As Steve Jobs once said, ‘The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.’

In 2020, as we embarked on a groundbreaking journey with Josplay’s African music metadata and Intelligence API, we embraced this wisdom wholeheartedly as we set out on an audacious mission.

A mission to not just change the world of African music but to empower it with data, knowledge, and a boundless vision.”

The challenge we faced at the time was a lack of data to fuel our AI models. At that time, if you wanted to know the empirical difference between Afrobeat and Afrobeats, you’d have to visit a professor of musicology — and that was what we did.

We spoke to musicologists, scoured the internet for fragments of data, consulted offline sources, and knocked on the doors of record labels.

We assembled a dedicated research and quality control team that worked relentlessly to build a robust system for collecting and preserving accurate and comprehensive metadata of African music.

But we didn’t stop there. We believed in the greater good of sharing this wealth of knowledge. We envisioned a world where engineers, innovators, and researchers could access the data they needed to shape the future of African music with a few clicks. And thus, the African Music Library was born.

Along the line, we realized that while the library was optimized for archiving and retrieval, it needed a more effective way to pass the knowledge the team acquired to the next generation — considering that many African music genres are facing extinction.

We founded Foster, a music education project, to achieve this goal. Foster takes African music education down to kids in early primary stages with the goal of cultivating a greater depth of creativity in the next generation of African music creatives.

At the library, we want to be a hub for everything data and knowledge on African music. We also want to be a tool for the easy exchange and transfer of these data and knowledge in a world choreographed by AI.

In all we’ve done, we prioritize accuracy and comprehensiveness. At the library, we care about data ranging from who played shekere on a particular piece of music to the emotions that music conveys to various audiences.

Today, we are incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved. The African Music Library is now the only public library in the world offering such in-depth and extensive information on African music.

Our Foster program has brought joy and opportunity to children in communities where music education was once deemed a luxury.

In addition to Foster, we’ve held scores of free industry talks that brought together brilliant minds from all corners of the African music scene, from South Africa to Morocco, Angola to Ethiopia. Our talks provide the best free resources for young talents and researchers on African music.

We’re infinitely grateful to our AML team members and partners in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Liberia, and Nigeria. Our advisors, Obi Asika and Dapo Olorunyomi, deserve special recognition for their unwavering support. We also extend our heartfelt gratitude to the teams at Premium Times, Trace TV, OneRPM, and Josplay for standing with us throughout this incredible year.

As we look back on this remarkable year, we can’t help but be excited about the future. We believe that the next nine years will be transformative for African music. We are committed to playing our part in this transformation by providing the data, resources, and education that the African music industry needs to thrive in a digital world.

Join us on this incredible journey, as we celebrate our first year and eagerly anticipate what the future holds. Thank you for being a part of our story!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to RSVP, or join us on our live stream via YouTube (Channel: African Music Library) from anywhere in the world.

Line-up of panelists at African Music Library at 1

Celebrating One Year of African Music Library

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