Why Ali Kiba is still a force to reckoned with

Bongo flava singer from Kings Music, Ally Saleh Kiba - popular by his stage name ‘Alikiba’ - has remained a formidable force in the Bongo flava industry for more than a decade despite the rise of new generations of artistes in the music business.

In an era mostly dominated by digital trends, Alikiba has managed to still be on the chat with a growing fan base in different digital platforms.

His new hit ‘jealous’ featuring Nigerian music star Mayarkun has set a new record in his music career after the video garnered over 1 million views in 12 hours.

Current Jealous is the most viewed song on YouTube with 5 million views in 6 days.

Mediocre hit maker became the first artist in the country outside the WCB Empire to reach 1 Million subscribers on YouTube.

So far music artistes with more than 1 Million subscribers in Tanzania are Diamond Platnumz, Harmonize former WCB signee, Rayavanny, Mbosso, Zuchu and Lava Lava all of the WCB label.

With the new milestone, ‘King Kiba’ has now broken a record that had been set by Diamond Platnumz’s song Iyo that reached the 1 million mark within 13 hours of being uploaded on YouTube.

“Thanks to our dearest Fans!! 1 million views in 12 hours! This is Massive. Please keep on streaming the video and audio on YouTube and other digital platforms. The Album is coming,” wrote Kings Music Records on their IG handle

Till Thursday evening, Alikiba had 433,000 monthly listeners with 10.4 million total plays on Audio mark - with his last hits Jealous among the 10 top songs in the platform with 653,000 listeners, and Salute - featuring Psquire’s Rude boy - with 793,000 listeners.

However, Alikiba is yet to break the record set by Chibu Dangote of hitting one million views in just 8 hours. Diamond Platnumz set the record through his hit song Waah featuring Koffi Olomide after it clocked one million views in 8 hours - and over 2 million in less than 24 hours.

Music video for the trending song Jealous was shot in Lagos by Director Pink under Pink Line Films. It’s Audio was produced by Yogo Beats of Tanzania.

‘King Kiba’ took to his social media pages to inform his fans that the video was available on all streaming platforms.

“As I promised you! Jealous music video is OUT. Subscribe to my Youtube channel and watch it. Directed by the beautiful Dayamund from PinkLineFilms” shared Alikiba.

The Jealous video had been scheduled to be dropped on Thursday but got postponed to Friday following the untimely death of his friend Malcom Ally Masoud.

Recently ‘King Kiba’ has been dropping songs back to back as opposed to the long break he used to take after releasing a new song.

Just the other day, he teamed up with Nigeria’s Rudeboy for a song called Salute and before that he had released Ndombolo with his team at Kings Music which are doing well in all digital music platforms in the country and abroad.

It should be noted that Diamond is still the leading subscriber for sub-Saharan Africa with 5.38 Million, holding the record for being the first artiste from the region to reach one billion viewers on the network.

Despite the record, Alikiba has been reluctant to stop using his channel for more than two years - and, instead, posted videos of his songs on the Kings Music channel for what he claimed he decided to do to promote it.

Alikiba - who joined the network on November 27, 2014 - has already garnered more than 147.4 million viewers, with the Kings Music channel which has its own label with 510,000 subscribers and a total of 45.2 million viewers.

Apart from Alikiba, the other Bongo flava artistes outside WCB Wasafi who are expected to reach one million subscribers this year are Nandy ‘the African Princess,’ and Aslay whose channels have more than 800,000 subscribers.

Worldwide, India’s T-Series label - which specializes in music and film production - has the largest number of subscribers on YouTube: 185 million.

So far, Tanzania is the leading East African Community (EAC) country. It has six artistes with more than one million subscribers each on YouTube.

Uganda have only one artiste - Eddy Kenzo - while Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan are not so lucky.

Why are Tanzanian artistes more successful in that regard? Fredrick Bundala (Sky) - the most popular entertainment YouTuber and Blogger in the country - says this is due to the cheap internet services compared to Kenya, Rwanda and other African nations.

“Apart from the internet being cheap, branding of Tanzanian artistes on social media is much higher in Tanzania than in many other countries. Tanzanian artistes do things differently from the pictures they post. Videographers, bodyguards, artistes, etc., have created this environment for fans to enjoy by following their stuff,” Bundala says.

He adds that Tanzanians have developed a certain interest and love for their artistes - and not just in the music industry.