potify has made significant strides in Pakistan since its official arrival in the country approximately two years ago. While the audio streaming platform has launched various programs in our music market including RADAR, its most notable initiative has been EQUAL Pakistan. As part of the program, an artist is selected every month to be the ambassador. The latest selection is Zeb Bangash, which makes complete sense for several reasons. She is a versatile artist who has made her mark through collaborative records and singles, appearances on Coke Studio under different producers, and providing backing vocals to films and television dramas. In other words, there is no aspect of music in which Zeb Bangash hasn’t excelled.

Beyond the current ambassador, the audio streaming platform is celebrating its second anniversary since introducing the EQUAL Pakistan program.

Designed primarily to highlight female artists, EQUAL aims to shine a light on their music and gives every EQUAL Pakistan ambassador a digital billboard in Times Square, NYC.

According to a press release: “EQUAL Pakistan’s anniversary is a celebration of the resilient, towering women creators that shape the fabric of our music industry, and with EQUAL Pakistan, we aim to amplify these creators so that they can take more space,” said Rutaba Yaqub, Spotify’s Senior Editor for Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. “Over the past year, there has been more than a 25 percent increase in streams for local women artists in 2023 globally, compared to the previous year, whereas, there was a visible increase in local consumption of local women artists experiencing a 44 percent rise in streams in 2023, emphasizing their growing influence and appeal among local listeners.”

According to data released by Spotify, some artists have seen an unprecedent rise in listenership.

“Asteria witnessed an astounding 408 percent growth, and Hareem Rashid experienced a significant surge of 281 percent in monthly listeners within just one month of being featured as the EQUAL Pakistan ambassadors for October and November 2023, respectively.”

This shows that there is a market for fresher voices that goes beyond familiar and well-established names.

In terms of popular names, Tina Sani, Aima Baig and Sanam Marvi have seen “the highest growth in listenership since joining the EQUAL Pakistan program.”

EQUAL is not a Pakistan-specific initiative. Further data revealed by Spotify notes that there are 1000 women who have been EQUAL ambassadors across many territories.

“To date, Spotify has added more than 6,900 women artists to EQUAL playlists and supported over 1,000 ambassadors in their home countries and beyond through editorial, partnerships, and marketing. EQUAL artists received 1.3 billion editorial streams within their first month of joining the program. In total, the EQUAL hub has generated over 31 billion editorial streams across one billion listening hours. In 2023 alone, more than 14.8 million artist discoveries were made through EQUAL playlists, and EQUAL artists received over 11,800 total editorial playlist adds.”

A decade of K-pop

Apart from representing women through its EQUAL campaign in Pakistan and other territories, Spotify celebrated a decade of its global K-pop through its playlist called K-Pop ON! which was introduced in 2014.

Since launching K-Pop ON!, the playlist has been “saved” by over 5.3 million Spotify users worldwide and racked up billions of streams for Korean artists.

The purpose of the K-Pop ON! has always been the same: allowing listeners from around the world an easy way to discover the best from the genre. Celebrating this milestone, Spotify launched a special series of Spotify Singles as part of the campaign called ‘My First K-Pop Crush campaign’ in March.

This particular campaign is headlined by some of the most popular K-pop artists such as Enhyphen, Shownu X Hyungwon (of Monsta X) and Stayc.

“This Spotify K-Pop ON! Singles means so much to us. In addition to bringing ENGENEs (our fans) a new track, this was our chance to tell the stories of our beginnings with K-pop through a song loved by the members,” said Enhyphen in a press statement. “We’ve always appreciated Spotify’s support for our music, so it’s an honor to be a part of its K-Pop ON! anniversary celebrations. We hope listeners enjoy our rendition of ‘I need you’ and we can’t wait to hear their first K-pop crush stories too!”

The diversity in EQUAL Pakistan’s motto to represent women from the field of music can be gauged by artists who have been ambassadors per month since the program was first introduced in Pakistan. Those who have been selected include names such as the late Nazia
Hassan, Tina Sani, Sanam Marvi, Natasha Noorani,
Aima Baig, Zoha Zuberi among several others.

The K-pop ON! playlist was introduced in 2014 and has given listeners from around the world a shared experience in finding some of the best K-pop artists. Among popular artists are names such as Enhyphen, Shownu X Hyungwon (of Monsta X) and Stayc.