What does the journey from emerging artist to a much bigger audience actually look like?
Spotify is releasing a new video following its Fresh Finds Africa campus tour, which took some of the artists shaping Africa’s next wave of music to university campuses in Lagos and Port Harcourt, connecting them directly with young listeners.
The tour brings the idea behind Fresh Finds Africa to life: giving emerging artists more opportunities to be discovered, while introducing audiences to talent they may not yet know.
Alongside the film, Spotify has looked at the growth of six artists who have previously featured on Fresh Finds Africa, and their trajectories tell an interesting story.
Collectively, the six artists have grown from fewer than 161,000 monthly listeners at the time of their respective Fresh Finds Africa placements to more than 3 million today.
Their music has also travelled. Across the cohort, the artists expanded into 121 additional markets following their placements.
Some individual journeys are particularly striking:
taves had just 461 monthly listeners when he was first added to Fresh Finds Africa in June 2023. He now has more than 722,000.
Zaylevelten has grown from around 28,600 monthly listeners when first featured in June 2025 to more than 921,000.
And Solana, who joined Fresh Finds Africa in July this year, grew from just over 7,000 monthly listeners to more than 120,000 within two months.
Together, the six artists have accumulated approximately 193 million streams since their respective Fresh Finds Africa placements, with their music now reaching listeners across 184 markets.
The film and data together tell a broader story about the pipeline behind African music’s global growth: the emerging artists finding their first communities today, the young audiences discovering them, and how those early moments can develop into much wider reach.
You can watch the Fresh Finds Africa campus tour film here: [LINK]
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