CAPE TOWN, South Africa, 21 October 2021 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/- Ayoba, the African super app, has announced the launch of a new focus on music in its application. The new Music homepage in ayoba offers a far superior design with enhanced player, and superb artist/ playlist imagery. Users are advised to upgrade their apps to the latest version of the app, 0.42.2, on ayoba.me, to experience it for themselves. This update of the app will also ensure that users get access to the full feature set of the Superapp – including the recent updates to add voice and video calling to the current chat and channels offering.
‘It has been an incredible journey building a music service in ayoba’ says CEO, Burak Akinci. ‘The year started at 40 000 monthly music users and we are currently at 300 000 monthly music users. The top territories are South Africa, Nigeria and Cameroon and we expect this growth trend to continue. The new music homepage in ayoba will further enhance music discovery in the app, and we anticipate a favourable response from users’’.
Simfy Africa [Pty] Ltd, owner of the ayoba app, has also announced the sunsetting of its standalone music streaming service, MusicTime®. MusicTime® was launched in December 2018 in South Africa with its partner, MTN, and was further launched into select MTN markets in subsequent years.
Simfy Africa [Pty] Ltd have taken the decision to incorporate music into ayoba and not to split their focus by running two independent apps. The MusicTime® app will be closed to new users this week, and will remain open for existing users until the 30th November 2021. MusicTime® evolved as a product from the legacy Simfy Africa music streaming service, which was sunset earlier this year.
‘We take this opportunity to thank all our Simfy and MusicTime® users for their support. It has been ten years’ since the Simfy service was launched, and the music industry and competitor landscape has changed significantly. We see greater growth opportunity with the music offering in ayoba,’ says Akinci. ‘A direct comparison of the growth of the MusicTime® and ayoba music services for the past year shows a clear preference for the service in ayoba, both in user numbers and plays.
The upgrade of the music homepage in ayoba is the first in a series of upgrades that are forthcoming in the app with our heightened music and content focus.’ The music offering in ayoba offers 20 localised playlists per week per territory. Nigerian music users for example, see a different offering to Cameroonian. Playlists are rotated weekly with favourites updated with new tracks. South Africa has brought the greatest success for music in ayoba to date, with Nigeria and Rwanda following closely.
The service has seen millions of plays this year, with the top artist across the continent coming in as Master KG and top song as Summeryomuthi by Blaq Diamond. The same song takes top spot for South Africa with Makhadzi coming in as the top artist. Olamide takes the honours for Nigeria as most played artist, with the top song being Naira Marley by Zinoleesky. Top artist for Ghana goes to Sarkodie with the top song coming in as Inna Song by DarkoVibes. Honours for Rwanda goes to Diamond Platinumz and top song is South of the Border (feat. Camila Cabello & Cardi B) by Ed Sheeran. Cameroon and CongoB have been listening to Fally Ipupa with top song as Mon Meilleur Ami by Rosny Kayiba.
Ayoba’s weekly Top Songs and New Music Fridays playlists have proven to be the favourite across all territories. Other top playlists that are notable are Gloire à Dieu for Cameroon and CongoB. Ziyaduma! For South Africa, Olamide: Birthday Playlist in Nigeria and Ghana’s Top 50 songs.
Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Ayoba.
About Ayoba
2021 has been a fast paced year so far for team ayoba. In September, the Super App launched a dynamic, high profile above the line media campaign titled: ‘Life inside ayoba’. Ayoba also announced an achievement of 8 million monthly users, a steep rise from the announcement of 5.5M monthly active users earlier in 2021.
To date Ayoba has over 160 content channels across various categories.
In partnership with MTN, MTN customers are automatically allocated free data to use ayoba features (with the exception of Benin). Free data allocations can be used for all activities available in the app – including messaging, browsing, gaming and listening to music, and customers can also download the app data free at www.ayoba.me. Users are advised that voice and video calls are excluded from the free data provisions.
Since its launch in May 2019, ayoba has reached millions of users. It offers users free access to an ecosystem of digital and rich media services through channels, micro-apps and payment solutions, embedded within an African super-app.
Ayoba is highly localised and tailored for African and Middle East consumer needs, supporting 22 relevant languages. Users can send and receive encrypted messages, share photos, videos, files and voice notes and can also subscribe to live channels. Family friendly localised content is available through curated channels aimed at entertaining, educating and empowering communities as well as a range of games. Ayoba is available for Android users on the Google, Transsion, Huawei, Samsung and BeMobi stores as well as the ayoba website (ayoba.me). The PWA can be accessed at web.ayoba.me.
For more information please contact:
Olivier Prentout
Email address: pr@ayoba.me
