Anghami, the leading music streaming platform for listeners in North Africa and the Middle East, has received a major investment from Dubai-based Shuaa Capital.
Shuaa Capital CEO Jassim Alseddiqi recently announced on Twitter that his investment firm – which oversees approximately $14 billion worth of assets – had backed the nine-year-old Anghami. And Anghami higher-ups, for their part, linked to a formal release revealing the agreement. Neither party disclosed the transaction’s financial terms.
However, Anghami cofounder Elie Habib noted in February of 2020 that his company – which had last raised capital in 2016 – was “contemplating” investment and acquisition proposals, following the release of solid growth figures and subscribership totals. At the time, some reports stated that the platform could sell for around $400 million.
In addition to its Beirut, Lebanon, division, Anghami has opened offices in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Cairo, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh. Also in the release announcing the Shuaa Capital deal, Anghami indicated that its library consists of more than 50 million songs, with north of 70 million users to the service’s credit.
The Shuaa Capital-Anghami investment represents the latest in a long line of music-industry efforts to develop footholds in quick-emerging markets. After establishing Def Jam Africa in May of last year, Universal Music Group kicked off 2021 with three executive appointments across its African divisions. And aside from partnering with Nigeria’s Africori, Warner Music Group in 2020 opened offices in both Vietnam and India.
Plus, Chinese streaming giant Tencent Music (specifically, its QQ Music, Kugou Music, and Kuwo Music streaming services as well as the WeSing karaoke app) quietly closed high-profile deals with Japanese animation film studio CoMix Wave, Kobalt Music Group, Thailand’s GMM, Merlin, and Peermusic in 2020.
And on the listener side, the publicly traded company indicated in its third-quarter earnings report (for the three months ending on September 30th, 2020) that it had experienced a 46 percent year-over-year boost in paid subscribers. The aforementioned Tencent Music streaming services counted a cumulative total of 51.7 million premium users at the end of the quarter, with an overarching total of almost 650 million monthly active users (MAUs).
Lastly, Tencent has upped its stake in Universal Music Group to 20 percent, ahead of the Big Three label’s expected 2022 IPO, in addition to acquiring over $200 million (directly and through its Huang River Investment subsidiary) in Warner Music Group stock. The Shenzhen-headquartered conglomerate also owns a third of Indian streaming service Gaana, which boasts more than 200 million monthly active users.