More song choices are to become available on South Africa’s Metrorail mobile app and website thanks to local startup KasiMP3 partnering with makers of the train service’s online tool.

Metrorail’s mobile application and website, developed by startup GoMetro, provides commuters with information on real-time train schedules, train fares, timetable deviations, schedule and platform changes.

The app, which is also called 'GoMetro', is available in South Africa’s Western Cape and Gauteng provinces, where Metrorail says that over three million passengers use the trains daily. The app’s developers also have further plans to introduce GoMetro in the Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal.

But apart from just providing train schedule information, the GoMetro service has also accommodated a feature to let users listen to their favourite African artists.

In October last year, GoMetro inked a deal with Nigerian firm iROKO Partners to provide a music streaming service on gometro.iroking.com as part of a train commuter online offering. iROKO heads up ‘iROKING’, which claims to be West Africa’s number one music distribution platform, with over 35,0000 songs from 400 artists streaming to over 100,000 subscribers.

And South Africa music technology startup KasiMP3 has joined iROKO to provide music through the GoMetro mobile app and website via the web address gometro.kasimp3.co.za

KasiMP3 provides an online system for artists to make their music available for free downloads to their fans. Music artists can register on KasiMP3 for free and upload their MP3 file, provided that they have full copyright for the file. They then have the ability to share their MP3 download link via email or social media and then earn royalties for each free download of their songs.

The team behind KasiMP3 say their service has attracted “over 40,000 music artists” across Africa and parts of Europe and Asia to sign-up.

Subsequently, all these artists’ on KasiMP3 are planned to have their music go live on the GoMetro app as well. The value of the deal, though, has not been revealed by the organisations.

“We have only added KasiMP3 to our music offering. We may add more channels as we go forward, as we find African music services we like,” Justin Coetzee (pictured), the founder of GoMetro, told ITWeb Africa.

“KasiMP3 is music from the townships of South Africa. We like their spirit and the fresh and new content they will bring to our users,” he added.