After speculation of Anghami looking for a buyer or fresh round of capital started circulating in January 2020, people may have thought that Spotify and Deezer’s rising popularity in the region played a major role in it.
However, it looks like even they have a few tricks up its sleeves in keeping their focus on music through different products. Even as they embraced podcasts and helping to promote Middle East ones, there’s always room to pursue many other avenues.
One would have expected Anghami to do an official announcement for something novel but looks liek this is more of a teaser with minimal details. A subtle announcement from Elie Habib (Chairman and CTO, Anghami) about Live Radio did pique my curiosity, which made me visit the link in his post.
From a glance of the Live Radio page, listeners can easily create their own live radio station within Anghami. That makes you a DJ or RJ from your own mobile device, tapping into social media elements of sharing and inviting your friends to listen live. It’s almost like recorded podcasts meets the service’s vast music library, which you can mix and match in real-time.
Apple already has something similar called Beats 1 radio, except it’s an actual RJ that helps air different genres of music and works within Apple’s ecosystem as long as you have access to Apple Music. Did I mention that it runs 24/7 and just completed five years since it went online?
Could user-created live radio stations be a disruptive change? Maybe, but that’s for the users to decide. Currently, it’s open to users to join a waitlist. That clearly shows that they want to do a public beta-test period to iron out issues before a full-fledged release to users across the Middle East.
Seeing the announcement first from his LinkedIn account update, I decided to reach out to the Anghami Press team for more details on it. It seems that a full-fledged announcement is due sometime in two weeks.
