Next week, May 20th and 21st, the city of Lagos will play host to the Who’s Who of Africa’s music industry at the Lagos Music Conference – the continent’s first pan-African Music Business conference.

According to the organisers Leke Awoyinka and Jenny Tan, the mission of Lagos Music Conference, or LMC in short, is to connect music industry professionals who do business in Africa. “While local music industry conferences do exist in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya or Nigeria, none of the events on the continent have a pan-African spirit, and our music industries are very disconnected. One of the key reasons why the US, the European and even the Asian music markets are so strong, is that there are synergies between the countries in the respective region, which is important for growing revenues from show bookings, streams and downloads. In Africa, there is very little spillover between the markets, which means that each country is practically on its own”, according to Jenny Tan,

As the first industry event on the continent that brings together music business pace-setters from Africa’s key music markets, LMC is first and foremost a platform for high-profile networking. The international speaker line up is truly top-notch and the first set of speakers that have been announced include Sipho Dlamini (MD for South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa at Universal Music Group), Tuma Basa (Global Programming Head for Hip Hop at Spotify), Tunji Balogun (Senior Director for A&R at RCA Records, who was responsible for the signing of Kendrick Lamar to Interscope and Bryson Tiller to RCA), Marek Fuchs (the manager credited with Sauti Sol’s recent international success), as well as award-winning artist and songwriter AKA (Vth Season) and Michael Ugwu (GM at Sony Music West Africa). More high-level speakers will be announced in the following days.

LMC’s sessions are carefully curated and focus on practical topics and current trends in the areas of A&R, Label and Artist Management, Brand Partnerships and Endorsements, Music Sales and Distribution, and Copyright Law, and in a separate track, LMC runs technical workshops aimed at professional sound/audio engineers, producers, artists and

For the first time, music professionals from West, East, Central and Southern Africa will be

able to rub minds at LMC, and find out how peers in other markets are coping with the

challenges that come with the unique African territory. According to co-founder Leke

Awoyinka, “At the end of the day, most music industries on the continent struggle with the

same issues, such as piracy, the lack of functional collection agencies, and expensive

internet data. So instead of each market trying to find its own solution for the same problem,

why not come together and share experiences, so we can learn from each other’s

Who should attend LMC? Forward-thinking artists, managers, label execs and A&R reps, as

well as promoters, brand managers of telcos and FMCGs, tech companies, app developers,

digital distributors, social media managers, content developers and publishers, and pretty

much all professionals that engage directly with the music industry. According to the

organisers, LMC is primarily a conference for professionals, but students and recent

graduates interested in joining the industry are also welcome.

“We hope that this inaugural edition will prove the point that we need a pan-African event

platform for the music industry, so that we can all grow together, rather than each one by

itself”, states co-founder Leke Awoyinka. “If Africa wants to become a music region to be

reckoned with, we have to start talking to each other, and we hope that with LMC, Nigeria –

as Africa’s largest music market – will finally be seen as stepping up and taking the lead in

bringing the continent closer together.”

LMC consists of a one-day conference, with high-level discussions and practical workshops,

which will take place on Friday, May 20th, at the Civic Centre in Victoria Island, and

continues on Saturday at Muri Okunola Park, with the LMC Launch Pad, featuring

workshops for students and recent graduates hoping to enter the music industry, and the

LMC Festival. The LMC Festival will feature the latest crop of the African New School from

Nigeria and different African countries. Artists who have made the cut for the line up will be

WEBSITE: www.lagosmusicconference.com