AfroNotes Musique

In Africa there are limited avenues to market and publish music. Currently musicians make their money from concerts, personal appearances, and advertisements. They do not make money off the songs they release. Songs are typically released online on Youtube and, once popular, the musicians use those songs in concerts and product endorsement ads. Musicians may release a CD periodically however there is not a large market for this because the music is often pirated. One person will buy a CD then make thousands of copies at home and sell them for a cheaper price in the local market. This means that African musicians are not able to capitalize from royalties from their songs.
The answer to the problem of not receiving royalties from downloaded/pirated songs that has developed in the USA is the formation of online warehouses to download songs legally such as iTunes by Apple. A purely online outlet for selling songs in the African market would have a very limited market and would not reach the majority of the population due to sparse and expensive internet access.
One technology that has thrived in Africa is the mobile phone. Mobile phones in Africa are unlocked phones that are purchased in stores or kiosks. Airtime is purchased by the minute from small kiosks or individuals that walk the streets with vests wearing the mobile provider’s logo.
In general African countries have poor infrastructures and the majority of the geographic area was never supplied with wired telephone service. In the same light, we can make an educated assumption that the majority of the African population will not have access to high speed internet in the near future unless there are strides made in wireless internet services.
With the problem of musicians missing out on royalties from their music and the understanding of how mobile devices have spread we have developed an idea to bring the most recent popular music to the masses while providing musicians with their due royalties. This will be done through a combination of an online music warehouse and corresponding cell phone application called AfroNotes and a small inexpensive Mp3 player with proprietary software called the AfroStick.
AfroNotes is an online music warehouse that will stream the most popular music in addition to allowing music to be downloaded to an individual’s computer. The music will be able to be downloaded but only played through the AfroNotes software and will not be able to be shared from computer to computer. AfroNotes would reach people in the large metropolitan areas with the means to afford computers and internet access. Afronotes corresponding cell phone application would also reach individuals who want to stream and download the post popular music via their cell phones using wifi access.
In order to reach the population that does not have internet access we plan to release the AfroStick. The Afrostick is an affordable Mp3 player with proprietary software. After purchasing the Mp3 player the owner can visit stationary kiosks or mobile kiosks and download individual songs or the entire set of new releases for the month.

Music will be streamed for free on the website but if a person wants to listen to or download specific music they must either pay a monthly subscription or pay per song.