John Blaq beats Pallaso on Spotify

Dec 03, 2022

According to Spotify, John Blaq has one million streams, 126.5 thousand listeners, and 46.6 thousand listening hours, and 181 countries have listened to his music this year, 2022. 

Musician John Blaq. File photo

Francis Emukule
Journalist @New Vision

Numbers don’t lie; whether you like it or not, numbers will always tell the truth. 

Many times, music enthusiasts try as much as they can to discredit the power of numbers. This is something they do to discredit the talent and relevance of an artist.

Musician Eddy Kenzo has often been labelled irrelevant to the Ugandan music market ever since he won the Black Entertainment Television (BET) award due to the fact that many think, his music is no longer relevant to the Ugandan music market.

Ironically, Kenzo’s numbers have always spoken for him; currently, he has the largest streams on YouTube, with more than 2 million subscribers. Although we have not yet seen his Spotify report, it is also possible that he is the most streamed artist in Uganda on Spotify.

On top of that, Kenzo recently held a show he named "the Eddy Kenzo Festival," which attracted over 40,000 people—a record he set that is yet to be broken by anybody.

Shortly after the successful show, he received a Grammy Award nomination for his song "Give me love" with American singer Mat B.

To put things into perspective, numbers are essential in every aspect of music, such as in attracting endorsements, award nominations and collaborations, to name a few.

This write-up is not about Kenzo; I just wanted to show you how numbers will always set an artist apart from the rest, however much anybody tries to discredit their numbers.

According to Spotify, John Blaq has one million streams, 126.5 thousand listeners, and 46.6 thousand listening hours, and 181 countries have listened to his music this year, 2022. 

Compared to Pallaso, who has 881.2 thousand streams, 126.6 thousand listeners, and 43.5 thousand listening hours across 178 countries, it is fair to say Blaq is better than Pallaso.

Many people may disagree with that statement, especially given that Pallaso nearly owned 2021–2022 due to his relentless hits. 

However, while it was true that Pallaso had hits, it was also true that 181 countries chose to stream Blaq’s music.

Blaq beating Pallaso with streams is not to say that he (Pallaso) is not talented, but as a sign that Ugandan music is growing and people outside Uganda are paying attention, and therefore, more time and money need to be invested in making quality music.

As it stands, Pallaso needs to pull up his socks and get to work.

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