Nigeria’s online entertainment magazine, Nigerian Entertainment Today (NET) has launched ORIN, a music streaming service designed to allow users access exclusive Nigerian and African music content faster and help artists and labels reach new audiences. ORIN merges the best features of established streaming service providers with social functionality and data gathering and analytics functions.
Boasting a library made up of 100% African content, ORIN is targeted at the average African music listener, with over 5,000 audio tracks and 1,000 videos already present in its rapidly expanding library. There are plans for the audio library to surpass 100,000. ORIN is making a deliberate play to capture the rapidly expanding market of Africans with a smartphone or a personal computer with internet access by making the app available on PC, Android, iOS and Windows Phone platforms.
ORIN incorporates online and offline streaming modes which permit users to listen to their playlists offline without downloading mp3 files which deprive artistes of royalties. It also incorporates automatic detection of connection speed and assigns streaming bandwidth accordingly, so for example a fast connection is assigned a bandwidth of 256kbps and a slower connection may be assigned 128kbps or 64kbps, with special formatting to avoid audible loss of audio quality.
A useful geo-location feature is embedded in ORIN to give artistes, labels and brands a picture of the geographical spread of content, which helps in decisions regarding recording, touring and marketing communication. Even upcoming artists are able to make use of the social media functionality to popularize their music and earn some money in the process.
ORIN, if successful, will not only deliver the best streaming experience available to the African market, but will also change the definition of social media and blur the lines between social networking and multimedia content use.
