Charlotte Bwana: The Kenyan impacting global music scene

“Describe myself… where do I start? I’m originally born and raised in Kenya, very passionate about Africa and African music, and being able to monetise it as well as possible by building a platform to push African stories to the rest of the world,” says Charlotte Bwana, the Audiomack director of brand and media partnerships in Africa.

Audiomack is an on-demand music streaming and audio discovery platform that allows artistes and creators to upload limitless music and podcasts for listeners through its mobile apps and website. It focuses exclusively on new, independent, and up-and-coming artistes. They are not a full-catalogue streaming service like Spotify and Apple Music.

The 31-year-old has always been big about African entertainment and storytelling in general, including novels and movies. She grew up listening to the music and consuming African literature. As director of brand and media partnerships, her work entails coming up with campaigns and partnering with brands that gravitate towards the same audience that will ensure the growth of both parties.

“Like, we had Audiomack zero-rated on MTN Nigeria to give people more access to music without having to dig deeper into their pockets was a killer partnership for us. I have to talk to different brands and different media to figure out what value they bring to us, and what we bring to them. I always have to think six months ahead about what campaigns we want to launch, what artiste to focus on and which ones we want to work with that are suitable for certain campaigns we’re doing; thinking of Audiomack as a brand in the larger perspective. On a day-to-day, however, I have to organise creator workshops, where we are constantly talking to artistes, teaching them how to monetise, understand and grow their audience,” she says, with the objective being that all players are vital in pushing African music forward.

Charlotte has been in the entertainment industry for seven years. The Catholic University of Eastern Africa alumnus was in advertising, building and working on social media strategies for an agency, before becoming the digital content manager at Coke Studios in 2017. She got to understand a lot of artistes and African entertainers from having long-drawn conversations with them.

Music industry

“A lot of them were really creative but missing out on understanding the business of music; 10 percent is the talent and 90 percent is the business. A song may not be very good, but if you have the business acumen, you can push it to whatever audience you want to,” this is what made Charlotte want to get in the music industry.

Immediately after that stint, in 2018, four years after having graduated, she left for Nigeria to learn the industry from an artiste’s and label’s perspective. She became a part of Davido Music Worldwide and got to experience how a global superstar, through a well-oiled label machinery, is pushed to the rest of the world.

“Now, I can talk to the artistes about monetising their work and letting them know “this is what works, because this is what brands are looking for” from my background in advertising and can also proffer solutions from my experience in the music business,” says Charlotte.

A year later, she left the label to become a brand ambassador for Audiomack. At the time, the platform was nascent, just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential in the African market. Her job was to get as many artistes onto the platform and putting their music on it. From her experience, she understood what the artistes needed from a digital service provider (DSP; an online store that features digital albums and singles) and streaming partner. Together with her team, they put a strategy together and built an office in Nigeria from where she was able to grow the brand and sign on numerous artistes.

The strategies have had to change as they sought more artistes from across the continent to get on board.

“The lucky part for me is that I’ve lived in Nigeria, been to Ghana, Tanzania doing a lot of research as I tried figuring out how the continent works. I think the key is always to understand the artiste more than trying to implement your own ideas. We have an Audiomack ambassadorship program, with 12 ambassadors who help us understand the cultures, industries in all the different countries on the continent. For example, the radio and TV stations supporting local artistes, and figure out how we help amplify that,” says Charlotte.

In 2019, Audiomack partnered with Afrochella in a competition called Rising Star that picked five emerging Ghanaian artistes on the platform with judging from Joey B, Julz and King Promise. The winners performed at Arrochella, got to meet the headlining acts and facilities to record their projects for the next six months without cost.

Audiomack

“This was our way of making sure that we are really pushing the artiste community. I’m constantly on the phone with artistes from all over the world trying to understand what Audiomack can do to help them build whatever they are trying to build. Every artiste has different dreams; some want to go and perform at Madison Square Gardens while some want to perform at a local stage near them,” says Charlotte, arguing that the platform helps artistes reach 100 percent of their fans.

In Kenya, the listenership is diverse and Charlotte says it has been a hard market to figure out. She believes that what people are listening to in clubs is what they are also streaming on their DSPs. So, Kenyans are listening to a lot of Afro beats, amapiano and reggae.

“Gen Zs are the audience and they are really quick to move on to discover the next artiste or trend. It’s the best place to know if your music is going to hit, because Kenyans will listen to it if it’s going to be great. But if they don’t listen to it, chances are it’s not,” she says.

The platform is fully accessible to artistes, whether signed or independent.

“You could record your song in your bedroom and feel like you want to put it out. You just go to audiomack.com, create your account and you put out your song. Then you can share the link with your people,” she says, explaining how easy it is for artistes to out their content on the platform.

There are no fees to join the platform. You can also apply to be a monetised artiste through Audiomack Monetised Program (AMP). Through the creator dashboard, you’re able to see how much you’re earning on a daily basis.

The dashboard also helps you see which songs are performing best and from what source are they finding your music (whether from a playlist or blog), where are your most listeners from, their gender and age. This makes you position yourself better for your subsequent projects.

According to an article on Techcabal, American acts like Megan Thee Stallion and Lil Durk used AMP to capture Audiomack’s community pool and extend their reach when it started in 2019. Artistes with at least two uploads and 1,000 plays can apply for an AMP authentication and continue taking payment.

Audiomack pays under $10 (Sh1,220) per 5,000 streams and you can withdraw your money straight to your account once it hits $100 (Sh12,200) without involving any third party. A stream is counted when a song has been played for more than 30 seconds.

Supporters feature is for fans who want to support their favourite artistes. There are badges that cost between $1 to $2 which you can purchase and counted as royalties to the artiste.

Charlotte has also been involved in setting up Swahili Radio Omari Tambwe aka Lil Ommy for fans and artistes to connect. It gave fans the opportunity to know the story behind artistes’ motivations, music and what’s happening in their lives. The show has featured Juma Jux, Nandy and Alikiba among other East African artistes.

Adding to being the first Kenyan as a director of an international music streaming platform, Charlotte is also one of only two Kenyans who are voting members on the Grammy Awards board. In April, she became the first Kenyan to be listed on Billboard’s International Power Players list, when she made the 2022 group.

“There’s a lot of conversations happening at the Grammys on what we need to do more to include Africa: West, East, South and North. It’s a learning curve for everybody; the biggest challenge is bringing all these people to understand the diversity in culture that the continent has to offer: including soukous, azonto, highlife and rhumba besides amapiano and afro beats. We’re not monolithic,” she says, adding her achievements in the music global music conversations are things that make her feel like she is really where she was supposed to be.

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