Arabic music's big summer on Anghami: Hamaki's 71m streams, and what the numbers don't say

Arabic pop had a very big summer on Anghami, the Abu Dhabi-based service that calls itself the leading music and entertainment streaming platform in the Middle East and North Africa. In figures Anghami published in mid-September and reported by Absolute Geeks, Mohamed Hamaki's latest album took 71 million streams and, shortly after release, held 18 of the platform's Top 20 chart positions. Seven artists reached number one over the season. The interesting question for most musicians is not who won, but what kind of market produced those wins.

We could not open Anghami's own post on its newsroom, talks.anghami.com, which returned a server error every time we tried. The summer numbers below are Anghami's, as reported by Absolute Geeks. The company figures come from Anghami's annual results release as filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Who had the biggest summer on Anghami?

These are album or release totals on Anghami only, for a season Anghami did not define by date:

The seven artists who hit number one were Amr Diab, Tamer Hosny, Mohamed Hamaki, Tamer Ashour, Cairokee, Angham and Tul8te. Anghami says Hosny's release had its strongest 48-hour album debut of 2026.

Absolute Geeks reads the season as established stars and younger artists trading places at the top, with newer Arabic acts competing for the same listeners. The clearest example on the list is Tul8te, an Egyptian artist who wrote the song himself and whose single "Garee2a Awy" stayed at number one on Anghami for several weeks. SceneNoise reported in July that he premiered the song on the COLORS channel as the lead single from an upcoming album produced by his longtime collaborator Moataz Mady.

What does 18 of the Top 20 actually mean?

It means one album crowded almost everyone else off the platform's main chart for a while. That is a sign of a devoted fanbase, and it is also how a chart behaves when listeners play an album start to finish: every track charts at once. For anyone else releasing around then, the chart was effectively closed.

Absolute Geeks makes the key caveat itself: these figures show listening inside Anghami only, not the wider streaming market. Anghami published no total streams for the season, so we can't say what share 71 million represents. It also published no royalty values, so the numbers don't tell an artist what any of this paid.

What does Anghami's business look like?

According to its FY2025 results release, dated 30 Apr 2026, Anghami's revenue grew 27% to US$99.3m in 2025, from US$78.1m in 2024. Paid subscribers passed 3.5 million and registered users passed 130 million.

Read the scope words before quoting those headlines. The 3.5 million subscribers are "across Anghami and OSN+", OSN+ being the video streaming service, with an exclusive HBO catalogue, that Anghami consolidated from 1 Apr 2024. Growth came partly from the first full year of that video business. The release does not split out music revenue or music subscribers, and it says profitability was hit by fixed video content licensing fees. So the US$99.3m is not a measure of what Arabic music earns on Anghami. It is a measure of a music-and-video company.

The same release shows how Anghami reaches people. It has integrations with 45 telecoms operators across the region. The company says these make subscription payments easier, help give it one of the highest paying conversion rates among music services in the region, and act as a marketing channel through co-branded campaigns and data bundle offers. Its outlook says it aims to scale "embedded and bundled distribution". In May, Samsung launched StreamPass in the UAE and other Middle East and North Africa markets, which, according to tbreak, includes unlimited Anghami playlists in the tier sold with Samsung's Q and S series soundbars.

How does this fit the regional picture?

IFPI's Global Music Report 2026 put Middle East and North Africa recorded music revenue growth at 15.2% in 2025, with streaming 97.5% of the total. We covered what that growth rate does and doesn't mean in our read of the 2026 global music map. The short version: when nearly all income comes from streaming, the rules of the main streaming platforms decide who gets paid.

What do independent Arabic artists face?

Two things stand out from this summer.

Exclusives. Tamer Hosny's album Mesh Hatkarar first arrived on 21 July as an Anghami exclusive, and ArabSounds reported it on all streaming platforms by 5 August. Yamane appeared in Anghami's summer campaign with an exclusive single. An exclusive window is a deal between a platform and an artist big enough to move subscribers. A new artist is rarely offered one, and if they are, they give up every other platform for the period in exchange for promotion they can't measure in advance.

Bundles. When people subscribe through a phone plan, a data bundle or a soundbar, they didn't choose music specifically. That is good for reach. What it does to per-stream income depends on how much of each bundle payment is allocated to music, and none of these announcements says. In the US, treating Spotify Premium as a bundle with audiobooks has let Spotify pay songwriters a lower mechanical rate. We have no evidence the same is happening on Anghami; the point is that artists can't check.

What we think

This was a real summer for Arabic music, and Anghami deserves credit for publishing artist-level numbers at all. But the release is a marketing document, and three things are missing.

A denominator. Without total season streams, "71 million" and "18 of the Top 20" describe dominance without measuring it. We'd like to see Anghami publish chart concentration, for example the share of Top 20 slots held by artists with no previous number one, in the broader listening report it says is coming later this year.

Music on its own. A listed company that reports music and video together makes it impossible to tell whether Arabic music's share of the money is growing alongside its streams. The growth in subscribers could be HBO as much as Hamaki.

Tul8te is the story to watch, not Hamaki. One newer artist reaching number one next to Amr Diab and Tamer Hosny is encouraging. One is also not yet a trend. If Anghami's year-end report shows more artists like him breaking through without an exclusive deal, that would be the clearest sign the platform works for people outside the star system.

For independent Arabic artists, our practical advice: avoid releasing in the same week as a superstar album, because the chart can be closed for days. Treat any exclusive offer as a negotiation, and ask for specific promotion in writing before giving up other platforms. Keep your music on every service, because a growing share of listeners arrive through telcos and devices you don't control.