Ownership Architecture Behind Nigeria’s 3.7 Billion Streams in 2025
Zero opinions, just about enough data.
The full report is now available in both print and digital formats.
It’s been a while since you last heard from me, and I’m excited to say it’s for good reasons, and we’re very much here now. I’m happy to share our latest music business report from the past year (FY2025), which we’ve spent so much time and effort on, pouring in hours upon hours of research, data collation, and analysis of thousands of songs and billions of streams across Nigeria and South Africa.
Since our first issue about 19 months ago in July 2024, it was important for us to take the whole of 2025 to think up improved ways, insights, and direction for what we do next. Resting on our laurels is far from our DNA, and while reception of the first issue was amazing (grateful for that), we understand the gaps there still are to fill in a nascent market like Nigeria, moreso an industry like music. That’s why upping the ante in follow-on releases, even if it means taking our time, was absolutely necessary.
In all, I’m proud to say that this issue, in every respect, from its thematic cohesion to the quality of data and the granularity of analysis, depicts an upgrade from our previous edition. And we intend to keep raising the bar subsequently.
One of the insights you’ll encounter in this report can already be seen in the featured image above. For instance, across about a thousand of the most-streamed songs powering over 3.77 billion streams on Spotify in Nigeria, 92% of those streams went to Nigerian releases, with the remaining share distributed across just 12 other countries. South Africa also shares a similar behaviour, as 76% of its total 1.8 billion streams in 2025 went to local artists, with the remaining share spread across artists from only 10 other markets. The report includes a proper breakdown of releases from these secondary markets across both regions.
A key thesis of this report is that Nigeria’s streaming economy is becoming more than just a story of volume growth, but also one of how ownership, distribution, and parent-entity consolidation determine where value ultimately sits. For a market averaging nearly 80 million streams weekly on just one platform, with no signs of appetite slowing down, it gets to a point where we must move the conversation beyond surface-level consumption to interrogate, in detail, who controls the value those streams generate. To decipher this, we carried out what would be our most rigorous exercise yet (the main reason this report took longer), determining market share across players in a way that reflects the true structure of the music business value chain.
Unlike our previous issue, where all players were largely analysed at the same level, we discovered this approach would not properly reflect how the industry really works. For example, analysing a YBNL alongside a ONErpm at the same level does not accurately reflect the structure of the music business. The music industry operates through layered relationships of ownership and control, where a YBNL would instead be in partnership with a ONErpm, and not exactly in direct competition.
So we dissected the most-streamed songs across Spotify and Apple Music and analysed them across three distinct but related layers of control present in every music market:
Primary Label / Imprint: This is where the musical content originates and is first owned. At this level, we have the Mavins, YBNLs, Dvppers of a music market.
Distribution Companies: These players route musical content from the aforementioned players (primary labels/imprint) into streaming platforms and often control access, reach, and rights along the way. Here, we have the ONErpms, the Virgins, and the EMPIREs of the ecosystem.
Parent Entities: This is where it all culminates. These are the multinational companies that ultimately consolidate value and power at the very top. This would include the UMGs (via Virgin, Mavin, Republic, DefJam etc), the EMPIREs (still EMPIRE at this level), the Sonys (via The Orchard, Sony Music West Africa, RCA, AWAL etc) of the global music industry.
So, all thousands of songs and billions of streams were analysed distinctly across each of these layers for the Nigerian market. We can confidently stand by the authenticity of this analysis, having relied on first-party data while also drawing on industry relationships where attribution lines were not immediately obvious.
An interesting takeaway from this exercise is that Nigeria’s music ecosystem may appear fragmented at the downstream level (primary labels/imprints), but it shrinks as you move upstream (distros & parent entities). In fact, just three companies control about 75% of Nigeria’s streaming market across major DSPs at the upstream (parent entity) level. Through this report, we were able to identify these leading rightsholders, the partnerships driving their market status and in some ways, their strategies.
Then, we examined streaming subscription economics across Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya, tracing how macroeconomic forces shape the music industry, starting from household budgets all the way to rightsholders’ revenue dashboards. We also drove this home through a real-life payout scenario.
Also, in what has become a readers’ favourite from this issue (going by early feedback), we draw from insights shared by Merck Mercuriadis, who has invested over $3 billion in music catalogues ranging from Beyoncé’s to Ariana Grande’s via an investment fund he’d founded called Hipgnosis Songs. From his session with SWAY Capital, we unpack what it means for music to evolve beyond a cultural artefact into an investable asset class, and what that transformation entails.
If there is one thing we wanted this issue to communicate, it is that Nigeria’s music industry is maturing and entering a phase where conversation around infrastructure, ownership, and distribution power should start to matter more than mere streaming volume. I’m proud to say this report very much contributes to that shift by unpacking who actually controls one of Africa’s leading streaming economy. And the timing could not be more relevant. Its no longer about culture or virality alone, as we should be way past that by now. We should now tilt our lens towards who controls the infrastructure that captures the value created by that culture.
You can access the full report here (both print & digital formats), and choose whichever works best for you.
That said, if I may make a small recommendation, the Print experience is particularly different. Reports like this tend to be easier to absorb when you can sit with them, flip between sections, revisit charts, and mark the pages that stuck out to you. It turns the report into something you can keep on your desk and return to as the market keeps evolving.
Of course, the digital version is also great for those who prefer reading online or downloading the PDF for quick reference. It is available as both a read-online edition and a downloadable PDF.
Whichever format you choose, here’s a glimpse of what’s inside.
And as you go through this report, don’t hesitate to reach out and let us know what stuck out to you. If there are areas you’d like more clarity on or ideas you think we should explore further in future reports, we’d very much love to hear your thoughts.
The conversations that follow from this work are just as important as the work itself.
Access the full report below 👇🏻: