Five years after launching EQUAL to champion women in music, Spotify is marking the milestone in South Africa with a new Spotify Single, a down-tempo reinterpretation of Lebo Mathosa’s iconic I Love Music by multi-award-winning artist Shekhinah.
Earlier in 2026, the Idols SA alum dropped her first EP, Love on Repeat, Vol. 1, which has been widely described as a lighter, fun project with house, soulful vibes.
It includes tracks like Say You Love Me (with Brandon Dhludhlu) and My Baby (also with Brandon Dhludhlu and Fatso 98). This followed her 2025 album Less Trouble. She’s also been performing (including at a festival she founded some years ago called Rosefest) and continues her independent work after earlier platinum successes like her 2017 project Rose Gold.
A dancefloor classic that keeps finding new listeners
Originally released in 2006, I Love Music has become more than a dancefloor classic. Twenty years on, the track continues to find new listeners, with more than 1.8 million global streams on Spotify, 88 percent of which come from South Africa.
According to the global streaming giant, the song also appears on more than 70 000 user-generated playlists globally, showing how a song released two decades ago continues to live on in listeners’ everyday soundtrack.
The track began gaining significant streaming traction in South Africa in 2018 and has grown every year since, recording an approximate 95 percent compound annual growth rate over seven years. Following particularly strong growth in 2019, the data shows that I Love Music is on pace for another standout year in 2026.
Cross-generational appeal
The song’s audience is strikingly cross-generational. Listeners aged 35-44 make up the largest streaming segment, followed by those aged 18-24 and 30-34. Male listeners account for 63 percent of streams, while the track continues to connect with Gen Z, older millennials and Gen X alike.
Gauteng is at the heart of the song’s South African listening trends, with Johannesburg leading the way with more than 700 000 all-time streams – nearly half of all streams in the country.
Collectively, cities across Gauteng, including Johannesburg, Pretoria, Centurion and Midrand, account for more than 75 percent of the song’s streams in South Africa. Durban, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth round out the top five cities.
Two generations, one song
Shekhinah’s reinterpretation of the timeless track forms part of Spotify Singles and celebrates the fifth anniversary of EQUAL, Spotify’s global initiative spanning the Nordics, United States, Germany, Portugal and Sub-Saharan Africa.
While it’s a global movement, the heart of the story remains in South Africa, where the collaboration bridges two generations of music, honouring the original while giving the song fresh cultural context.
“Lebo Mathosa’s I Love Music has demonstrated something powerful: great South African music evolves, gets rediscovered and finds new listeners. Shekhinah’s reinterpretation is a celebration of that legacy while giving audiences another reason to connect with a song that has remained part of our musical DNA,” said artist label and partnership manager for Southern Africa and lead for the Spotify EQUAL Africa programme Jodie Tabisher in a statement.
Tabisher also served as artist director and road manager for various local acts at the late Riky Rick’s Cotton Fest.
With continued streaming growth, deep local resonance and strong appeal among younger listeners, Shekhinah’s version has the potential to take I Love Music from a beloved classic to a new-generation soundtrack – Citizen.
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