Music piracy has always been a popular and serious issue in South Africa since the emergence of technology that enables 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. 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.
Launched in late 2016, fakaza.com is a website that basically upload new South African music for free download, but before Fakaza, there has been countless free music download websites in South Africa but none has been big enough to become one of the country’s top websites. The practice that gave Fakaza an hedge was the website ability to publish songs even before they were released. people looking for free download would visit the website to download songs because they know they have a chance to access musical contents that has not been officially released which is a bonus for them.
Free music download is also very popular in South Africa. Record labels like Ambitiouz Entertainment, 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, there are now countless platforms to choose from in terms of music distribution.
Remember we did not have the popular streaming services we have in South Africa today, It was just two years ago that some of the major streaming services started investing into South African music market due to the huge mark some of the 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 just to more exposure while also distrubuting on the paid streaming services available at the time. There has 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 prove to sustain the speculations. Fakaza runs fully on Whois privacy protection which means it is very hard to know is behind the website.
We have seen artists take to social media to express their anger whenever their song is illegally uploaded for free download on Fakaza, but 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 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. Artist 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 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.
We still see some artists release free music download till date, both upcoming and established and they do it in a very large scale which makes free download even more popular in South Africa. But the website that take the lead till date is Fakaza, although gradually becoming unpopular as new website springs up on a regular basis and there are new website that does exactly the things that gave Fakaza an hedge, which is to illegally publishing music before release.
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 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 used combined with either artists names. genres, albums, songs or other musical content, we found out that the word is used in combination with other words almost 1,000,000 Times monthly.
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 ususally combine these words with artist name, genre, album and other musical content which by just marely 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 download 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.