Smubu is a new music streaming app coming out of Kenya and it’s already making a big impact in its region.

Smubu is a start-up streaming service from Kenya that launched less than 2 years ago. In just the 18 months they have been around and growing they have managed to attain 200,000 active users with a 100,000 track strong library to offer.

Their growth looks great but they aren’t without competition in the African music streaming business. Their primary competitor is the African Boomplay Music which to date has 29 million user registrations with 10 million installations.

Speaking to Disrupt Africa, Smubu co-founder and CEO Jad Aizarani said of their achievements so far: “What makes us different is that our vision is built on working closely with artists in providing them with a fair share of the revenue for every single download on our platform.

“The platform is technically built to provide statistics, potential revenue and track download numbers and streams. Day by day, we work to unlock the potential of African artists’ creativity by allowing them to live off their art by cooperating with them to fight music piracy.”

Another unique factor of Smubu’s business is their compression tool which aims to reduce the data consumed when streaming. This particularly appeals to regions where data costs are expensive or their devices have limited power.

Speaking on their expansion, Aizarani continued: “We are initially focused on East Africa. The music here amazed me and my team, and we genuinely believe that we can push it internationally . We’re here to stay and make a difference in the music game in Africa. We hope that Smubu becomes a home for all musicians emerging from Africa.”

They may look towards Tanzania and Uganda next as the regions are experiencing a boom to the internet market, particularly in mobile network expansion.