Thanks for reading, and your comment. If you notice, this post was written a few years ago, and at a time that I felt “buzz” was being mistaken for market penetration.

I fully agree with you that Afrobeats must and will truly go global — i.e. penetrating the mainstream cultures/markets of key international markets. At the time I wrote the article — and up til only very very recently — Afrobeats in international markets has only been consumed by diaspora Nigerians/Africans. However, in the UK this segment became a major influence over mainstream pop culture and so it became part of their “pop” world. That is Afrobeats really going global.

Same is now slowly starting to be seen in US. The music/culture is crossing over to non-Nigerian/Africans in US but into US African-American urban culture. And given that the AA demographic has been the biggest influence on US mainstream (“pop”) music for almost two decades, this is a big step forward.

Lastly, I am also concerned that in the quest to “globalize” afrobeats, a HUGE opportunity is being missed — the domestic recorded music market. A potential goldmine as comms/tech/broadband deepens and GDP/capita rises. And ironically, the global markets are looking to the emerging economies, Africa (and Nigeria especially), to be the next wave of commercial growth -the next 150m subscribers in streaming terms. Wrote about this here . Would be interested in your thoughts.

Regards

The L.U.M.I. Brief

Thanks for reading, and your comment.