Boomplay gives Africans the gift of music
February 26, 2021
By Angharad Rhiannon
China’s Transsnet Music is putting a smile on the faces of African audiences by increasing access to streaming music via its Boomplay platform. The African music distribution platform has rolled out a new offer for its customers by providing them with the ability to claim and obtain free data.
Boomplay launched in Nigeria in 2015, later opening offices in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and other African countries. It now enriches the lives of 70 million Africans with a catalogue of 43 million songs, operating both a freemium ad-supported service and a subscription-based service that provides premium features such as offline play and ad-free listening.
Boomplay’s new solution is supported by data monetisation platform Centili, which enables Boomplay to identify users and distribute data packages to the appropriate phone number. Centili’s platform makes gifting data quick and easy, boosting engagement.
Boomplay rewards active users through a gamification system that enables them to collect points from streaming music, share it with friends, post comments and add music albums to their favourites. Points can then be used for in-app purchases or exchanged for rewards such as data packs and airtime. Specific campaigns reward users with data, tackling one of African customers’ biggest pain points – data affordability.
Boomplay is putting its money where its mouth is – donating 25 million megabytes of free data in 2020 to Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans and Tanzanians. And this is just the start.
Boomplay uses Centili’s sister company Infobip to deliver verification codes via WhatsApp. The Centili Fusion platform then enables customers to exchange points for data and claim and obtain free data, while also identifying mobile users and provisioning the right data quality. Centili handles legal and commercial agreements, integration, reporting and analytics.
From April to October 2020, Boomplay saw double-digit growth in the percentage of users redeeming data, and double-digit increases in the percentage of active users. Transsnet Music has revealed three key ingredients to its success. Firstly, you have to have a valued product. Secondly, data redemption must be easy. And, finally, trust is everything. According to Transsnet Music’s User Operations Director Jake Chen, building trust requires a robust privacy policy and favourable user reviews to build credibility.
“Lots of people worry about scams, and sometimes they’ll assume there must be a catch if you are offered something for free,” adds Phil Choi, Copyright Director at Transsnet Music. “To avoid that, we make sure we have a strong privacy policy in place and a trustworthy process and reliable partners we do business with.”
Chen says Transsnet Music is ambitious about growing Boomplay and bringing the gift of music to more Africans. “We hope that data recharge can extend from Nigeria to the other three markets in which we operate and that we can include more virtual and utility services,” he explains.
According to Teresa Cottam, Chief Analyst at Omnisperience, the tie-up addresses a key bottleneck – affordability – to widen access to creative content in Africa in a fun and pragmatic way. “This solution tackles another serious concern – content piracy – by providing a legitimate platform for enjoying content in a manner that is also affordable and safe for African audiences,” she adds. “There is considerable opportunity to take this offering to more audiences in Africa, as well as to widen the type of content and services being supported. This model also has great potential in other markets – such as in LatAm and Asia-Pacific.”