Who Controls Playlist Access in the MENA Music Market?

Two Platforms, Two Starting Points

Spotify launched in the Middle East and North Africa in November 2018, running regional operations out of Dubai. Anghami, by contrast, describes itself as the first music streaming platform built for the MENA region, predating Spotify's regional entry by close to a decade, and now operates at real scale: the company reported $99.3 million in revenue for 2025, with 3.5 million paying subscribers across Anghami and OSN+. That sequencing shapes how each approaches playlist curation, and how much power each curator holds.

The stakes are structural. IFPI's Global Music Report 2026 puts MENA recorded-music growth at 15.2 per cent for 2025, with streaming supplying 97.5 per cent of regional revenue, the most streaming-dependent profile of any region measured. In a market this streaming-dependent, editorial playlist placement functions as one of the few remaining forms of curated discovery, and the royalty pools it feeds are, as Ghurba's money-flow investigation details, thin enough that placement can be the difference between an income and a hobby.

How the Two Systems Work

Anghami accepts playlist submissions through the third-party platform Groover, and has built its regional identity around editorial expertise, positioning itself as a locally focused alternative with staff dedicated to Arabic-language discovery. Analyses of how Anghami held its ground against Spotify attribute its position to first-mover advantage and local catalogue depth rather than superior technology. The company's own Form F-1/A filing with the SEC remains the most reliable public document on its business structure, and is worth reading directly rather than through press summaries.

Spotify's regional editorial operation runs the Arabic flagship playlists that anchor its MENA strategy, and participates in the same global pitch system, every artist submitting through Spotify for Artists, that governs editorial consideration everywhere. What neither platform publishes, for MENA or anywhere, is the criteria its editors actually apply.

What Remains Undisclosed

Neither platform publishes the selection criteria for major regional playlists, and neither responded to a request for comment for the original version of this analysis. That opacity is not unique to MENA; editorial selection has been criticised industry-wide for lacking transparency. But the stakes are arguably higher in a market where a small number of curators make decisions that carry outsized weight for artists without marketing budgets, where no fraud-enforcement data is published either, and where the alternative discovery infrastructure, radio with royalties, press with reach, functioning collection societies, is missing or new.

The commercial context adds a sharper edge: Music Business Worldwide has reported on Spotify weighing an acquisition of Anghami. If the region's two main editorial gatekeepers were to consolidate, the number of independent doors an artist can knock on would fall from two to one, in the world's most playlist-dependent market.

What Artists Can Actually Verify

What independent artists can verify, rather than speculate about, is the existence of formal submission routes: Spotify's editorial pitch through Spotify for Artists, and Anghami's via Groover. Beyond that, the practical advice follows from metric literacy: playlist streams spike, saves and returning listeners persist, and an artist optimising for the gatekeeper's number rather than the audience's behaviour is optimising for the wrong ledger. Placement is a door, not a house.

The structural point stands regardless of platform: curation without published criteria is power without accountability, and in a market growing this fast, the accountability gap grows with it. Two companies decide what the region discovers. Neither says how. That remains the finding.

Key Facts

• Spotify launched MENA operations from Dubai in November 2018; Anghami predates it by nearly a decade regionally.

• Anghami reported FY2025 revenue of $99.3m and 3.5m paid subscribers (with OSN+).

• Streaming supplies 97.5% of MENA recorded-music revenue (IFPI GMR 2026), maximising playlist gatekeeping power.

• Neither platform publishes editorial selection criteria for regional playlists.

• MBW has reported Spotify weighing an Anghami acquisition, which would consolidate regional curation further.