In the contemporary world of rapidly developing music industry, digital form of music has facilitated the access to unknown parts of the musicians. Based on the research, new data obtained from Spotify provides a distinct insight into this phenomenon’s potential force.

The younger South Africa-born music genre, amapiano, which literarily has only been around for a decade, has hit 1. Later in 2023, Spotify exposed that pop music had hit 4 billion streams, as agreed in a sequence of articles that was released particularly on the advancement of popular music.

This is actually a very high growth figure of 5,668 percent more since the year 2018. Amapiano only amassed 34 million streams in 2019, which rose to 102 million in 2020, and was nearly at 300 million in 2021.

The Position of the Pandemic
Amapiano’s hypnotic electronic melodies, backed by percussive bass lines and log drum-inspired beats, were significantly boosted by an unexpected force: The factor of secondary importance according to patients’ experience is the Covid-19 pandemic. Major events happened around the world forced people to stay home and leading them to use social media in finding new music.

“With people in South Africa being able to look for new ways of meeting friends, dance challenges captured the creativity of young people,” as Spotify put it. “That they could not Boogie in public did not restrain them from synchronizing the smooth moves with amapiano music that had flooded messaging apps. Social media created a platform through which they could emulate others on the same.

Popular social media dance challenges such as #Johnvuligatechallenge, JazziDisciples dance challenge and #Amanikinikichallenge were times that youth culture associated with and promoted genre through social media as observed by Spotify.

In the context of the pandemic, Spotify presented a function by which artists could collect money from listeners. “Due to the restrictions of live performance due to the pandemic, artists lost their source of income Many of them had to take loans or sell their instruments In the case of young, emerging musicians, the situation was slightly worse than the previous one because they did not have the connections and savings,” Spotify said.

Some of the major moments in amapiano cultural adoption include Beyoncé using Uncle Waffles’ “Tanzania” in her Renaissance world tour, Jennifer Hudson learning and dancing to the TikTok dance to Titom & Yuppe’s “Tshwala Bam” on her show “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” and Tyla dancing to track “Water(+)” which has 675 million streams on Spotify since the time it was released in July

What Spotify did was take statistics of all the amapiano songs that have ever been made in the last 10 years and there was this song Mnike by Tyler ICU. Dj Maphorisa was labelled as the king of amapiano of the decade.

However, it is important to note that as far as the popularity of amapiano is concerned, it can perhaps still brush the limelight within South Africa and other parts of the sub-Saharan Africa only. The same year, 2023, South Africa was the source of 55% of all the amapiano streams while in sub-Saharan, amapiano contributed 78% as per the Spotify data.

A Youth-Driven Movement
Amapiano belongs to and is enjoyed by the youngsters, whereby Spotify revealed that 39% of the listeners are between 18 and 24 years, while 22% of the listeners are between 25 and 29 years. “It’s culture that every now and then we receive massive shake up from the youth in the music industry but in the case of amapiano the change has been and still is extraordinary,” Said The Spotify’s Artist, Label, and Partnerships Manager for South Africa.

Notably, smartphones allowed the users to listen to digital music that played a big part in the popularity of amapiano. “Writing: Although, four years prior to the advent of South Africa’s first pandemic lock down, people owned smartphones less than half as stated by Spotify. While in May 2019 the figure was 80%, by the end of 2019 it had risen to 92% Currently; 84% of all amapiano streams were done using smart phones.

Cultural Significance
Amapiano has become a major part of South African culture and identity. A Pretoria born rapper Focalistic had this to say: It was like a breath of fresh air, the light of the sun, something that was close to the African communities.

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The growing popularity of amapiano from being an underground sound to now an international one indicate the influence of social media in transforming the music business. This is supported by the fact that most people in this category are the youth and through the help of the social network linked platforms music discovery and sharing has been heightened. Amidst the never-ending influx of listeners to the genre, amapiano is a perfect example of how creativity, a sense of kinship, and the tradition’s touch of local color can reach out into the large world and make a timeless impact.