Uniting East Africa Through Music, Mdundo Brings the Best of the Best of East Africa Directly to Your Pocket

Music is a great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.  With a music library of more than 50,000 songs, Mdundo is home to a limitless number of genres of music. This is the reason our catalogue grows by the minute, with most of it being uploads from our artists in East Africa.

Unfortunately, most of the music is consumed in the countries that it is produced, making it hard for our artists to grow their fan base outside their countries. In every top ten weekly countdown on Mdundo, only one or none of the artist is from a different country. However this is a trend that Mdundo is trying to change – and it’s working!

In most cases the artists doesn’t have connections in the other East Africa countries, lack of access to fans or limited information distribution to these markets as compared to the individual home markets. Additionally, the media does little to help these artists as they focus more on international musicians and music from West Africa. It is hard to grow across East Africa, but our experience is that fans love the sound of each country and the artists are increasingly focusing on East Africa as a market, rather than Nigeria or the west.

Like Henry Wadsworth, we believe that music is the universal language of mankind. It’s for this reason we are taking the initiative to market and promote our artists across borders.

Currently we are focusing on eight artists, two from each country in East Africa for the next one month, working to grow their numbers in different countries. The fan base of one country is rarely enough to sustain a good music business, thus the need to assist artists grow. These artists are chosen based on the genre of music, search results and ability to grow in different markets.

So if you are a Mdundo fan in Uganda watch out for the amazing sounds of Kagwe Mungai and The Kansoul from Kenya. If you are in Tanzania watch out for Khaligraph and Gloria Muliro from Kenya. And finally if you are in Kenya watch out for Nikki Mbishi and Baraka da Prince from Tanzania and Radio and Weasel and Cindy Sanyu from Uganda.

Make sure you check out these fine musicians on Mdundo and experience their amazing music. Also ensure you download their back to back mixes from Mdundo done by the best mix masters in East Africa.

And best of all, it’s all FREE.

About the author: Liz Mwangi is the Artist Relations Manager at Mdundo Limited, an online music distribution APP in East Africa with more than ten thousands artists from ALL over Africa. She has worked for the company for two years, having worked with artists from the both the Uganda and Kenya markets. For the last year, she has been heading the expansion of Mdundo in Uganda and this has expanded her knowledge and information of the music industry beyond Kenya. This experience has created some insights on some of the challenges the artists go through in the industry. She is currently working on some initiatives that will increase the value for musicians who use Mdundo.