How Fakaza Now Means “Free Mp3 Download” In South Africa

Emergence Of Music Piracy

Music piracy has always been a popular and serious issue in South Africa since the emergence of technology, making it possible for people to copy music. First, music was pirated by making copies on audio cassettes, then it became physical CDs, and then the internet became a thing. Therefore, we will not be talking much about music piracy today but something very similar.

We are touching on how the name of the most popular music download website in South Africa has become the ultimate word when people talk about download.

About Fakaza

Launched in late 2016, fakaza.com is a website that basically uploads new South African music for free download. Still, before Fakaza, there have been countless free music download websites in South Africa. Still, none has been big enough to become one of the country’s top websites. So today, Fakaza is one of the biggest websites in South Africa.

How Fakaza Became Popular

The practice that gave Fakaza a hedge was the website ability to publish songs even before they were released. People looking for free downloads would visit the website to download songs because they know they have a chance to access musical contents that have not been officially released, which is a bonus for them.

Before Fakaza

Free music download is also prevalent in South Africa. Record labels like Ambitiouz Entertainment, DJ Maphorisa’s Blaqboy Music and more officially released some songs for free download through another popular free download website known as datafilehost, but that is now a thing of the past, as there are now countless platforms to choose from in terms of music distribution today.

Remember, we did not have the popular streaming services we have in South Africa today. However, just two years ago, some major streaming services started investing heavily into the South African music market due to the huge mark some artists have made internationally.

But before then, music artists struggled to find music platforms that would give them a good return for their arts; some would release their music for free to gain more exposure while also distributing on the paid streaming services available. There have been speculations that Fakaza is owned by DJ Maphorisa just simply because he shared links to the website on his social media platforms, but no proof to sustain the speculations. Fakaza runs fully on Whois privacy protection which means it is tough to know who is running or behind the website.

Artists Expressing Their Anger On Illegal Downloads

We have seen artists take to social media to express their anger whenever their song is illegally uploaded for free download on Fakaza. Still, some of these artists will also share links to the website for their song to be downloaded for free whenever they have a new song out, and those practices got the website even more popular with the free publicities.

An artist under DJ Tira’s own record label even released a song and titled it Fakaza.

Some have advised that the owner of Fakaza be sued and the website shut down but does that really solve the issue? There are lots of free illegal downloads going on that we are no aware of. There are thousands of tools online such as Torrents, YouTube to Mp3, Soundcloud downloader, Audiomack downloader and many more that people can basically use when websites like Fakaza shuts down. Artists that depends on free music download websites to get their music out there will also suffer. Artists as big as Cassper Nyovest once supported the notion of downloading music from Fakaza because he acknowledged the fact that paid downloads and streaming services are just not affordable for some.

Some free downloads are illegal because they are not authorized by the artist or record label representing the artist, but some are 100% legal because they have been released solely for free download. That is how some give fans full access to their music. Some of the big artists we have today started off releasing their songs for free download because it was and still is one of the ways for artists looking for exposure to breakthrough. We have seen artists with zero exposure become some of the biggest artists in the country, thanks to free download websites.

Artists Releasing Music For Free Download

We still see some artists release free music downloads to date, both upcoming and established, and they do it on a huge scale, making the free download even more popular in South Africa. But the website that takes the lead to date is Fakaza, although gradually becoming unpopular as new websites spring up regularly. New websites do exactly what gave Fakaza a hedge, which is illegally publishing music before release.

How Fakaza Now Means Download

Regardless of the state of Fakaza today, the website made a big mark, so big that the word which originally means “testify” is now used as “download”. See the image below for an estimated search volume for Fakaza in South Africa compared to the United States, for example. You can see from the image below that the word “Fakaza” is used on search engines almost 680,000 monthly. When we dig further, we found out that the word is combined with either artist’s name. Genres, albums, songs or other musical elements, we found out that the word is used in combination with other words almost 1,000,000 Times monthly to find music.

How Popular Is Fakaza?

We did some keywords research and found out how South Africans use Fakaza instead of download or together with the word download and mp3. They usually combine these words with artist name, genre, album and other musical content, which by just looking at the use, one can see that the word Fakaza means download to many. Here are a few words that people use when searching for free music downloads in South Africa:

No	Keyword	Search Volume
1	fakaza	673000
2	fakaza com	135000
3	fakaza music	33100
4	fakaza download	9900
5	fakaza mp3 download	8100
6	fakazahub	6600
7	fakaza gospel	6600
8	fakaza gqom	6600
9	fakaza house music mp3 download	5400
10	fakaza albums	5400
11	fakaza latest songs	5400
12	fakaza hip hop	4400
13	fakaza songs	4400
14	fakaza 2019	3600
15	fakaza new songs 2020	2900
16	fakaza com 2020	2400
17	fakaza house music	1900
18	fakaza maskandi	1600
19	fakaza com music	1600
20	fakaza gospel music	1600
21	fakaza 2018	1300
22	fakaza deep	1300
23	fakaza gospel mp3 download	1000
24	fakaza upload	1000
25	fakaza naija music download	880
26	fakaza news	880
27	fakaza instrumental beats	880
28	fakaza wap	880
29	fakaza king monada	720
30	fakaza maskandi music download	720
31	fakaza vigro deep	590
32	fakaza sesotho music	590
33	fakaza gospel dumi mkokstad	590
34	fakaza videos	480
35	fakaza audio	480
36	fakaza makhadzi	480
37	fakaza sjava	390
38	fakaza free mp3 download	390
39	fakaza blaq diamond	390
40	fakaza app	390
41	fakaza music videos	390
42	fakaza web	320
43	fakaza music upload	320
44	fakaza international music	320
45	fakaza movies	320
46	fakaza gqom mix	260
47	fakaza zion music	260
48	fakaza r&b	260
49	fakaza jazz	260
50	fakaza emtee	210
51	fakaza hip hop beats	210
52	fakaza app download	210
53	fakaza 2020 songs download	210
54	fakaza kwesta	210
55	fakaza me	170
56	fakaza dj tira	170
57	fakaza latest house music	170
58	fakaza music gospel	170
59	fakaza org	170
60	fakaza registration	140
61	fakaza old school house music	140
62	fakaza gospel babo	140
63	fakaza afro pop	140
64	fakaza sa hip hop	140
65	fakaza venda music	140
66	fakaza prince kaybee	110
67	fakaza dumi mkokstad	110
68	fakaza zamusic	110
69	fakaza gqom mix 2019 download	110
70	fakaza usa	110
71	fakaza reggae mixtapes	110
72	fakaza big zulu	110
73	fakaza gospel 2020 download	110
74	fakaza dj maphorisa	110
75	fakaza black coffee	90
76	fakaza professor	90
77	fakaza black motion	90
78	fakaza latest songs 2020 download	90
79	fakaza vusi nova	90
80	fakaza tns	90
81	fakaza beats download	90
82	fakaza facebook	90
83	fakaza top 10	70
84	fakaza the soil	70
85	fakaza whatsapp group	70
86	fakaza thina zungu	70
87	fakaza mp4	70
88	fakaza sign up	70
89	fakaza albums 2020 download	70
90	fakaza lebo sekgobela	50
91	fakaza trending songs	50
92	fakaza jazzidisciples	50
93	fakaza chris brown	50
94	fakaza soul music	50
95	fakaza ringo madlingozi	50
96	fakaza reggae	50
97	fakaza usa hip hop	40
98	fakaza 2020 music download mp3	40
99	fakaza zonke	30
100	fakaza okmalumkoolkat	30
TOTAL		941970

Because the word is widely used, we have seen many websites launch with the name Fakaza in them.