Interview: Melanie Triegaardt of @SpotifySA Talks Success of 'Africa Heat' Global Campaign, Uplifting African Artists & More

What is your role at Spotify?

Music Strategy and Operation Lead for Sub Saharan Africa. My role centers around leading music strategy on the continent, which includes genre development and expansion. I am responsible for strategic African creator initiative programs and driving creative partnerships in market. And last but not least, I look after creator marketplace tools and the rollout of these for the African continent.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

Working across multiple time zones with several internal stakeholders and external partners, all the while executing multiple initiatives & projects timeously. 

It's accepted that bandwidth is expensive in South Africa. Is that the case in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa and does Spotify offer a data-efficient version? 

Yes, key challenges in the Sub-Saharan market include infrastructure and the high cost of data and subsequently its consumption by users. When entering a new market, Spotify is mindful of the individual market challenges and looks for solutions to these challenges to make music streaming accessible to all. 

Spotify’s default data streaming setting for South Africa is 24kbps, perfect if you’re streaming when not on Wi-Fi. This is a lower data streaming setting than any other music services offer. To give you a comparison, Spotify uses 11 megabytes per hour of data while streaming music, compared with 43.2MB per hour as the lowest reported available data consumption available to other music streaming services.  And for when you are on Wi-Fi and want to stream at high quality rates, Spotify also offers data streaming at 96kbps, 160kbps and 320kbps (for Premium users).

Another solution has been the introduction of Spotify Lite, a smaller version of our unparalleled music experience.  Spotify Lite lets users control their data and storage. It’s only 10 MB, so it’s quick to install and load while offering the same great listening experience that lets you discover, play, and enjoy millions of songs. Spotify Lite also comes with the ability to set a data limit and get a notification when you reach it. This way, users can focus on finding their next favourite song and not worry about data. The Lite app also offers users a reliable way to fully enjoy their favourite music in areas with limited bandwidth, if they have limited phone storage, and even if they do not have the latest smartphones. 

You played a key role in the African Heat playlist that Spotify launched a few years ago. Which regions or genres in Sub Saharan Africa have experienced the most growth?

Africa is one of the fastest-growing music markets in the world and there is an increased global demand for our [African] music and our wealth of genres and artists. The continent’s distinctive sounds are taking the world by storm, this includes AmaPiano, Afropop, Afrobeat, Gengetone and more. African Heat is one of the key curated, flagship playlists on Spotify that is dedicated to supporting African creators. Playlists such as these have helped drive artist discovery to more than 365 million active users across 178 markets by showcasing the hottest tracks on the continent right now to the world. 

In South Africa, AmaPiano comes to mind when we talk about genres that have experienced exponential growth (since it gained mainstream popularity in 2016). Recent Spotify data shows that the genre has seen an increase of 170% globally, in the past year alone. Outside of South Africa, the two top countries streaming AmaPiano the most were the UK and the USA with streams of AmaPiano Grooves playlist increasing by 142% in the UK (over the past year).

Kenya’s Gengetone has also seen a rise in popularity and to help support this growth, Spotify introduced its flagship playlist for the genre Gengetone Fire - that highlights the latest tracks and artists out of Kenya - allowing for further global discovery.

Nigeria is fiercely proud of the music that it exports and Afrobeats has grown significantly on Spotify. The genre has evolved to become more reflective of all commercial music genres from Africa.  Artists such as Burna Boy, WizKid, DaVido, Tiwa Savage feature extensively on top Spotify playlists and more collaborations with international artists are redefining the genre. Traditionally, the African Heat playlist has been associated with Afrobeats and the playlist's popularity can largely be attributed to Afrobeats undeniable momentum in the past decade.

Which genres or sub-genres didn't develop as well as you thought they would?

The development of genres moves in waves and is seasonal. It is often influenced by culture and socio-political shifts happening in the country at the time. All genres do develop and evolve as they should. Development can speak to multiple aspects, for example audio quality, the influence or impact on other genres, sound evolution, the commercialisation of the genre (i.e., Top 40), artists’ rise and export in that space and hit music export. When Spotify first launched in South Africa in 2018, Gqom was still popular and penetrating the mainstream space, all the while AmaPiano was building momentum in the shadows. Gqom has a loyal core fanbase and amazing DJs and producers that are still championing the sound locally and abroad. However, it does not have as many cross-border hits and hits in the local Top 40 mainstream as it did a few years ago.

