At the turn of the century, as mobile phones were taking off, there was a fad for novelty ringtones. People were paying small sums for their new Nokia phones to play a simple version of popular tunes as a call alert. “It was a silly trend at the time,” says Eddy Maroun, co-founder of Anghami, which is today the Arab world’s biggest home-grown music streaming service. “I would compose the melodies,” he says. His co-founder, Elie Habib, meanwhile, took care of the technical and distribution side. To go from two men with some ringtones to creating one of the most successful regional technology companies took years, inspiration and the battle to overcome the limitations of launching in a region where new tech companies are the exception rather than the rule.

Source: BBC

Date: February 14th, 2017

Link to video and article: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38664037

Discussion

1) “At that point piracy was killing the economics of producing music,” he says. “Producers were at the point where they were making almost no money.”  By coming up with a platform that was convenient and affordable the founders believed that consumers would be willing to pay rather than illegally download music.  Anghami makes its money from people subscribing to the service, advertising to people who stream the service for free, and by doing deals with mobile phone companies who carry the app.”   Are there any other areas where piracy is a problem that a service like this could fix?

2) What can you learn from how these two Arab entrepreneurs got this off the ground?