Spotify Africa boss Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy speaks on royalties, streaming and the continent's music revolution

For more than two decades, Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy has operated at the intersection of African media, technology, storytelling and culture; long before the rest of the world fully realised the continent’s creative industries were becoming a global economic force.

The Rwanda-born media executive has built a career across some of the world’s biggest media and technology companies including Reuters, MTV Base, Viacom, Facebook and now Spotify, where she serves as Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa. According to her LinkedIn profile, her work has largely centred on amplifying African voices and expanding digital access across the continent.

That mission was evident during Spotify’s Loud & Clear event in Johannesburg last week, where the streaming giant unveiled new data showing South African artists generated more than Ksh.3.9 billion (ZAR504 million) in royalties on the platform in 2025 alone.

But beyond the billions, the charts and the streaming milestones, Muhutu-Remy believes something deeper is happening across the continent; African audiences are reshaping the economics of digital culture in ways even Spotify did not initially anticipate.

In an exclusive interview with Citizen Digital on the sidelines of the event, Muhutu-Remy spoke candidly about Africa’s growing streaming economy, the misconceptions many artists still hold about royalties, and the structural weaknesses she believes continue to hold back the continent’s creative industry.

From weak copyright systems and struggling collection societies to limited payment integrations across African markets, she argues that while African music has already conquered global ears, the business ecosystem supporting artists still has significant ground to cover.

Yet despite the challenges, Muhutu-Remy remains optimistic about Africa’s digital future, pointing to rising local music consumption, growing willingness among Africans to pay for streaming services, and the emergence of hyper-local genres that are beginning to thrive both at home and internationally.

For Spotify, she says, success will not simply be measured by subscriber numbers or viral global hits, but by whether an artist singing Benga in Dholuo somewhere in Nyalenda or Amapiano in South African township slang, or folk music in a local dialect can build a sustainable career from their craft.

What has surprised you the most about African audiences since you started leading Spotify nearly five years ago?

You know, sometimes we make assumptions about our continent. One assumption is that because data is so expensive, because we have economic issues, there would not be as much engagement.

What I mean by that is that I thought because of all of this, people would engage here and there, listen a little bit, but then say data is expensive, or “I don’t have the right phone,” and all those kinds of reasons. But it’s been completely the opposite of that. We have very deep consumption levels in terms of content hours per user.

So that has been a big surprise. It just shows you that we all make trade-offs. We’re all very savvy in terms of the trade-offs we make. And if music is important in our lives, and listening to podcasts is important, well, we’ll make the arrangements needed for that to happen.

Another thing is that I thought my biggest challenge was going to be convincing African audiences to convert into subscribers from the free service, again for all the reasons you know. And that has proven to be a complete misconception on my part.

Willingness to pay is very much there, if it’s the right service at the right price, something that considers affordability and brings value to your life.

So these things were the biggest surprises and honestly my biggest joy. It’s the reason I come to work every day, knowing that this is the reality I’m actually working with.

Spotify distributed $11 billion in royalties last year, the highest ever for any platform. For context, $11 billion is about Ksh.1.4 trillion. Kenya has 47 counties and the total budget for all 47 counties is a little over Ksh.400 billion per financial year. So $11 billion could finance all 47 counties in Kenya for two financial years. I guess my question would be that, do you feel African governments actually understand the economic potential of the creative sector?

If you had asked me this 10 years ago, did we even have creative economy ministers then? Not at all. Nowhere. But now this is becoming more prevalent. Many countries have such ministries, which shows you there is more and more understanding.

There is also the fact that funding is now much more prevalent among international and Pan-African institutions. I’m thinking of Afreximbank, IFC, AfDB. All these institutions now have strong creative economy tracks. So, there is really this trickling awareness that we can’t just rely on agriculture and two or three other sectors. We have this youth population, they need employment, and the creative economy is going to be one of those contributors.

So, there is more awareness, but of course much more work still needs to be done to strengthen some of the ecosystem. For example, in music, IP protection is still very weak in many of our markets.

Music collection societies and music rights organisations as a whole still have a lot of work to do. Often, they are in shambles, even though there are improvements. And then support to musicians, artists and the creative economy as a whole from governments - there still isn’t enough of it. So that’s still work in progress. But in short, the awareness is coming and there is change.

There’s still a bit of skepticism among some African musicians about royalty distribution. What are some of the hard truths African musicians need to know about the revenue generation and royalty distribution process?

First of all, they need to understand how it works; that it’s not per stream, it’s per share. I think that one is really important because often they don’t understand that.

The other thing that is important to understand is that since Spotify redistributes about two-thirds of its revenue to the music ecosystem, it all depends on how much revenue is made in the market. And that depends on two things: how many people subscribe, but also how much each person pays.

We really consider affordability. It’s not a one-size-fits-all pricing model, otherwise it wouldn’t work. You can’t ask somebody in Nakuru to pay USD12/13 a month for a service like Spotify. So, we really adjust the pricing according to the market. Of course, it can’t be the same revenue per user as it is in other markets.

That’s one thing artists often don’t understand. They think that if you live in France, you’ll earn X for the same stream share, but if you live in Kenya, it can’t be compared because of the price of the subscription. I think those are the misconceptions.

And I think one role artists could really play is first understanding it themselves and then explaining it to their fans, that; “When you pay, I get paid.” Sometimes that doesn’t happen as much as it should.

As the head of Spotify in Sub-Saharan Africa, there’s obviously a lot on your plate. But over these past five years, what is the one thing that keeps you awake at night about the African music ecosystem? Something you wish you could change tomorrow.

It’s two things. If I had a magic wand, first of all I would have these music royalty organisations and CMOs functioning transparently, efficiently, paying out quickly across the continent.

Another would be making sure that wherever you are in any country, if you want to pay for Spotify, you are able to because whatever payment method you have available is integrated. Right now, among the big streaming platforms, we are one of the most integrated with local payment methods. In Kenya, we are with M-Pesa obviously. But there are other systems elsewhere. In Cameroon they use something else.

If I had a magic wand, Spotify would integrate with any payment method so that whatever your preference or ability is in terms of payment, you can pay. If you’re sitting in Burundi using a Burundian bank card and your local currency, paying for Spotify should be really easy. That’s where I hope we’ll get to in a few years.

So now you’re five years in charge, what does success for Spotify Africa look like in the next five years?

It means adoption across the board. It means artists being satisfied for two reasons: either they had export potential and discovered audiences across the world with Spotify facilitating that, or their genre is hyper-local and they still make a sustainable living from the local revenue Spotify generates.

For me, that would be success. That you can sing Benga in Dholuo and make a sustainable living from it.

How is Kenya, generally, performing as a streaming market compared to other regions?

Kenya is one of the most important markets for us. It’s absolutely a priority market. There are many reasons for that. Kenya is extremely digitally savvy, as you know. The youth are very quick when it comes to adopting things. You don’t even need much promotion. They just know. They’re very connected to the world.

Secondly, Kenya is generally one of the most economically successful markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s in the top three. The population is also growing really fast. I used to live in Kenya when the population was 30 million, now it’s over 55 million. It’s crazy, it’s almost doubled in 20 years, and a lot of that is youth population growth.

With devolution and all the other changes that have happened, the digital economy has really penetrated. Fibre connectivity and internet access have improved significantly.

Third, the music industry itself is diversifying and growing. The local music industry is going through a very exciting evolution. When we first started, a lot of the music consumption was international music. Now, and I don’t have the stats in front of me right now, there has been significant growth in local consumption. We’re seeing local genres developing. We’re seeing hyper-local music becoming a big thing. Kenyan pride in general is really up there now.