Songa, the new music streaming service from Safaricom is only available as an app on Android at the moment. An iOS version is coming but that’s not here yet and, heck, do we really care about those guys anyway? However, getting the app has been a bit of a hustle. Thanks to being restricted to Safaricom SIMs, it’s taken a bit of figuring out for most users (myself included) to be able to get on board and start the free 2-week trial.
Even then, all has not been smooth. There are bugs, lots of them. The app crashes randomly often, transitioning to the next song in a playlist is broken etc.
Wah! I can't help you here since I've also encountered that today. Cc @songamusicKe pic.twitter.com/QC9B5un62S
— permanent irrefutable public user (@echenze) February 14, 2018
This is not something out of this world though since the application is still in testing mode and this is to be expected. For us who are keen watchers, what matters is how soon the app is able to grow out of these initial setbacks so that focus shifts to the service and what it offers. You know, things like the quality of the streams, the size of the music collection, what’s available and what is not, launch exclusives. Such.
As such, it is not surprising that the very first update to the app, at least since its hyped release earlier this week, seeks to fix a lot of the little annoyances that users have had to make do with for the last few days.
One annoying thing with the app that hasn’t been fixed in this update, is that it goes on and on when you initiate another app utilizing the same audio channels so, essentially, you end up having two audio streams, whatever it is that you have switched to and Songa, something that is not characteristic of music apps. Here’s to hoping that and many others get fixed next time and that we will have a better experience when the app exits beta.
The update is available via the Play Store where Songa can be downloaded and installed from.
