Namibia Music Website – Making Local Music Accessible

Imagine a website designed solely to promote Namibian music. An online platform where users can download the latest offerings from their favourite artists and possibly bump into another new artist to add to their playlist.

This is exactly what the website Namibia Music does. It’s an online platform designed for local artists to share and promote their content.

Founded by Yemen Saunders Jumah, Mathias Chitalu and Andreas Nokokule Uusiku, Jumah said they noticed that artists were struggling to promote their talents online and therefore founded this proudly Namibian product.

The aim is to give artists exposure and users access to local music without having to rely on other tedious methods like sending content via WhatsApp for example, Jumah explained.

The site was created in 2015 but only began to gain momentum in 2016. Today, they average over

35 000 hits on their website monthly. In addition to this, they repurpose local and African entertainment content on their site to give their visitors something else to chew on, including videos.

The website presents you with a list of top downloaded and top trending songs (based on the number of times the song link was accessed), which are calculated daily and visible to the audience. These charts are also present per genre category included in their menu.

“From face value, it is probably the best product we have pulled off so far. Easy to navigate and the graphics are particularly awesome,” said Facebook user Hosianna Tukondjela Kalomho.

“I’ve used it a couple of times. It’s cool to have a site for Namibian music. Just need more artists to make use of it,” says Twitter user Johannes Benito Orr, something Nelson Nessmoo on Facebook also noted as he downloads most of his music from the site.

The most important question for artists, though, is how can they get involved with the website. At the bottom of the website, under the ‘contact us’ section, there’s an email address that artists and managers can use to contact Namibia Music to send their songs to.

This method was chosen as opposed to having artists upload their own content for the sake of quality control as explained by Jumah. If a song is not up to standard, feedback is given to the artist on how they can improve their music. Namibia Music will then upload the track and send a link to the song back to the artist. If there are certain limitations that an artist would like to set, that can be also be requested.

If an artist would like to use the platform to promote their album, Jumah recommends sending the best song from the album with details on the album, which will be included online.

Singles will have the Namibia Music tag added to the song, but that is not the case with albums. The aim of the tag is to promote the website and let people know where the song was accessed from.

Given that artists willingly give their songs to the website, they have not had to deal with copyright issues. Jumah mentioned an incident where an artist used a beat he did not purchase and they were contacted by the producer, which subsequently led to them taking the song down and giving the artist a warning. Otherwise they have not come across any issues but make a point of asking artists who contact them to be registered with Nascam.

At the moment, the founders and artists do not make money from the website, even from local adverts. They plan to eventually have users pay for albums to generate profits that will benefit both the platform and the musicians. Jumah stressed that musicians put in great efforts to make music and should be compensated for these efforts.

Livio Goodheart on Facebook said: “It is the best platform for Namibian artists, especially for me living outside of Namibia, I can always go there and listen to my favourite local artist”.

Sharing content on a website with as many visits as Namibia Music is gaining will lead to exposure beyond our borders, encouraging collaboration.