Tems and Runtown headlined Spotify’s first live Surround Sound performances in Lagos on September 25 and 26, 2026, taking the stage at Livespot on two consecutive nights. Spotify launched the format out of sub-Saharan Africa, and Lagos hosted the opening shows. Tems went first with a set drawn from her 2020 debut EP For Broken Ears and the songs that came after it. Runtown followed the next night with a career-spanning set that placed his 2016 hit Mad Over You at the centre. Only selected Spotify Premium listeners were in the room, and both performances were recorded for release as Surround Sound presents Tems and Surround Sound presents Runtown. Spotify has not yet announced release dates for the films.
Surround Sound differs from a standard concert in how it is staged and who gets in. The performances take place in the round, with a small crowd gathered close to the artist, and each show is captured as a full-length music film for the platform. There was no general ticket sale for the Lagos edition. Spotify used listening behaviour to pick and directly invite listeners instead. Rifumo Mdaka, Spotify’s Format and Video Strategy Lead, said the approach reflected the room’s fixed capacity and the need for a space that works for both a live performance and film capture. The result was an audience made up largely of people who already had a history with the songs on the setlist, which shaped the mood of both nights. Spotify also presented the shows as a concrete example of what Premium can offer fans beyond the music itself.
Tems opened the series with a set that moved across several stages of her career. From For Broken Ears she performed Ice T and Damages, and she added earlier singles Mr Rebel and Try Me, along with newer records such as Love Me JeJe and What You Need. An attendee also named her performance of Burning as a highlight on social media. At different points she stepped back and let the audience take over parts of the songs, which turned portions of the set into a group sing-along.
Before the show she spoke about how her sound began, recalling that Free Mind started as a bedroom experiment on her laptop, where she tried out chords until the first two stuck and the melodies followed. The choice of material also fits her history with Spotify. In September 2020, shortly after For Broken Ears was released, she became the third artist picked for the RADAR Africa programme, after South African acts Elaine and Willy Cardiac. The EP introduced a wider audience to her alternative R&B sound before her international profile grew, and the Lagos show returned to it six years later.
Runtown performed on September 26 and opened with Lagos to Kampala and Gallardo before working through For Life, International Badman Killa, Unleash and Kini Issue. Ahead of the show, he said it was his first time performing with his band in ten years. His public performances have become less frequent in recent times, so the set gave fans a rare chance to hear his catalogue played live in one sitting. The show did not rely on new material. Its focus was on familiar records from the Afropop period of the mid-2010s, played in a live band arrangement. Mad Over You was the main moment of the night. He performed it during the set and returned to it a second time to close the show, with the crowd singing along on both occasions. One attendee wrote on X that the closing version was the part that stayed with them most. Yen.com.gh also reported that the night was tied to the song’s tenth anniversary.
One moment from the second night spread widely online. During Mad Over You, Runtown spotted Ghanaian influencer and content creator Gisela Amponsah in the audience and handed her the microphone, and a clip of her singing along circulated quickly on social media. The moment suited the record, since Mad Over You is about a Ghanaian woman, and Runtown built a large part of his early following in Ghana by referencing its culture, food and women in his music. The song was produced by Runtown with Del B and TSpize, and it reached number 38 on the Billboard Twitter Top Tracks chart in 2016. He also used the moment to thank fans around the world for supporting his music across more than a decade.
Spotify shared listening data to explain why these two bodies of work were chosen. For Broken Ears has reached listeners in 185 countries, and Spotify says it has introduced nearly 19 million first-time Tems listeners since 2023, including 4.9 million so far in 2026. It also found that 21.6% of the people who played the EP in January 2022 were still listening in August 2026, though it noted that this does not mean uninterrupted listening. Lagos ranks as the second largest city in the world for streams of the EP. Mad Over You has recorded 140.7 million streams to date, with 36.6 million of them coming in 2026 alone, which already exceeds its full 2025 total. Nigeria is its leading country and Lagos its leading city, but about 81% of its streams in the reporting table come from outside Nigeria, and six of its top ten cities are in Africa. Around 43% of its streams come from listeners aged 18 to 24, which shows that younger audiences make up a meaningful share of current listening. Victor Okpala, Spotify’s Senior Artist and Label Partnerships Manager for West Africa, cautioned that the data does not show when those listeners first found the song. The track has also been added to more than three million user-created playlists.
The shows also arrive at a time when Spotify’s presence in Nigeria has grown considerably. The platform launched in the country in February 2021 and marked five years there earlier this year. In that report, Spotify said the number of Nigerian artists on its service was up 158% since launch, and that Afrobeats streams in Nigeria grew by 5,022% between 2021 and 2025. The same report listed R&B streams as having grown by about 2,602%, which places Tems’ catalogue within one of the faster-growing genres on the platform. Surround Sound connects that streaming growth to a physical setting. Instead of only measuring audiences through streams, playlists and other platform data, Spotify used those listening patterns to decide who would be in the room.
The pairing also let Spotify approach two different points in Nigerian music through one format. Tems represents the newer wave of Nigerian artists who reached a global audience, while Runtown revisited records from the Afrobeats period that came before it. Both have been seen less often on Lagos stages in recent years, even though the city remains central to the sound that carried them. For Broken Ears and Mad Over You were released years apart, yet both are still generating listening activity well beyond their original release windows, which supports the argument that catalogue music can stay relevant long after launch. With both performances filmed, the Lagos shows will reach beyond the small audience that attended, giving listeners elsewhere another way to experience them once Spotify confirms release dates.
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