{"id":8598,"date":"2026-07-24T08:02:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/morocco-is-in-the-worlds-fastest-growing-music-region-its-biggest-rappers-money-runs-on-spotify-not-anghami\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T08:04:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:04:50","slug":"morocco-is-in-the-worlds-fastest-growing-music-region-its-biggest-rappers-money-runs-on-spotify-not-anghami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/morocco-is-in-the-worlds-fastest-growing-music-region-its-biggest-rappers-money-runs-on-spotify-not-anghami\/","title":{"rendered":"Morocco Is in the World’s Fastest-Growing Music Region. Its Biggest Rapper’s Money Runs on Spotify, Not Anghami."},"content":{"rendered":"

Spotify Wrapped Morocco landed in December with the same name on top it has carried since 2020. ElGrandeToto, the Casablanca rapper known as EGT, was the country’s most-streamed artist for a sixth straight year, with roughly 411 million streams on the year, according to Morocco World News<\/a>. Stormy, Shaw, Draganov and Inkonnu filled out the top five. Every one of them is a rapper.<\/p>\n

Morocco sits inside the fastest-growing music region on earth. But the headline number and the money underneath it are telling two different stories.<\/p>\n

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The MENA growth story is real, and mostly not about Morocco’s rap<\/h2>\n

MENA means Middle East and North Africa, the region the IFPI tracks as one bloc. IFPI means the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the global trade body that publishes the annual Global Music Report.<\/p>\n

MENA revenues grew 22.8% in 2024, the fastest of any region, and streaming made up 99.5% of the total, per the IFPI figures reported by The National<\/a>. In 2025 the region grew again, up 15.2%, keeping it among the two fastest-growing markets worldwide, according to the IFPI Global Music Report 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That growth is heavily a Gulf story. It is driven by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, and by Arabic-language pop distributed through Anghami, the regional DSP. DSP means Digital Service Provider, the streaming platforms that pay out royalties.<\/p>\n

Anghami merged with OSN+ in 2024 and holds around 28% of streaming in its core Gulf and Egyptian markets, with more than 120 million registered users, per coverage of the merged group<\/a>. Its catalogue leans Arabic pop, from artists like Amr Diab. Moroccan darija rap is not what powers it.<\/p>\n

Moroccan rap runs on a different stack<\/h2>\n

The scene EGT leads lives on Spotify and YouTube, in a mix of Moroccan darija and French. It is closer in sound and distribution to French rap than to Gulf pop, and its audience map proves it.<\/p>\n

ElGrandeToto carries about 6 million monthly Spotify listeners. His top listener cities, per Music Metrics Vault<\/a>, run like this:<\/p>\n