Who the Creative Industry figure is and how they are changing or influencing your discipline? - Pedro
Anghami, is a music-streaming platform, who have become the first Arab technology business to list on the New York Stock Exchange. Anghami is estimated to be worth $220 million. They have expanded from only Arabic music to most recently streaming podcasts and international hits. (Anghami)
Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), MBC Group, Saudi Telecom Mobily, and UAE Telecom Du, as well as SHUAA Capital, Samena Capital (UAE), Megladon (Saudi Arabia), Endeavor (USA), and Sal&Co, are among the top venture capital firms and significant shareholders in Anghami (USA). (The World Is Listening
What process or technology are they using that is changing the industry? - Gokul
Anghami offers both a paid subscription model and a free model. The free model makes up about 70% of their revenue. Hence having an ad engine and giving companies a platform to place ads is a form of technology that is essential to a company like Anghami. (Fay, 2022)
Anghami also uses AI to create personalized playlists for each individual user based on their past streams. ("How AI Is Transforming Music Streaming Services | Plat.ai", 2022.
What are the political, social, cultural, and/or economic environments that inform the change, evolution or disruption? - Gokul
Anghami was launched in 2012 in Lebanon. Anghami later shifted their headquarters to Abu Dhabi. The majority of Anghami’s user base lies in the Middle East and Africa Region. Anghami is credited to being the first legal music streaming service in the Middle East.
Majority of the Middle Eastern population are Arabic speakers. Anghami offers region specific content to Arabic speakers by offering a wide range of Arabic podcasts and songs. This gives them an edge over their competitors like Spotify and Apple Music.
Much like their competition Anghami’s purpose too was to reduce the level of music piracy in the Arab world. During the early 2010s, reportedly 1 in every 10 internet users had pirated music on their computers. It made it a lot harder for musicians and people associated with the music industry to make money by producing or distributing music. This was one of the main reasons for the founders of the platform to start Anghami. ("Best Music Streaming Service In MENA: Anghami, Deezer, Spotify? - TechGeek365", 2022)
Who their audience is - consumer and industry?- Pedro
The Anghami Music Group caters to a variety of musical groups, but our primary concentration is on MENA's Gen Zs. Our values are to motivate our users, who place a high priority on their family and friends. They are tech-savvy, youthful, and ambitious. Music, technology, gaming, fashion, sports, and gastronomy are among their many passions, which we are aiming to attract as we develop. We are mainly aiming to target the generation and population of the UAE as a startup initiative. (“Anghami.” Campaign Middle East)
How the Creative Industry figure's unique selling proposition and pricing strategy helped them find and maintain an audience? - Gokul
The major advantage anghami has over its rivals in the religion is its wide Arabic library. To add to this, their aggressive pricing strategy beats their competitors by quite some distance too. Anghami offers its users offline playback along with advertisement free playback for $4.99 per month or $44.99 per year. Their main competitor Spotify on the other hand charges about $9.99 per month. ("Best Music Streaming Service In MENA: Anghami, Deezer, Spotify? - TechGeek365", 2022)
Though there are a considerable number of Arab countries with a very high per capita income rate like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E there are a multitude of countries which are extremely price sensitive and a difference of $50.00 year on year would make a great difference.("Countries ranked by GDP per capita (current US$) - Middle East", 2022)
How the audience is responding to the change, evolution or disruption? - Bashar
Numbers don’t lie, the audience recently is growing year by year, so for example,and according to Campaign Middle East magazine “More than 60 percent of our users in the region are loyal to the platform” that means that 60% of the people who used the app/platform actually liked it, kept it installed on their phones and used it on regular basis! Keeping in mind that there are other competitors in the market who were there way before Anghami started, like Apple Music for example and Spotify nowadays. (Anghami Campaign Middle East)
How the audience impacts the production of the creative media products? - Bashar
Most of Anghamis’s users are based in the region; their core audience is Gen Zs according to their vice president Elie Abou Saleh, which gives them an edge on other competitors because Gen Zs are the ones who consume most of the media content in this day and time.(Anghami Campaign Middle East)
And to go a bit deeper into numbers:
29 percent of Anghami’s users are from GCC; 21 percent Levant; 42 per cent North Africa; 8 per cent rest of the world.
