Indaba Music

History

Indaba was founded in 2005. Indaba's primary website, www.indabamusic.com, was launched in February 2007. Indaba is a Zulu word for community and collaboration and was chosen because the platform is designed as a way to meet new people and share ideas to create music. The founders came up with the idea for Indaba after starting a non-profit label while they were in college as a means to provide new opportunities for student artists and give them greater exposure. The key to Indaba Music's popularity and success is said to be based on two ideas: that the internet has helped connect artists in a more intimate way, and that the spread of cheaper, higher-quality digital music production software and hardware has enabled virtually anyone to create quality music productions. In February 2015, Indaba Music launched the Converse Rubber Tracks Sample Library in partnership with Converse. The library offers over 42,000 royalty free audio samples recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks studios. Indaba built the technology and produced the recording sessions and sample packs for the library. Many established artists have used sample in their songs including Mura Masa, who used vocals by emerging artist Lewis Lane for the hook of his mega hit song Lovesick. Other artists who have used Rubber Tracks Sample Library samples in songs include: Frank Dukes, RJD2, Com Truise, Machinedrum, Midland, Tom Trago, and Body Language.

In February 2018 Indaba was acquired by Splice.