Venture provides new opportunity for emerging artists

Gallo Music Investments has bought a stake in Content Connect Africa (CCA), Africa’s biggest content aggregator.

The 45% equity transaction links Gallo’s rich catalogue with CCA’s technical capabilities and pan-African reach to provide a platform for innovation for African Music.

This, together with shareholder Black Coffee’s global experience, is set to give  emerging artists  an opportunity to benefit from the slipstream of established artists as a pathway to regional and international success.

The CCA and GMI partnership kicks off with the two entities partnering with artists on brand work, providing backend services for independent labels, developing  and launching continental artists.

CCA chief executive Antos Stella said the move was the beginning of an industry revolution where African artists participate in structures to encourage new ways to monetise content.

“We’ve had the same 10 or 15 artists dominate the last decade, and this partnership provides us with the capacity to develop faster by leveraging technology and the CCA relationships,” Stella said.

Gallo Music Investments managing director Simukayi Mukuna said GMI and CCA viewed this as an important partnership to empower African artists through greater engagement and participation.

“We would like to see artists far more involved in the process and not be tied to the one-size-fits-all deal structures.

“We want to develop solutions that are born from Africa, for Africa, to export to the world.

“Our approach is underpinned by an emphasis on the use of scalable digital tools that support the creative process,” Mukuna said.

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