What is your proudest achievement from the African Heat Playlist?

Our African Heat global campaign, which launched at the start of this year, was great for championing dance culture on the continent and showcasing the incredible artists, creators and hit music we have. To highlight AmaPiano on a commercial level was truly a special and proud moment. Being able to help, support and elevate artist profiles through showcasing incredible hit music and by driving genre and sound discovery on global platforms, will always be a proud achievement through our campaigns. It’s incredible to see the results both on and off platform. This is arguably the most exciting time to be in the African tech and digital space as a creative or as a supporter of content creators. 

Spotify is known as a platform that seeks to empower artists with initiatives like 'Spotify for Artists' events. What are some of the things that Spotify has done in collaboration with artists to capitalise on the rapid rise of AmaPiano and African Dance music as a whole?

Spotify’s mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and by giving fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by these creators. Spotify drives initiatives that support African creators including, promoting key curated, flagship playlists such as African Heat, AmaPiano Grooves, and most recently, Gengetone Fire, which has driven further discovery and celebration of African influence to its global audience of over 356 million active monthly users. 

Spotify also houses the Afrohub platform that promotes and brings to the surface culturally diverse music to users around the world. This year, we launched the global Africa Heat campaign that was headlined by the hit track ‘Ke Star’ by Focalistic. Focalistic is also one of the artists that were selected for RADAR Africa, a global program that aims to promote emerging artists around the world.

The African Heat campaign celebrated the impact of African Dance culture around the globe and the diversity of Africa’s talent, by giving creators a platform to showcase their music to the world. The campaign featured emerging and established artists alongside one another, further showcasing its dedication to and investment in all artists at every stage of their career, as pledged through RADAR. Focalistic is a prime example of the type of support and investment Spotify can offer local artists to elevate their profile and music to a global stage, maximising the power of the world's most popular audio platform to aid discovery to millions of worldwide active users.

Earlier this year Spotify launched its global EQUAL program that creates a platform to amplify and support female creators. Most recently AmaPiano DJ, DBN Gogo joined the ranks of EQUAL stars and featured on a Spotify billboard in Times Square New York. In the local market Spotify has run several AmaPiano data-led content pieces highlighting top artists in the genre and the rise in popularity of the genre worldwide.

Spotify is also a platform that focuses on the user experience offering things like following artists and great playlists. What other things, if any, have Spotify done to provide users with a unique experience?

Spotify offers personalised algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly, Daily Mixes, Time Capsules and Your Daily Mix, which is updated daily, for every one of its 365 million monthly active users. These personalised playlists deliver a blend of music users already know and love, alongside discovery of tracks, identified by our algorithm, like the type of music a user has recently been listening to. Wrapped is Spotify's biggest annual campaign. At the close of each year Spotify creates a personalised Wrapped Card for each of its users that reveals the top tracks, artists, podcasts, and more individual information around a user's listening habits - essentially revealing each user’s ‘year in music’.

Spotify recently launched a new hub ‘Only You’, which celebrates how users listen and offers users data and personalised playlists customised to their preferences. Users can also track what other fans are listening to and put it all together with another new feature called ‘Blend’ that lets two friends create a joint playlist, which Spotify’s algorithm will populate with songs that combine their individual listening tastes.

In closing, what piece of advice would you give to someone that wants to follow in your footsteps?

A key piece of advice I received is to network! Never turn down the opportunity to meet and interact with new people, in your field of expertise or in some cases, completely outside of it. It’s often not what you know but who you know.  Looking back on the last decade, my career highlights have come from networking encounters, which strongly influenced my career progression or pivot. I also love connecting people, those moments of talking to someone where you think “hey I think you should meet so-and-so, you could do some great things together” And it happens… Often a simple conversation with a stranger can lead to profound impact and magic. 

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