These numbers impact the way artists and producers make music, and pushes them to make content that is easily consumed and likable by the massive audience they have.
What hard skills are required of the Creative Industry figure? Pedro
In terms of the hard skills which are used and reflected throughout the Anghami platform it is referred to the software and hardware development of the application. The algorithm behind the display of different trending tracks, albums and playlists are also a keen reflection of hard skills.
When referring to a presentation we are also referring and talking about the track filtering mode where songs and playlists are created.
What soft skills are required of the Creative Industry figure? Bashar
Anghami started out as a small record label, it must’ve been very hard to convince artists who are dealing with Rotana Music, Melody Music, etc to sign with Anghami, or let them produce their music.
This particular step is crucial for a startup success, to have big names signed with you, to start strong in the region. So it needed a special set of soft skills, talking, negotiating and convincing artists to sign with them and have their music on this new app that’s called Anghami.
We all know how much music rights cost and how expensive it is, especially for a startup company. So having these soft skills was an asset that anghami’s team had at the time, that helped them start strong and then grow in the region.
What impact the change is having on the skills required to succeed in the industry (creatively and in the working environment)? - Pedro
Streaming enables a much wider range of people to view an artist’s content. In turn it pays the artists a lot less in terms of money made per individual stream. Therefore, with the advent of streaming services artists have had to make their songs shorter thereby leading to an increase in the number of streams which in turn leads to higher revenue generated. ("7 Ways That Streaming Has Changed the Music Industry - Output", 2022)
Another major skill that has evolved over the last 10 years is promotion on social media. While it was up to the record labels to promote songs and albums, with the advent of social media artists themselves got a forum to speak about their releases directly with their fans and listeners.("How Streaming Is Changing Music (Again)", 2022)
This project was aimed to research and present our own choice of current creative industry figure and evaluate how it has impacted the industry and developed over time. Within this project, we were required to follow the responsive assignment brief guidelines and guiding questions to formulate and create a catchy and informative interactive media presentation.
As a group, we decide to focus our project on the Anghami Music group for Project 2. The Anghami Music Group is the first-ever legal music streaming platform in the Middle East and North Africa which provides customers and users access to over 57 million Arab and international songs to stream and download. From my point of view, this project was successful.
It was great to have the opportunity to work alongside my classmates, Bashar and Gokal. Through both the planning and creation processes of this project, we as a group made sure to continually reflect on the project brief to ensure that we were meeting all learning objectives.
While continually aiming to receive an overall HD grade for this project, we regularly reflect as a group on how we were progressing but also requested feedback from classmates and our lecturer. It was difficult to find reliable sources with the information we needed at times during the research section of this project. However, one of our strong sources of information throughout this project was Bashar, who has previously worked within the Anghami music group and so was able to verify facts and information about the company and its' streaming platform.
For project 3, my next steps will be to research alternative presentation methods that will allow me as a student to continue to develop my research and presentation skills while at the same time enhancing my transferable skills.
Upon our group video presentation, we will be looking to reflect on our lectures' feedback to understand what next steps can be taken to support and enhance our group submission for project 3. In terms of project 3, I would personally also like to take the opportunity to compare and contrast two different future creative industry figures and have the opportunity to go above and beyond with my presentation skills by creating a 6 to 8-minute podcast recording. Creating a podcast for project 3 will allow me, personally and as a group, to develop my creative skills and understand how engaging media can have a positive impact on our audience.
I firmly feel that this project was a great and positive learning experience for both myself and my teammates, as it allowed us the opportunity to work together and understand the different ways in which the music industry is continuously growing and developing.
Overall, in terms of the transferable skills learned and applied within this project, I feel that the best-reflected ones have been critical thinking, creativity, and time management. The reason why I believe their skills were reflected in this project was due to us being required to collect extensive research on our chosen creative figure within the industry and then be able to apply what we had learnt to create an informative, creative, and catchy video presentation in a very short period. I think that, however, it was an incredible learning experience and I am looking forward to project three.
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