Music streaming app JOOX first launched in South-east Asia three-and-a-half years ago.
South Africa, the first market for the brand outside of Asia, is growing in the world of streaming services.
Thabiet Allie, chief commercial officer for music at Tencent Africa, the company that brought JOOX to the country, said the streaming service attracted all major local and international music labels, which allowed them to access the best music that was available in the country.
“We ensure better locally curated content to get ahead of all music trends.
Popular genres as well as pop and all manner of urban music genres (local and international, from old-school hip-hop and R&B to gqom and kwaito).
We also have exclusive streaming rights for Afrikaans music, which is cool,” said Allie.
For anyone who doesn’t understand what streaming is in the music sense, it’s a way of listening online to all the new and classic music you feel like.
“With a JOOX VIP subscription you also get to listen to all your favourite music offline, meaning you don’t need to use data, offering a great benefit to manage your data usage.”
On Thursday, hip-hop artist Nasty C launched his album Strings and Bling, exclusively with the music streaming app.
“We are all about connecting fans with their favourite music and artists, whatever their music tastes. We have a large local team focused on ensuring our platform offers the widest variety of both local and international music, and we have secured exclusive partnerships with local independent labels to ensure that our listeners get first access to the latest content.
JOOX allows you to listen to your favourite artists' music for free.
“We have sponsored a number of events that showcase artists across genres to continue to support music, such as KKNK, the Red Bull Music Festival, Cape Town Electronic Music Festival and #GqomInConcert.”
Allie said that as streaming continued to grow, it would become the future of the music industry.
“In 2017, 38% of global music revenue came from streaming, compared to 30% from physical sales, according to IFPI.org.
“We are passionate about its success for South African artists. JOOX is not just song catalogues, but a rich content portal for artists.
“JOOX is increasingly a marketing platform to profile the artists in apps and on our social communities, in PR, TV advertising and in print.
“It’s a great ecosystem to establish a long-term career in music,” said Allie.
* Tencent Africa is a technology company that has brought WeChat, VOOV - the social live-streaming app - and JOOX to the continent