Tencent launches music streaming service, Joox, in South Africa

Chinese technology giant, Tencent has officially announced the launch of a music streaming service Joox in South Africa. South African media giant, Naspers, has a significant shareholding in Tencent hence Tencent is riding on the back of its advertising platforms e.g. DStv, to promote this new service. This will be the second major Tencent service that is being introduced by Naspers/Tencent into the South Africa space. Tencent started with WeChat, a social media (instant messaging, commerce and payment services) mobile app.

According to the company, it is being launched in South Africa “after Joox has proved popular in Asia for a couple of years in countries such as Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.”

The music streaming service was first launched in 2015 in Hong Kong and has since amassed over 50 million app downloads according to a 2016 study by McKinsey.

“Although Joox is in all respects very similar in what it offers in its paid version to other well established music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, it is its focus on local South African music that is likely to differentiate it. Joox partly differentiates itself by offering local music curated playlists such as “The Daily Sun Top 20” as well as Afrikaans music and South African Gospel music charts.”

“What is interesting with the focus on playlists is that it is relatively similar to South African music streaming service, Nichestreem. NicheStreem specialises in building music streams for niche audiences in emerging markets with their first stream being that of Afrikaans music, named Liedjie.”

Coincidentally, earlier in 2017, Naspers owned Media24 acquired a 10% stake in Nichestreem.

Joox will have to contend with the likes of Apple, Deezer and Google Play in the South African market. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) 2017 report, revenue from music streaming in South Africa increased by 334.2% over the past year.  Total South African streaming revenues increased from $1,877,000 (±R25 million) in 2015 to $8,150,000 (±R107 million) in 2016, IFPI told MyBroadband.

Sipho Dlamini, Managing Director of Universal Music South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, adds: “In South Africa, although the physical market remains important, there are already over 250,000 paying subscribers on streaming services and we expect the market to grow strongly.

Joox is available in South Africa on both iOS and Android. Tencent has indicated that a desktop version will likely be available before the end of 2017.