KamerLyrics: A Young Entrepreneur's Gift to Cameroonian Music
The writer celebrates KamerLyrics, a mobile app created by Minette Lontsie that makes Cameroonian song lyrics accessible in one place. The app integrates YouTube playback, allows user contributions, and addresses a long-standing gap in how fans engage with local music.
Have many of you have ever listened to some good makossa from the 80s and wished you had the lyrics to sing along? Or Tenor in his TGV de rap mode? I know I have.
When I was faced with such a situation, I’d usually go to Google search and try to pull up the lyrics from there hoping that some benevolent soul has written the lyrics on some dark website that only Google’s algorithm could bring up. Almost all the time, I’ll end up disappointed.
Well, we can all kiss goodbye to that experience. Just last week I discovered this app called KamerLyrics. Like its name suggests, it is an app where one can find lyrics to Cameroonian songs.
At the head of this project is a young Cameroonian woman that I think deserves all the due accolades. She is called Minette Lontsie. She is also an entrepreneur and a blogger at lemobileaukamer.com.
The app is really good and practical. There are hundreds of songs therein already. Some obscure songs might not turn up when you search for them but most of all the popular songs you can think of can be found on the app; especially the recent urban music records from the likes of Salatiel and Locko.
The app also has a YouTube plug-in incorporated into the app. What do I mean by this? Let’s say you want to listen to ‘Promet-moi’ by Daphne. Well, you open the app, search Daphne and select the song ‘Promet-moi.’ If you look down at the left corner of your phone screen, you will see a YouTube window.
If you want to listen to the song as you read the lyrics, you can click on the YouTube window and the song will start playing from YouTube. Cool huh? If you are low on data, you can of course play music from your phone directly and not have to click on the YouTube window. There are apps out there that allow you to play YouTube in background mode - meaning you get the only the video and hence consume only as much data as you would if you listened to an audio only YoutTube file.
Another really cool thing about the whole project is that you, yes I’m talking you reading this, can contribute to the app by submitting lyrics of songs you cannot find on the app. I recently submitted the lyrics to a song myself. To do that you’ll have to submit the lyrics via the desktop website (www.kamerlyrics.net) or you can email the lyrics to them at redaction@kamerlyrics.net
I hope all the up and coming and established musicians reading this can take this opportunity to submit the lyrics to their songs so we the fans can enjoy their songs as we listen to their songs.
As to the rest of us, let us download the app and write some positive feedback to our sister and her team, so we can make the app better.
Link to Play Store app in comments section.
- Wandji Wilfred.
In the mid-2010s, music discovery and consumption in Cameroon was shifting toward mobile-first platforms, yet infrastructure for supporting local artists—and serving fans—remained fragmented. The app emerged as a practical solution to a real frustration: Cameroonian listeners had few reliable ways to find lyrics to songs by artists like Tenor, Salatiel, and Locko.
The piece matters then as a quiet moment of recognition for local innovation solving a local problem with dignity and practicality. It reads now as a snapshot of how digital tools were being built, community by community, to fill gaps that global platforms overlooked. The writer's tone—celebratory but grounded, focused on the creator's vision rather than hype—captures something true about how change often moves in Cameroon.