More than one in five people who streamed Tems’ For Broken Ears in January 2022 were still coming back to it in August 2026.
That stat, pulled from Spotify’s own September 2026 analysis, is the quiet engine behind Surround Sound, a new full length concert film the platform released on November 11.
Shot in Lagos and directed by Tim Horwood, the film puts Temilade Openiyi in the middle of the room with fans gathered all around her.
The set plays like a career scrapbook, moving from early cuts like “Try Me” and “Looku Looku” through to “Love Me JeJe” and “Me & U.”
The real centre of gravity, though, is that debut EP. For Broken Ears is now six years old and has racked up more than 888 million streams across 185 countries, according to Spotify.
Since 2023, its songs have introduced nearly 19 million listeners to Tems for the first time on the platform.
So it makes sense that the film leans into it. “Damages,” “The Key,” “Higher” and “Free Mind” all get the live treatment, with “Free Mind” closing the night.
In between come “Crazy Tings,” “Replay” and “What You Need,” before the set swings toward her more recent hits.
Spotify frames the whole thing as a way to give a streaming relationship a physical address. Tems’s early music continues to be a starting point for new listeners and a place that existing fans return to,” said Rifumo Mdaka, Content Marketing Manager for Spotify in Africa.
Surround Sound gives that relationship a physical setting, with Tems surrounded by fans in Lagos.”
Mdaka added that the film “takes that encounter beyond the room, allowing audiences to experience these songs together as part of her wider story.”
That’s the commercial logic in plain view. Take a small, invite only moment and turn it into something anyone with the app can press play on.
Horwood comes at it from the craft side. “With Tems, the voice and the space around it are central to the experience,” he said. “We wanted the film to stay close to the detail of the performance while allowing each song to breathe.”
The in the round setup is what makes that possible. Instead of the usual front of stage view, the cameras pick up the performance from several angles, so the crowd becomes part of the picture rather than a blur behind it.
Horwood said arriving at “Free Mind” gave the team “a way to follow the emotional thread connecting different moments in her music.”
Surround Sound itself is a format that started in Sub Saharan Africa. Spotify brings an artist together with a group of selected Premium subscribers for a close up show, then captures it as a full length music film.
For fans who weren’t in that Lagos room, the film is now streaming on Spotify. With For Broken Ears still pulling in first time listeners years after release, some of the people pressing play this week might be hearing “Free Mind” for the very first time.
