Zaidi Kidogo

These statistics are so fascinating to me, especially as they relate to music production and distribution.  As the global music industry becomes increasingly digitized — and by extension, democratic — the potential benefits are almost completely negated in most African countries just due to low Internet access.  In one respect, the digitization of music could actually be a stratifying factor in East Africa (like, only rich people can access the internet with any regularity or have the portable technology to carry it).  In the next few years, it’ll be super interesting to see how the channels and flows of the East African music industry morph to accommodate new tunez in new formats.  Mobile phone tech is still clumsy and underdeveloped as a system of music distribution — but it’s a system that’s already diffuse and established, so perhaps all it needs is a little tweaking and refining before it becomes a viable and equally democratic network for accessing & sharing muzik.  And when East Africa does figure out a serious and well-oiled system of music distribution, who knows what empowering effects that will have on music creation (which, I think, has up til now been largely stymied by ineffective music-publishing networks).