WAW MUZIK is a next-generation digital music service founded on a simple idea: to offer a music streaming platform specializing in African artists and genres. Recently launched in partnership with French telecoms operator Orange serving as the distributor, the service features a 100% Black music repertoire. Thanks to licensing and distribution agreements with multiple content providers and aggregators, including Universal Music Africa, Idol, and Believe, the platform offers over 11 million songs to its listeners across the continent. It’s also one of the few music streaming services that reaches bandwidth-limited regions in Africa.
While African beats have taken the global music scene by storm, infrastructure and network challenges are stark in Africa. Launching a new streaming platform can be riddled with tough challenges — especially because bandwidth is quite expensive in Africa.
Another major issue in Africa is the limited CDN presence. The nearest delivery point is in Europe, which creates network bottlenecks for streaming services. Service providers need a flawless distribution solution capable of delivering exceptional quality, especially during primetime peaks.
Another hurdle is establishing an effective payment system at an attractive price point for the service. This is especially challenging since a large percentage of the African population does not own a credit card. According to The World Bank, in 2017 only 4.47% of Africans aged 15+ owned a credit card.
WAW MUZIK wanted to launch their music streaming service with a very short time to market. Given the time constraints and with content being delivered by many different content providers, flexibility was critical.
Considering the complexities of the project, EasyBroadcast was selected to power the new streaming service. EasyBroadcast built the Android and iOS mobile streaming applications, transcoding platform, backend, content management system, loyalty points, monetization mechanism, and analytics dashboard for the streaming service.
At the core of the solution is the company’s innovative Viewer-Assisted Delivery (VAD) technology, which acts as a hybrid alternative to traditional CDN-based delivery by relying on a combination of CDNs and viewer-to-viewer adaptive streaming.
EasyBroadcast was also responsible for providing ongoing technical support and maintenance of the music streaming platform.
EasyBroadcast’s VAD technology ensures the best possible user experience to its listeners. With the technology, anyone listening to the same content at the same time can operate as a server for nearby listeners. Each user obtains the first segments of audio from the CDN. The rest of the audio segments are distributed directly from other listeners, optimizing delivery and reducing buffering by decreasing the load on the network. In addition, VAD enables rapid, smooth scaling, ensuring a seamless audio streaming experience for end users even during peak listening times.
Without VAD, WAW MUZIK would not be able to deliver content cost-effectively in Africa, where bandwidth is expensive and internet connections are poor. EasyBroadcast’s delivery technology lowers the price of streaming substantially, reducing bandwidth stress and dependency by up to 90%.
A unique approach to the platform is its customized loyalty points system that EasyBroadcast built for the provider. This system has been critical to monetizing the streaming service and attracting users. Loyalty points are a form of digital currency and can be purchased on a pay-per-use basis inside physical store fronts operated by Orange. Loyalty points can also be attained through advertisers, via social media sharing, and by using the app on a daily basis. Through loyalty points, WAW MUZIK effectively addressed the lack of credit card access in Africa.
EasyBroadcast delivered the entire solution, including the content management system, delivery technology, loyalty points, and mobile app within five weeks, meeting all requirements for rapid time to market.
In the world of OTT service delivery, having a larger audience size is an opportunity to gain more revenue. But it’s a double-edged sword because reaching a larger audience requires more bandwidth, which can be especially costly in a region like Africa.
EasyBroadcast’s end-to-end OTT platform and VAD technology helped bypass bandwidth challenges and has been critical to the service’s success, guaranteeing a high QoS for end users and substantially reducing CDN costs.
Partnering with EasyBroadcast, Orange, and Universal Music Africa, WAW MUZIK is revolutionizing music streaming in the region. Thanks to its ability to provide an exceptional quality music streaming experience, with access to millions of Afro tracks and over 12,000 different music genres, they have attracted a large number of listeners.
To kick-start music streaming in Africa, WAW MUZIK needed a technology partner that could drive up profitability. Our Viewer-Assisted Delivery technology ensures an exceptional quality music streaming experience and reduces CDN costs, enabling WAW MUZIK to quickly start monetizing its new service.
Mohsen Haddad, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Office, EasyBroadcast
