There aren’t many indigenous streaming platforms commonly used by music artists in Nigeria. The few ones are Boomplay, Audiomack, UduX, Naijatastic, Mino, Gbedu Live, Playfre, Mdundo. Although Boomplay, Audiomack and Mdundo seem to be the largest platforms on this list, it is technically not Nigerian owned. Boomplay, Audiomack and Mdundo are Chinese, American, and Danish companies respectively.

This leaves us with UduX, Naijatastic, Mino, Gbedu and Playfre, which are Nigerian owned with unique features that sets that apart. However, noteworthy on this list is Naijatastic. The streaming service platform recently became the first indigenous platform to introduce a monetization program through a user-centric model.

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This streaming monetization program on the Naijatastic platform, allows pro plan artists with original (non-copyrighted) music uploaded, to earn revenue when pro listeners on Naijatastic listen to their music. This is a user-centric model in the sense that as a pro member, your subscription is given directly to the artists you’ve listened to, in proportion to the number of times you streamed them.

This model favors independent artists more, as it is different from the traditional streaming model used by Spotify, Apple Music, where money is pooled and the artists with the biggest fans typically earn the most streaming revenue. Therefore, in the traditional streaming model, it is difficult for independent artists to compete fairly with major artists and labels. Also, artists earn from the advertising revenue generated by the platform.

The Naijatastic monetization program is fan-powered / user-generated. At scale, revenue depends on the behavior of music audiences. This benefits genres with typically long track length, since royalties no longer get divided by stream count across all subscribers, but on a per subscriber basis. A detailed explanation of how this revenue model works can be found on the Naijatastic website.