Forget Netflix, Here Are Black-Owned Streaming Services That Will Give You Original Black Content
While some of us continue to complain about the lack of diversity on platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, others are doing something about it. Thankfully there’s now a long list of Black-owned or minority-centered streaming services dedicated to publishing original content.
It’s a breath of fresh air to be able to have options – particularly during Black History Month – a time when most major streaming giants put Black trauma at the center – when in fact BHM is also a time for us to celebrate the amazing potential and uniqueness of our communities.
Below is a list of streaming services you can check out.
Dame Dash Studios
Does his name sound familiar? It should do because he’s one of the greats in the music industry and is best known as co-founder of Roc-A-Fella along with Jay-Z and Kareem Burke. Outside of his music, he is also the founder of Dame Dash Studios, a D-Programming for millennial trendsetters.
Currently, there are new episodes of Health is Wealth Network, RocuSeries & OG Stories. He recently collaborated with Fox Soul in a new partnership that included a four-hour block of cultural music, talk, film, and health content from Dash’s streaming platform, which he founded for millennial trendsetters.
KevOnStage Studios
You’ve scrolled to the end of Netflix a million times. Be honest you need something else.
In comes KevOnStage Studios by the one and only Kevin Fredericks, known professionally as KevOnStage. The streaming platform focuses on highlighting content from Black creatives and giving opportunities to other up-and-coming comedians.
“The launch came from me getting sick of pitches going nowhere. I was pitching place after place and getting rejection after rejection. Some pilots. Some no follow-up…I got tired of that and decided I would make the shows I wanted and hopefully find the audience to watch them,” Fredericks told Because Of Them We Can.
To access all features and content you can subscribe to KevOnStage Studios on a monthly or yearly basis with an auto-renewing subscription right inside the app.
Brown Sugar
Brown Sugar’s modest, but modern, video streaming service shows love to an overlooked era in film history. This is how the platform was described by PC Mag. It’s a subscription video-on-demand service where you can watch the largest collection of classic urban movies, uncut and commercial-free.
Kweli TV
kweliTV is an interactive streaming platform that shares the African Diaspora experience through dope, undiscovered documentaries, films, web shows. On its website, it says “Our mission is to curate and create content that is a true reflection of the global black experience versus what we may sometimes see in mainstream media.”
It features “550+ undiscovered, award-winning indie films, documentaries, web series & kids shows celebrating global black stories.” You can subscribe, rent or live stream from anywhere in the world.
One example is the show ‘Blackness is Everything’, which is an experimental/performative short film that celebrates the diversity of the Black diaspora in The Bay Area. This film rejects the false narrative by accentuating what makes us unique as a people.
BlackBoxMovies.co
Black Box is a video streaming service that allows users to watch movies, TV shows, and the latest releases on-demand from any device. While it’s Black-owned it doesn’t just release Black movies but you might also find a few avenger films on there too.
Black & Sexy TV
Black & Sexy TV is a digital media network founded by Dennis Dortch, Numa Perrier, Brian Ali Harding, and Jeanine Daniels. The network produces scripted content oriented to progressive black American audiences.
Notable programs include RoomieLoverFriends and Hello Cupid. In 2015, BET purchased the rights to broadcast three of Black & Sexy TV’s original series on their cable channel. Black & Sexy TV moved to a monthly subscription model in 2015 using the platform VHX.
Afrokids.tv
It’s a kid-friendly, family-oriented ethnically centric edutainment interactive website with media that offers a variety of animated shows produced in various media styles. Among the features appearing on this website are an animated adventures series (Afrokids® Adventures), historical people and events, Afro-Classic Rhymes, Afro-Classic Storytelling, e-books, games, and puppets.
Nollyland
Watch 1000’s handpicked Nigerian, Nollywood, Ghanaian, & African movies Ad-Free. NollyLand Apps are on major devices. NollyLand’s cutting-edge features include: download and watch offline, adaptive video streaming to watch smoothly on any screen, anywhere.
Enjoy Adaptive Video Streaming, Automatic Bookmarking of movies to stop watching a movie and continue even on another device, a Watch List to personalize movie choices, Timeline Thumbnails to easily jump to any scene in a movie, and intuitive Searching and Categorization.
Producers and Movie Owners who are interested in monetizing and promoting their premium movies under their own brands should visit our sister company, NollyMax Technology Limited.
