IROKO, Nigeria’s largest entertainment company, is set to launch a dedicated, 100% Nigerian music & lifestyle channel on LES BOUQUETS CANAL+, channel 127. IROKOMUSIC will launch across French Speaking Africa on 20 June 2017, and will showcase top Nigerian Afrobeats hits, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The channel will play music videos from globally renowned Afrobeats stars such as Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Psquare, D’banj, Yemi Alade and Davido, as well as showcase the music scene’s up and coming performers. The announcement was made to industry professionals at this year’s DISCOP Abidjan and the move follows IROKO’s success in building a pan-African TV audience of entertainment fans in its millions.
IROKO announced a content partnership with CANAL+ INTERNATIONAL in January 2016, and the two global entertainment brands are working together to open up the Francophone market to more premium music and TV entertainment, both online and on TV.
Jason Njoku, CEO of IROKO says: “Afrobeats is the sound of Africa. As we’ve built out our TV audience across the continent, our teams noticed that there were plenty of channels showing a ‘Nigerian music hour’, but nowhere was there a dedicated channel showing Afrobeats 24/7. We live in an on-demand economy – consumers don’t want to wait for that ‘hour’, they want it now. Furthermore, we felt that the sound of Africa deserved a premium content channel all of its own, and when we looked further into the market, we found that music lovers felt the same too. So we’re very excited to be expanding our music offering, in partnership with CANAL+ INTERNATIONAL, and bringing Nigerian music to French Speaking Africa on 20 June”.
François Deplanck, SVP Channels & Content of CANAL+ INTERNATIONAL, says : “We are glad to launch IROKOMUSIC on LES BOUQUETS CANAL+. We reinforce our musical channels’ offer with a channel with a unique positioning and answer our subscribers’ expectations. Indeed, this new channel will please our subscribers for whom music is really important, especially Nigerian Afrobeats”.
The launch of IROKOMUSIC on LES BOUQUETS CANAL+ isn’t IROKO’s first foray into the African music industry. In 2010, IROKO launched iROKING, one of the first legal music streaming platforms in Nigeria, which has since aggregated a global Afrobeats fan base, with over 1.2 million registered users. The mobile music site will now sit under the IROKOMUSIC brand, and is available at http://m.irokomusic.ng/.
IROKOMUSIC viewers will have direct access to video mixes, current hot hits, brand new videos from popular Nigerian artists, throwback tracks and behind-the-scenes content. In addition to the music content, IROKOMUSIC will be featuring scripted and unscripted content created by award-winning Nigerian film studio, ROK Studios.
Nigeria has one of the world’s fastest-growing markets in entertainment and media, with overall growth of 15.7% in 2015, reaching $3.8 billion. The Nigerian music industry is expected to almost double from $47 million in 2015 to $86 million in 2020. With the launch on LES BOUQUETS CANAL+, IROKOMUSIC will expand their popular service to the big screen, with access to over 2.6 million subscribers across 26 African countries.
