The world’s largest online source for African entertainment, Nigeria’s iROKO Partners, plans to debut in the South African market by partnering with a train commuter mobile website.
iROKO burst onto the global internet scene this year with its internet Nollywood TV streaming service, dubbed iROKO TV, hitting 500,000 subscribers in just six months.
However, the firm also has an online music offering, iROKING, which it claims is West Africa’s number one music distribution platform, with over 35,0000 songs from 400 artists streaming to over 100,000 subscribers.
And amid its high takeup, the Nigerian outfit has partnered with South African mobile company mobi.lity to provide its music streaming services as part of a train commuter mobile website targeted at 3 million daily passengers in Johannesburg and Cape Town
The GoMetro mobi-site – launched in September and in partnership with South Africa’s Metrorail – lets Johannesburg and Cape Town commuters track real-time train schedules, timetable deviations and platform changes.
But in addition to helping commuters make sure they catch the right train on time, GoMetro mobile users are soon set to be able to listen to, watch, download and share the latest African songs via iROKING’s exclusive mobile site, gometro.iroking.com.
“The South African music market is huge and so it was a natural progression for iROKING to look into moving into this territory,” says the music service’s chief executive Mike Ugwu.
“When the opportunity to connect with GoMetro happened it was great timing,” he adds.
Adi Nduka-Agwu, iROKO Partners’ head of business development for Africa, said, “It symbolises how we want to work with tech and entertainment companies across Africa.”
Currently, the only artists available on the planned offering for SA train users are Nigerian and Ghanaian musicians.
But according to iROKING’s Ugwu, his company has plans to broaden the array of content from other African nations.
“As we grow as a platform we will be looking to sign up artists from across the continent. The afrobeats scene has global reach and we’re definitely part of that,” says Ugwu.
Justin Coetzee of GoMetro adds, “It is fitting to have iROKING on our platform as the first music offering, as they are true African tech innovators.”
“Public transport just got cooler with GoMetro and iROKING,” says Coetzee.
Source: itwebafrica