AFRIMA Music Business Summit: A Worthy Experience
What’s better than a thematic learning experience? A learning experience where you have to sit in a dark themed, cool and calm hall to bask in the euphoric vibe of listening to the best brains in your field; and like Ema said, ‘a masquerade is out’ meaning someone you don’t see often is out and you’ll have to milk out every knowledge you can, and literally pick the brains.
Decorated with glamor and sweet splendor, The Eko Convention Center saw various legends, panelists, moderators and guests from all over Africa grace the seventh edition of the Afrima Music Business Summit with the theme, ‘Monetizing Music In Africa’.
In three panels with two moderators and several panelists, facts and figures, points and nuggets were served and with consistent hitting the ball on the head, these seasoned professionals from different aspects of the music business enlightened the audience on all of these parts.
The first panel which was moderated by Emem Ema, a seasoned media and entertainment professional with over a decade of practice spoke about ‘Building a Cult: The Magic of Music Marketing’. The panelists spoke at length and dissected what music marketing should be both with the traditional and digital media. They include Efe Omoregbe, a talent manager and key stakeholder at Hypertek 360 with a career spanning over two decades. Oreoluwa Peters, a 27 year old pop culture journalist with a career spanning up to 10 years in public Relations, advertising and music business. Olukolade ’Ronkay’ Ajayi who is the CEO of ITAAW distribution and a director at Afro Music Pop. Tarek Nojara, an Egyptian film producer and director with over 13 years of experience in his field. This panel opened our minds as to how culture can directly impact music marketing and how Africans in diaspora can directly influence the ‘Africa to the world’ movement.
Moderated by Tochi Louis, a seasoned music business professional whose enthusiasm is on the upcoming artists with his popular ‘Upcoming Artist Guide’ newsletters, the second panel featured Motolani Alake, a lawyer and pop culture journalist at Pulse Nigeria. Nikita Kering, a Kenyan artiste and an AFRIMA nominee for best female artist in Eastern Africa, former chocolate city A&R executive and strategic partnership manager at Triller , Dapo Ayo-Adeusi. Director of RTI Digital in Cote D’ivoire, Sahifoulaye Koné. This panel spoke about the topic ‘The Music Industry Goes Online’. An interesting and enlightening session that saw Kenny ‘Keke’ and Dayo ‘D1’ Ogungbe speak on how music has transcended from what it used to be during their time at Kennis Music and how everything has moved, however, not neglecting the fact that the digital and online media have to work simultaneously to market and promote the craft of an act.
The last panel had seasoned entertainment and IP lawyer Omolola Oyedele, Serge Noujaim who was represented by the head of branding communications for Cool FM, Wazobia FM, Nigeria Info and Arewa FM. This panel talked about ‘Modern Technologies and Music Struggles’. More light was shed on how more money can be made through the different kinds of royalties, endorsements and other streams.
It’s not far-fetched that AFRIMA has been doing great in terms of raising, educating and rewarding greatness and hopefully this continues. See you at the award ceremony.
