also simultaneously broadcast for the first time on LIBWEB Radio.

From a quality perspective, the first simulcast broadcast was not perfect as the link went down several times but it showed how the Internet can extent the footprint of a local FM radio while at the same time showcasing Liberian content and artists abroad. According to Martin Fagans, one of the most amazing thing was when listeners called in from country as far as Sweden, Korean or even Australia.

Since then, the partnership has strengthened between Martin and Kaifa as both share the same passion for Liberian music, radio and new technologies. However, many challenges remain in particular a suitable business model to run a profitable online radio. As Kaifa underlines it “the most challenging thing in running an online radio is having advertisers or businesses to believe in you because they don’t hear the audio from the radio in their car. But they forget that online is worldwide which is a much better place to advertise than FM radio”.

The concept of a FM radio backed 24/7 by an online presence makes a lot of sense because each medium enhances the other one but will it be enough to make a difference first at the local level where many FM radios already compete for a share of the advertising money of a few companies?

On the other hand, the online world is highly competitive and if Liberian music wants to make it, it will need to go head to head with Nigerian and Ghanaian music for a start. The discussion on local content has shifted a level up as it is not really anymore about the lack of local content (there is lot) but more about the quality of this local content. Only high quality local content has a commercial value whether online or offline.

Gidilounge is an online radio station that is not well known globally but has 6 million listeners a month for its mix of Afrobeats, Juju, Highlife, African Gospel and much more. Russell Southwood spoke to one of its founders Benny Alaga.

Gidilounge was founded in 2007 by two Nigeria students at York University in Toronto, Canada., who had a passion for Nigerian music. It started as a website with a music player and they then created a database of tracks and an online playlist. “At that point, we couldn’t find the music we liked anywhere.”

In 2010, they decided to create an online radio station for those young Nigerians, like themselves, who wanted to listen to DJs and shows:”That’s where I came in. I developed a plan even though I had no experience in radio.” At that point, the level of use began to take off. Now it has four different types of show including Afrobeat and Gospel of 1 hour each that go out at specific times according to a schedule:”We recently added gospel which is huge in Nigeria. We’re also looking to add other types of music that will take us up the age range.” In all, there 20 different shows at different shows, some live and some pre-recorded.

The business model is to attract advertising and there is an app which will have advertising in it:”We haven’t made significant revenues in the last three years because we’ve been focused on developing a good product. But this year we’re focused on developing income streams.

Its audience strongholds are the UK (40%), the USA (25%) and Nigeria (10%) but it is listened to in 57 countries globally:”As the bandwidth improves in Nigeria, we’re looking to break out to new audiences there. We’ve found it very hard to penetrate Africa but in 2014 we’re looking to team up with telcos there.”

Its listeners are in the classic 18-30 demographic and are largely college or university students or young professionals.

However, online is not just about music distribution. Social media has become the tool of choice for music promoters to get their artists’ name and music across to audiences, again both within their own country and to the increasingly important diasporas. The latter have the money to pay for tracks and to attend live music events.

Bankie Grey-Johnson, Hot Ink Media used social media to promote the last album put out by Gambian hip-hop performer Gee and in a country as small as the Gambia (2 million people), Facebook is an extremely effective medium for reaching the young fans of this local performer. See interview below:

SOURCE: http://smartmonkeytv.com