{"id":7765,"date":"2026-07-18T17:03:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T17:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/mena-grew-15-2-on-almost-pure-streaming-anghami-is-the-dsp-most-distributors-skip\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T17:05:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T17:05:28","slug":"mena-grew-15-2-on-almost-pure-streaming-anghami-is-the-dsp-most-distributors-skip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/mena-grew-15-2-on-almost-pure-streaming-anghami-is-the-dsp-most-distributors-skip\/","title":{"rendered":"MENA Grew 15.2% on Almost Pure Streaming. Anghami Is the DSP Most Distributors Skip."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Middle East and North Africa was the joint second fastest-growing recorded music region on earth in 2025, and it barely touches the platforms most distributors optimize for.<\/p>\n

MENA means the Middle East and North Africa, a block IFPI now tracks as one of its most valuable growth stories. IFPI means the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the body that compiles the global market data every label quotes.<\/p>\n

A region that grew 15.2% on almost pure streaming<\/h2>\n

MENA recorded music revenues rose 15.2% in 2025, according to the IFPI Global Music Report 2026<\/a>. That followed a 22.8% jump in 2024, when the region was the single fastest-growing market in the world.<\/p>\n

The shape of that revenue is what matters for release strategy. Streaming accounted for 97.5% of all recorded music revenue in MENA in 2025, one of the highest streaming shares of any region IFPI measures.<\/p>\n

There is almost no physical, almost no download, almost no sync cushion. If your catalog is not on the streaming services people in Cairo, Riyadh and Casablanca actually open, you are not in this market at all.<\/p>\n

Anghami is the DSP most distributors never deliver to<\/h2>\n

DSP means digital service provider, the streaming platforms that pay out royalties. In MENA the local giant is Anghami, a home-grown service launched in Beirut in 2012 and now listed on the Nasdaq.<\/p>\n

Anghami reported full-year 2025 revenue of $99.3M, up 27% year over year, on more than 3.5 million paying subscribers, per its FY2025 results<\/a>. Its registered user base has crossed 130 million across the region.<\/p>\n

The distribution detail that gets missed is how those subscribers pay. Anghami maintains integrations with 45 telco operators across MENA, which means a large share of listeners subscribe through their phone bill rather than a card.<\/p>\n

That telco billing is exactly the mechanic that a Spotify-and-Apple-only delivery lane cannot reach. Skip Anghami and you skip the paid tier for a huge slice of the region’s actual payers.<\/p>\n

Mahraganat is the local sound the charts finally count<\/h2>\n

Egypt is the cultural engine, and its dominant export is mahraganat, also called Egyptian electro or shaabi-electro. It fuses working-class wedding shaabi with EDM, hip-hop and heavy autotune, and its artists routinely top Anghami and the Arabic Spotify charts.<\/p>\n

The genre now has official measurement behind it. IFPI runs weekly charts for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and North Africa<\/a>, built by BMAT from streaming data across Anghami, Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify and YouTube.<\/p>\n

Note which platform sits first in that list. A chart-eligible campaign in Egypt has to include Anghami by definition, and cross-region collaborations are now the growth engine, as with mahraganat singer Fares Sokar’s 2025 track with Saint Levant, one of the year’s standout Arabic pop moments per Arabsounds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What an independent release should do about it<\/h2>\n

The takeaway is not that MENA is coming. It is here, it pays through streaming, and the money concentrates on a platform many distributors treat as optional.<\/p>\n

For an artist or label eyeing the region, the checklist is short:<\/p>\n