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Okri, TuneAfrique in five years partnership, distribution deal

By Eniola Daniel
18 April 2021   |   4:09 am
After months of negotiations, Mike Okri Entertainment and TuneAfrique have unveiled a five-year partnership deal aimed at protecting artistes’ work, help them block revenue leakage and have control of every penny that is generated by their songs.

Artists and Label Services Director, Hembadoon Peter-Thomas; MD/CEO, TuneAfrique, Dr. Olakunle Oladehin and Mike Okri during the partnership unveiling

After months of negotiations, Mike Okri Entertainment and TuneAfrique have unveiled a five-year partnership deal aimed at protecting artistes’ work, help them block revenue leakage and have control of every penny that is generated by their songs.

Since 2017, TuneAfrique has helped not less than 4,000 artistes across all the genre of music get fully paid for money made from their songs. The partnership comes after the release of Okri’s much awaited, The Mike Okri Extended Play (EP).

Speaking at the unveiling MD/CEO, TuneAfrique, Dr. Olakunle Oladehin, said, “I’m a lover of music, entertainment and hospitality. What makes us unique is that it’s Africa first self-service music distribution company.”

He said, “from the comfort of an artiste room, tablet, phone he or she can monetise his or her music by uploading them on TuneAfrique and our technology does the work. We offer this services across board of the music business, which is why we are partnering with Mike Okri and Mike Okri Entertainment.

“We have been able to support the monetisation of music through our advance technology fully grown by a Nigeria developers where we are able to collect music recordings in all format and make them available to global and local streaming platforms, help collect royalties and make payment timely, and this has been happening since 2017, when we became the highest services administrator. I am happy to say that TuneAfrique is the first to issue Nigerian specific International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) that start with the prefix, NG. This allows us to track music usage across all platforms, be able to report music usage and be able to allocate appropriate right not just to the artiste but also the composers and the song writers, and as of today, we are also offering this service across the globe including to artistes in West, East, South Africa, the UK and in the US using the TuneAfrique services to monitise their catalogs.

“Today, we are here to unveil a very unique opportunity, based on the strength of our platform where we offer advanced royalty to music composition ahead of the exploitation. We have supported over 4,000 artistes across the globe since 2017 and we look forward to do a lot more.

“I got a call recently from an aggregator who told me that an artiste has over two million streams but doesn’t know who distributed the music, so, these are the things we come in to block. Music should be seen as an estate that can be easily transferred to the next generation unborn who will continue to collect the royalties.”

Speaking on the partnership, he said, “it’s one thing to distribute music, and another thing to maximise the full potential of those content being available on those platforms. One of those things we’ve done in the past is to make our artistes being able to perform at gigs within and outside Lagos. We are also support artistes to get their songs played in radios but most importantly is that we felt that there is a need to also tap into the digital space in term of marketing and promotion.

“Why are we partnering with Mike Okri? He has created good contents and can still create greater contents. There is a need for us to establish a proof of concept, that’s, aligning with contents producers that shares similar vision. We believe in monetisation and digital transformation and Mike Okri represents everything we stand for.”

On the duration, he said, “for every contractual relationship, there should be a termination date, because we believe so much in what we are trying to do, we mutually to do this for the first five years.”

On his part, Mike Okri said, “we are ready to partner for the better, we’ve been looking forward to making sure that when we come on board, it’s an opportunity to excel in every angle. Mike Okri Entertainment is a very young label and we consider Tune Afrique to be such a partner that has the strength to be able to move forward. We are looking forward to making Nigeria and African music go beyond words.”

Mike Okri, as an artiste, “would also join young artistes that would be on the label to be able to actualise the bigger dream in front of us.”

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