Welcome to the Dozzan Project
Dear Visitor,
In their digital music report, the IFPI stated that, “With the spread of digital services across the world in the last three years, record companies are intensely focused on the potential of developing markets. These are territories with a vast potential consumer base but with little previous retail infrastructure and traditionally high levels of piracy. Growth is also driven by increasing smartphone penetration, and increasing investment in local record companies and domestic repertoire.”
Over the past 15 years, Arabic MENA has witnessed major technology-led transformations. Nominal GDP is at 2.7 trillion dollars, 5th among world’s countries. 141 million individuals from the Arabic MENA are using the Internet out of 2.9 billion people connected around the world, ranking 4th worldwide. Today the Arabic MENA has a growth of 11% on average annually. Average regional penetration rates stood around 37%. According to Dubai School of Government, 38% watch and download video clips at least once a day. 35% listen to or download music at least once a day. 46% are single, 44% are between 15-29, while over 75% are males.
Piracy is big here, so is underdeveloped payment systems. But it is all about to change. With soaring mobile technology & smartphone pentration out pacing the World, streaming & subscription models are available all round the Arabic MENA. “They are removing the friction around distribution and reaching the consumer,” said Dennis Kooker, Global Digital Sales Sony Music. Globally, The streaming & subscription model is mainstream. In 2014, 28 Million subscribers to subscription, 3 time the market in 2011. Arabic MENA is bound to follow with a correlation to their Internet population & general population at large, both standing at 5 % of the World’s share.
Arab Diaspora in the West is up to 14 Million people out of over 45 Million around the world. Latin America is the third continent in concentration of Arabs speaking population. In Brazil 9 million Arab Brazilians while 3 Million in Argentina.
At BPM we are committed to infrastructure. Without music data & proper information classification, the Arabic MENA will always face its potential with a grim face. BPM has marched on for years now. We classify music, melody, beats, lyrics, accents, and artists. We buy CDs, aggregator sheets, data sheets, music notes, old reels, cassettes & cartridges. We search online everywhere. We know when & where music is out. As the beats commercial reiterates, the code doesn’t know that although the Nubian language is in Egypt, it’s not Arabic. The code doesn’t know what is the “in” wedding list in Saudi Arabia this week.
We face challenges. Quality imagery, audio, & media in general are hard to search, find, collect or otherwise buy. The market is still learning the importance of High Definition, let alone 4k imagery. Independent labels & artists and even medium size record companies lack education on compression, encoding & its importance to their expansion & fame. But we plan accordingly. We find tools, we navigate our way through, we connect with old archivist, and young YouTube & Facebook music aspirers and we educate independent labels & artists and it is paying off.
We love our work. We wake up everyday, excited to finish what we started, knowing that everyday there is new music by our talented artists & musicians from Bahrain to Morocco, that needs to be curated, analyzed & classified.
Sherif Montasser
CEO
