The two-night series at Livespot marked Runtown's first show with his band in a decade, and both sets were filmed for release.
Spotify has launched Surround Sound, its new intimate live performance series, and it did so with two of Nigeria's biggest names. Tems headlined the opening night at Livespot in Lagos on 25 September; Runtown closed out the series the following evening.
Surround Sound is Spotify's new live format, built to pull artist and audience into the same small room while each show is captured as a full-length music film. The series launched from Sub-Saharan Africa, and Lagos, with Nigerian artists and listeners at its centre, is where it begins.
Tems opened the series with a walk through the chapters of her career. She returned to her 2020 debut EP For Broken Ears for Ice T and Damages, reached back to earlier singles like Mr Rebel and Try Me, and worked in newer records including Love Me JeJe and What You Need.
Ahead of the show, she described how one of the EP's standouts began. "I remember making Free Mind on my bed, on my laptop, experimenting with chords and seeing what stuck. The first two chords sounded so good, and it ignited melodies in me," she said. That same song, Free Mind, has since sold a million units in the United States. At different points in her set, Tems handed parts of the songs to the audience, turning the room into a sing-along.
Runtown took the second night with a career-spanning set, opening with Lagos to Kampala and Gallardo before moving through For Life, International Badman Killa, Unleash and Kini Issue. Mad Over You drew the loudest response: he performed it mid-set, then brought it back a second time to close the show as the crowd sang along.
For Runtown, the night carried extra weight. "This is the first time in 10 years I am performing with my band, and I am looking forward to seeing my fans," he said. It was a rare chance to see the singer, who has kept a lower public profile in recent years, revisit the different eras of his catalogue onstage, from his 2016 breakthrough to his newer material.
There was no public ticket sale. Spotify invited selected Premium listeners directly through the platform, using their listening habits to decide who got in. "The live room is intentionally intimate and has a fixed capacity," said Rifumo Mdaka, Spotify's Format and Video Strategy Lead. "We use listening signals to reach selected Spotify Premium listeners in Lagos directly rather than running a public ticket sale."
The choice of headliners was hardly random. Spotify's own September 2026 analysis found 21.6% of listeners who streamed For Broken Ears in January 2022 were still listening in August 2026, while Mad Over You sat in more than three million user-created playlists.
Both nights were filmed and will be released as Surround Sound presents Tems and Surround Sound presents Runtown, with release dates to be announced.
No comments yet