Senegalese artist Youssou N'Dour will be featured on MusikBi, Africa's first music download service. (Google Images)
Senegalese artist Youssou N'Dour will be featured on MusikBi, Africa's first music download service. (Google Images)
Senegalese artist Youssou N’Dour will be one of the musical artists featured on MusikBi, Africa’s first music download service.
(Google Images)

The Guardian is reporting Africa’s first homegrown platform for legal music downloads has launched in Senegal with a mission to promote African artists, pay them properly and fight internet piracy. The author writes:

“Internationally famous musicians such as Youssou N’Dour and Baaba Maal are among almost 200 who have signed agreements with MusikBi, along with younger rappers, jazz artists and Christian and Muslim vocalists.

The platform draws its name from the word for music in Wolof, the language widely spoken in Senegal and neighbouring Gambia, said project developer Moustapha Diop at the launch in Dakar on Wednesday.

Songs cost between 300 and 500 CFA francs (50-85 US cents) and users can download them using mobile phone credit in a region where few have bank cards.

‘It is the first platform of its kind enabling music downloads by text or PayPal,’ said a statement released by Diop’s company, Solid.

Solid noted that many African music artists ‘cannot live comfortably by the proceeds of their work’, adding the platform offered a chance for ‘promotion and to allow them to make a living from their art.’”

Read more at The Guardian.

Follow The Burton Wire on Instagram or Twitter @TheBurtonWire.

Previous articleMavis! Documentary: Director Jessica Edwards Talks Process
Next articlePolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell: ‘Organizing Matters’
TheBurtonWire.com is the premiere online destination for people who think for themselves. This blog offers news from the African Diaspora, culture that is produced by often overlooked populations and opinion that is informed and based on fact. Tired of the onslaught of websites and talking heads that regurgitate what people want to hear, TheBurtonWire.com is a publication that elevates news and perspectives that people need to hear. TheBurtonWire.com is for individual thinkers who understand that they are part of a larger collective. What is this collective? Free thinking people that care about the world, who will not be categorized or boxed in by society or culture and are interested in issues and topics that defy stereotypes and conventional wisdom.