Mobile app alert: 4m songs free download

It is emerging as one of the fastest growing music streaming apps in the Middle East.

‘Anghami’ is emerging as the Arab World’s search for a ‘free iTunes’ and has notched up 2 million downloads in less than a year after it was launched.

Anghami has now launched a promotion where users signing up will be able to get one month free premium subscription with unlimited downloads.

The service is a mobile-only music application targeting markets in the Middle East and North Africa.

While users in the region can access the complete package, those from elsewhere will only have access to Arabic content.

Once your free download expires, the subscription charge for Anghami is set at $5 per month.

However, for now it is free, even for the iPhone – for which getting free music downloads is nowhere close to as easy as for Android devices.

How good is the Anghami playlist? For free unlimited downloads it is close to brilliant.

A cursory search revealed it had pretty much everything mainstream – from jazz (George Benson) to classic rock (Deep Purple) to legends (Rolling Stones) to all the big 80-90s artistes (George Michael, MJ, etc, etc) to every big name in the Noughties (Coldplay to Rihanna).

Granted, a search for Mumford & Sons did not reveal anything, but Michael Buble… he’s there.

Anghami, which is opening an office in Dubai, claims to have licensing agreement with major regional and international labels.

Speaking to Emirates 24|7, Choueri Khainallah, Marketing Manager, Anghami, said what prompted them to start Anghami was a clear lack of available options to get legal music in the region.

“Even iTunes was not active here then. Today we have a deal with all labels, including Arabic and international, with about four millions songs in our library,” he said.

The company has signed licensing deals with a number of major Middle Eastern labels, including Rotana, Platinum Records, Mazzika, and Melody.

They also have deals with international labels, including the three majors Universal, Sony and Warner.

 “We hope to become the leading streaming service in the region,” he adds.

 “We recently published a revamped app for Apple, Android and Blackberry stores. An App for Windows phones will be released soon,” he adds.

According to him the idea of opening an office in Dubai is to tie up with various telcos and media companies based out of the emirate.

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