Warner Music Group Has Acquired African Music Distribution Start-Up Africori
Warner Music Group Has Acquired African Music Distribution Start-Up Africori. Warner Music Group (WMG) has announced it has acquired a majority stake in Africori, Africa’s leading digital music distribution, music rights management and artist development company. Africori is currently servicing 7,000 artists and 850 clients and last year its artists generated hundreds of millions of audio streams, billions of YouTube views and the company recorded strong revenue growth across all major DSPs.
Alfonso Perez-Soto, President, Emerging Markets, Warner Recorded Music, said in a statement, “Since partnering with Africori, we have established a collaborative and strategic partnership that has resulted in some impressive results on a global level. Yoel Kenan and his team have done an incredible job building a company that is a real force of nature in Africa and, by bringing them into the Warner Music ecosystem, we believe we can give them deeper support as we aim to take African music even more global.”
Africori was founded by Yoel Kenan and in 2005 he moved to Africa to develop new digital business opportunities for the music industry across the continent. Africori is based in Johannesburg and has offices in Lagos and London and representation in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Yoel Kenan said in a statement, “African music is booming all around the world and some of our artists are right at the heart of the explosion. Through our partnership, Warner Music has proven that it is the perfect home for Africori and our artists going forward. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with them as we break more artists on a global scale.”
This is WMG’s latest investment in Africa, after it expanded its presence in the region in recent years through partnerships and deals with Chocolate City, Diamond Platnumz and his label WCB-Wasafi, Coleske and Ziiki Media.
