Tune In To Something New

I remember very clearly spending Sunday afternoons as a kid in the early 90s listening to the Top 40 singles chart being counted down on the radio and having a blank cassette ready in my (bright red) ghetto blaster so that I could quickly press the record buttons when a song I liked came on. The art was guessing when to press stop before the presenter started speaking again. If I really liked something I’d head down to the shops to buy the single, or I’d save up my money and wait for the album.

Aside from my trip down memory lane giving away my age, it also shows just how much things have changed in 20 years or so, from the early launch of Napster in 1999, followed by YouTube in 2005, followed by many others since. Music fans of all ages these days don’t visit record stores to choose between vinyl, cassettes, and CDs—they expect everything straight away at a click. They stream, they subscribe, and they download. And they do so in huge numbers.

This means big bucks for the streaming platforms. Global leader, Spotify, was worth over $54 billion as of March this year. Last year, YouTube was already reportedly a more than $15 billion per year business, and that was before the mass lockdown-induced digital migration of 2020. Good news for the likes of billionaires Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon (founders of Spotify), and Sergey Brin and Larry Page (founders of Google, owner of YouTube). With home-grown Middle East streaming platform Anghami now listing on Nasdaq I’m sure founders Eddy Maroun and Elie Habib are hoping for similar success.

But even for those of us non-billionaire users, this evolution has been a good thing in many ways. As someone that remembers the old days but is now absorbed in the new, having music at my fingertips has opened my eyes, and ears, to artists that I just wouldn’t have looked into before. For example, when reading this month’s list of the stars of the Arabic music scene, I admit I had YouTube open at the same time—for research purposes only of course. I found myself scrolling through the hits and becoming a bit addicted to Gims and Mohamed Ramadan’s “Ya Habibi,” which is in French and Arabic, neither of which I speak.

You only need to look at the growing popularity of bands like Korean K-Pop sensations BTS in Western markets to see that easy access and online sharing is seeing music beginning to transcend stereotypes and language barriers in some of the industry’s biggest markets. This could mean even more success for Arabic musicians in future as new fans tune in.

I hope you find some new favorite artists in this month’s issue.