Mdundo African music streaming service

Photo Credit: Mdundo

As it works to top 50 million monthly active users (MAUs) by 2025, African streaming service Mdundo has revealed that its userbase approached 31 million in 2023’s latter half.

Mdundo just recently shed light upon its performance specifics for July through December of 2023, when revenue, notwithstanding the mentioned 30.8 million MAUs (up 16 percent from June 30th), is said to have declined by double digits from the same stretch in 2022. Underscoring the historical difficulties associated with monetizing streaming in emerging markets, the dip was followed by lowered guidance for the entirety of the company’s fiscal year.

All told, Mdundo across 2023’s final six months generated $824,000 (5.7 million Danish krone), down about 12 percent year over year (YoY), the analysis shows. The business mainly attributed the decrease to a 41 percent YoY falloff in advert revenue – which itself is said to have resulted from “a delayed and unsatisfactory execution” of an advert-resale pact on the part of South Africa’s Ad-Dynamo.

Nevertheless, Mdundo also identified a 48 percent YoY hike in subscription revenue, at roughly $450,000 (DKK 3.1 million). Significantly, it was only in the 2019-20 fiscal year that the company was pulling in no cash at all from subscriptions, and the sum attributable to the category at present is particularly noteworthy given the relatively small monthly charge at hand.

(Users can download tracks for free on Mdundo, which compensates the involved professionals with a piece of the associated advert income, per the service’s website. DJ mixes, on the other hand, are “premium products” accessible solely via various telecom partners to listeners based in Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa, according to the same source.)

Finally, in terms of the platform’s core financials for the second half of 2023, Mdundo’s EBITDA improved 21 percent YoY to negative $477,180 (negative DKK 3.3 million) – “in-line with our 2025 goal of reaching EBITDA positive” – as cash burn came in at $303,600 (DKK 2.1 million), the company communicated.

Looking ahead to the remainder of the fiscal year, Mdundo has forecasted revenue (for the entire 12-month period) of between $2.02 million and $2.46 million (DKK 14 million and DKK 17 million) as well as EBITDA of between negative $939,900 and $1.08 million (negative DKK 6.5 million and DKK 7.5 million). Overall, the operation had a cash balance of $1.94 million (DKK 13.4 million) as of December 31st, the report shows.

Last month, MENA-focused streaming service Anghami indicated that it had also suffered a revenue slip despite achieving double-digit subscriber growth. Meanwhile, the share of Spotify MAUs (which exceeded 600 million in total as of Q4 2023) based outside North America, Latin America, and Europe could potentially hit 60 percent closer to 2024’s end.