Anghami commits $3 million worth of free audio ads for small businesses on its music stream service

Anghami, the leading music streaming company of the Middle East & North Africa has committed $3 million worth of free audio ads for small businesses on its app, company’s co-founder Elie Habib announced last week. The move is part of Anghami’s community support plan which includes different initiatives by the Beirut-headquartered company to supports the local artists, small businesses and its users in this time of Crisis.

“The world has never been so uncertain, Covid-19 is affecting businesses small & large, people’s health and livelihood. And its impact goes beyond the shift to working from home: forced lockdown has disrupted our whole mental state and health,” said Elie in a blogpost.

The ads for small businesses initiative has already supported over ninety businesses with $850,000 worth of free audio ads. The blogpost did not have the details about criteria or pre-requisites the interested businesses can apply using this link. Ads on Anghami reach over 13 million people in the Middle East and the businesses will have the option to choose the market they want to target.

Anghami is also granting over 400 of local independent artists $1.5 million of ‘Amplify’ credits. The credits will allow artists to promote their content on the platform. In addition to this, the company also has plans to launch a ‘Support My Music’ button for artists.

Elie told MENAbytes that the feature will be launched later this week, “The artists will be able to enable it via their dashboard and fans will get notified. They can support artists with money and get direct access to them.”

The feature, for now, will support one-time payments that fans can do repeatedly but Elie hasn’t ruled out the possibility of exploring the option of turning it into a subscription-based feature for artists using which they could charge their fans a small monthly fee in exchange of exclusive access and content.

In addition to this, the company has also introduced a discounted price of $6 (previously priced at $7.49) for its family plan that allows 6 people to get the full Anghami Plus experience. Those who subscribe using this offer will be able to enjoy the discounted price for 12 months.

Anghami was one of the first companies in the region to close its offices on March 9, forcing all its employees to work from home. They’ve also out a hub for their users to get ‘Stay Home’ content and helped promote safety guidelines like ‘wash your hands with music’ on the platform.