Five years after launching in Kenya, Spotify has released data showing how the country’s listening habits have evolved.
The numbers point to an audience that is young and increasingly proud of homegrown sound.
Since arriving in February 2021, the streaming platform has recorded an average year-on-year listening growth rate of 68 per cent in Kenya, with momentum holding steady through 2025. In that year alone, Kenyans clocked over 203 million hours of listening on the platform.
The genre telling the biggest story is Amapiano. Streams of the South African-born sound grew by 1,404 per cent between 2021 and 2025, outpacing every other genre tracked in the market.
Gospel and praise music followed at 1,103 per cent growth, with R&B at 737 per cent, Afrobeats at 680 per cent and hip-hop and rap at 520 per cent.
Perhaps the more telling shift, however, is in language.
Listening to music in Kenyan indigenous languages grew by more than 101 per cent locally over the five years.
The appetite is not confined to Kenya either. Global streams of indigenous language Kenyan music grew 128 per cent in 2024 alone, with a year-on-year growth rate of 69 per cent.
Drake, Chris Brown, Future, Burna Boy, and Travis Scott were Kenya’s most-streamed artists over the five years.
The most-played songs include Ruger’s “Asiwaju,” Ayra Starr’s “Rush,” Bien’s “Inauma”, Njerae’s “Aki Sioni”, and Mutoriah’s “Beta.”
On the creator side, the number of Kenyan artists on the platform has grown by 112 per cent since launch. Kenyans have also created more than 9 million user-generated playlists since 2021, and podcast listening has surpassed 35 million hours streamed.
The platform’s data puts Kenya’s average listener age at 26 and shows that in the most recent month measured, the average listener streamed 124 different artists, a figure that suggests a user base that is actively exploring rather than passively consuming.
