I remember when MP3s were the hottest thing to own. Clunky and roughly the size of fat flash drives (which they pretty much were, except with a few extra buttons), they were essentials for any outing and owning one was a mark of supremacy back in the day. It was through these devices that we shared the hit singles of the times, like “Cyclone” by Baby Bash ft. T-Pain. A couple of months down the road and MP4s were the next big hit for listening to music. Then of course came the original, iconic iPod. One of Apple’s first steps into the music industry in general, the success of the iPod inspired the iPod touch, the iPhone and of course: iTunes.
Now the reason I went a little nostalgic there was because the next great leap the music industry has taken in terms of delivering the product to us the consumers is streaming. Streaming music is the new hottest thing, the iconic iPod touch of our times. From services such as Soundcloud, 8tracks, Fizy and of course Spotify, our musical palettes have been quenched and sated. There’s just one problem, many of the aforementioned services aren’t available in the UAE. The lack of Spotify in the Middle East is a major issue for music aficionados. Enter Anghami, the first legal music streaming platform in the MENA region, featuring over 9 million international tracks as well as a wide plethora of Arabic content.
New users to the app have to sign in through Facebook or Google+ (there is an option to sign in with an email but no way to register with an email as far as I saw). Being a normal human being, I of course chose the Facebook option (sorry Google+) and dived into Anghami. The first order of business was to customise the music I was looking for, which started of by selecting which genres I was keen on. To keep things interesting I decided to select everything on offer (No K-pop or J-pop sadly). Next to further optimise Anghami to match my earbuds, I had to follow a few select artists, narrowed down from the list of genres I selected. Once all of that was out of the way I was ready to stream some music.
Right of the bat the interface is appealing to the eye and is easy to navigate, points it scores over the generic Google Music app I mostly use. The main interface is the “Explore” tab, compromising of playlists Anghami thinks will cater to your tastes as well as new songs that have just been released by artists. A little further scrolling brings up a selection of radios dedicated to artists, ensuring you can spend hours thinking of yellow submarines and tangerine trees as the dulcet tones of Paul McCartney plays in the background. A little further down is the Personal DJ section, filled with different “moods” such as “summer”, “happy”, “shopping” and so forth.
The first order of business I went about doing was hitting the drop down menu at the top right and selecting only International songs to be filtered to my Anghami app, instead of the default selection of Arabic + International. With that done, I decided to head over to the top songs and proceeded to spend an hour listening to the likes of Taylor Swift, Eminem, Ellie Goulding, Sam Smith and other such artists that inspire the hordes. The quality of the songs is quite simply fantastic, not once did I have any sudden audio bugs or autotuning going on other than when I was listening to Cher’s “Believe”, but that was all her.
Sure, every couple of songs an advertisement plays (in my case it was the same Ford jeep advertisement three times in a row) but for unlimited free streaming, that seems more than fair. And hey if you have a spare dollar every month, you can subscribe to Anghami+ (Don’t worry, unlike Google, the plus sign in this case is great). This is where Anghami sets itself apart from nearly every other music streaming service on the planet. To subscribe to Anghami+, thus removing ads and giving you the option to download 40 songs (you can still stream unlimited songs) you only have to pay $0.99 a month. Spotify Premium on the other hand is $9.99 a month (in the USA). As a result, Anghami has created tidal waves with its subscription model; it already has more than 13 million users. Those aren’t it’s only attractive packages, if you want to have the option to download an unlimited number of songs, you can pay $4.99 a month and if your wallet is still a little bit too heavy you could for the yearly subscription that consists of unlimited downloads, unlimited streaming and no advertisements which has a price tag of $59.99. Now before you get your charging cables in a twist over the cost of that package, there is a bonus: you can invite upto two friends to share the package with you. Now if you divide the costs up, that roughly evens out to about $1.6 a month per person. In the world we live, prices like those akin to the legends of old.
Though I only listened to International songs, special mention should be made to the Arabic songs available on Anghami. Exclusive Arabic content is featured on Anghami thanks to a partnership with Rotana – the local label that holds over 40% of the Arabic music catalogue, with exclusivity in key territories such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Lebanon. Exclusive pre-releases rights over majority of Rotana upcoming releases. Exclusive Arabic content through partnership with MBC covering access to talent shows music such as Arab Idol, X Factor, and The Voice.
What’s more, just recently Anghami announced that you can now stream songs straight to your laptop or desktop using this website, making the switch between earphones and a headset much more enjoyable since you won’t be missing out on your favourite tunes.
That being said, Anghami is an absolute bomb when it comes the music streaming scene, it’s already caused me to sing Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” sporadically, and I can’t wait to see what else is in store for the future of this app (since this article’s inception a major aesthetic update has already been dropped).
You can download Anghami off the Apple App Store here, the Google Play Store here, the Windows Store here and the Blackberry Store here.
What do you think of Anghami and music streaming in general? Do you think Anghami is on par with Spotify? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
