YouTube’s comments section is widely acknowledged in modern internet culture as one of the worst places on the Web. Even the most benign videos of a tech toy’s unboxing all too easily descends into vitriol, sexism and discriminatory outbursts.
Over the years it’s become so bad YouTube has been experimenting with hiding comments as a default on certain types of videos.
But of course there are millions of hours of YouTube videos watched everyday and not all videos inspire nasty comments—far from it. In fact, if you want to enjoy overwhelmingly positive comments, then watching most popular African music videos are where you want to be.
It’s almost always good vibes in the comments for your Burna Boys, Sauti Sols, Wizkids and Diamond Platnumz, who between them rack up hundreds of millions of views each year. You have the roll-callers and the hype(wo)men “Who is still listening to this jam in 2019?” or “If you have listened to this song more than 5 times today, click like” or “If you are Kenyan, please hit like on this comment,” or “I don’t know why this song hasn’t made it to 5M views. Hit like and keep sharing!”
In the recent past even more than before, African music has been crossing borders—aided by the rise of social media and the diaspora that gave musicians more opportunities to instantly release their music to the world. African pop genres developed over the last decade like Nigeria/Ghana’s Afrobeats and South Africa’s gqom have benefitted greatly from YouTube in particular which made it so much easier to go global without major record labels (though they’re now all on board). There has also been a growth in the number of radio stations exclusively dedicated to hits from all over the continent.
Investors are seeing the opportunity and investing in homegrown music labels. Even Beyonce hasn’t been left behind with the recent release of the Lion King soundtrack that is packed with Afrobeats artists. Big name collaborations are becoming commonplace – bringing black artists across the continental divide together. Afrobeats hits have even made their way into the Caribbean carnival scene.