In this episode, Addy Awofisayo, the Head of Music, Sub-Saharan Africa at YouTube, takes us on a fascinating deep-dive into the African music universe and the far-reaching impact of digitalization on African music that has just commenced.
After her early-stage career stint in finance and what Addy calls a "quarter-life crisis", she knew she wanted a career in the creative industry. Still, the possibility of a career in the music industry never occurred to her. She made her first inroads into the media and content creation industry before joining YouTube, where the potential of then-booming music and especially the afrobeat industry on the continent, opened up the music sector as a viable career path.
Addy describes how she carved out and seized the opportunity to become YouTube's first-ever Head of Music for Sub-Saharan Africa. From an immersion trip to Nigeria with Lyor Cohen, the Head of Global Music at Google and YouTube and five senior leadership members on the music team organized by Addy to obtain new insights into realizing the potential and diversity within the African music industry, she highlights the journey leading to the creation of this new position at YouTube and how she interprets this new role.
Addy shares some highlights and projects she spearheaded in her new role, such as a fundraiser for covid relief efforts through a live African Benefit Concert by African music stars out of their homes on Africa Day and the live broadcast of Burna Boy's show at the Madison Square Garden via YouTube.
Beyond the great strides of Addy in her role and the African music industry as a whole, we discuss additional measures undertaken by YouTube to strengthen the African creative sector ranging from training to funding and much more. Despite further initiatives, the one factor identified by Addy as the holy grail of unlocking the African creative industry both from a creation and consumption perspective is data availability and data cost.
Addy further highlights the potential of digitalization through examples of artists and their management teams using YouTube's analytics to make business decisions and how digitalization has broken down entry barriers for content creators, enabling younger artists and female artists to circumvent gatekeepers and transform the African music industry.
Looking into the future, Addy discusses how the focus is shifting from just the artist to an entire industry and how she supports the ecosystem's development and new opportunities created by that development.
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