• Musician and entrepreneur Mr Easi creates $20m Africa Music Fund to invest in the best African music talent.
• The Africa Music Fund will provide new funding model for music industry as current finance providers do not serve the industry.
• His company emPawa Africa with music technology company Vydia will be launching Cinch Distro, a music distribution platform for new artists.
• Mr. Eazi says he wants to create a model where Africans are the owners of their own content and intellectual property.

Why is Africa Music Fund Needed?

According to Mr Eazi in an interview with CNN, current financial institutions on the continent do not have financial products for musicians. This is because they don’t understand the music industry and how to secure intellectual property to create financial products.

How will the fund work?

Existing musicians will receive funding based on their current revenues and projected incomes from streaming revenues. New artists will have access to a new music distribution platform Cinch Distro, to be launched in partnership with music technology company Vydia. Artists will be able to upload songs to major music stores for as little as 500 naira. The fund will make decisions on who to invest in based on data such as the number of streams they get on the platform. The platform will also allow musicians to book shows. Artists will have real-time access to information about their content and earnings.

Financing music on a big scale is a natural next step after launching incubator emPawa Africa

The AMF is a natural next step for Mr. Eazi who launched an incubator program in 2018 to provide artists with resources to market their music and train them to be independent music entrepreneurs. emPawa has discovered new music start such as Nigerian Joe Boy and Ghanaian J. Derobie. ‘s first venture into investing in music and musicians on the continent.

This investment comes on the backdrop of a growing debate about funding in Africa and the disproportionate percentage of funding that goes to entrepreneurs from the West vrs Africans. Africa Music Fund will provide much needed local participation on a large scale in funding of creative arts.