South Africans call out Spotify for using Davido as Amapiano playlist cover

Some South Africans on social media have called out Spotify for using Davido, the Afrobeats singer, as the cover for Amapiano playlist on its streaming platform.

Amapiano is a style of house music that emerged in South Africa in 2012. It is a hybrid of deep house, jazz, lounge music, and wide percussive basslines.

The genre is distinguished by high-pitched piano melodies, Kwaito basslines, low-tempo 90s South African house rhythms, and percussions from another local subgenre of house music known as Bacardi.

Afrobeats, on the other hand, is a music genre commonly adopted by West African artistes. It gained popularity in the early 2000s.

Spotify recently unveiled Davido as the cover for the playlist of the South African music genre and captioned it ‘Amapiano To The World’.

The streamer added: “Join the global amapiano movement with tracks and artists pushing amapiano on the global stage. Cover: Davido”.

The development, however, did not sit too well with a lot of South African music lovers; some of whom took to X to register their annoyance at Spotify.

“@Spotify What is this why are you mixing Amapiano with other genres, whoever you got to compile this playlist must be fired & you should hire a South African to compile these playlists, there is Amapiano Afrobeats and Afroyano dont mix them into one thing and say its Amapiano,” a user wrote.

“@Spotify am canceling my subscription with immediate effect. Amapiano was born and bred in SA,” another user wrote.

Here are some of the reactions below:

https://twitter.com/therealbandisa/status/1728581539468804465?s=61&t=-AeqqW0KP-6gL_OiwkFlog