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Collaborative Crescendo: Nigeria’s Musicians Riding The Digital Wave

Nigerian media mogul Mo Abudu is collaborating with pan-African financial institution African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) through its Creative Africa Nexus to produce a short film directed by Hollywood actor Idris Elba and starring music icon Seal.



In a move to empower and foster Africa’s creative economy, the founder and CEO of EbonyLife Films will set the movie, Dust to Dreams, in Lagos, Nigeria. The film follows the relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter, as she meets her father for the first time, and Abudu will serve as both Executive Producer and Producer, with Heidi Uys as Supervising Producer. Alongside Abudu and Uys are producers Temidayo Makanjuola, Inem King, and Vanessa Demme. The cast for Dust to Dreams includes international music icon Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel, better known by his stage name Seal, along with Nse Ikpe-Etim, Eku Edewor, Atlanta Bridget Johnson and Constance Olatunde (also known as ‘Konstance’).



“I am delighted to be working with Afreximbank and this incredibly talented team. Dust to Dreams is a story close to my heart, and I&#8217;m thrilled to bring it to life with such passionate collaborators,” Abudu shares in a press statement.



Professor Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman of Afreximbank (who was also 2023 FORBES AFRICA African of the Year) adds in the statement that “the Bank is committed to supporting Africa&#8217;s creative industries through financing, facilitation, providing market access solutions, capacity building and other services”.



In a 2022 trade report by Afreximbank, Africa’s creative economy generates over a billion dollars in revenue yearly. In addition to that, the creative economy also creates thousands of jobs. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added in their 2021 report that Africa (along with the Middle East), represents about 3% of this output, generating about $58 billion. The creative economy is recognized as a highly diversified, resilient, and gender-neutral sector that provides high-skilled jobs and encourages young entrepreneurship, while supporting innovative forms of sustainable economic growth.



In the August-September 2023 issue of FORBES AFRICA, the award-winning Elba, who was the edition’s cover star, had said that his film, TV and digital production company, Green Door Pictures in the United Kingdom, would be collaborating with Abudu to empower and uplift talent from Africa.



At the 2024 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit in Johannesburg on March 8, Abudu had spoken about her work: “You’ve got to find what you are passionate about. And when you truly find what I call your God-given purpose, I do not see it as a cost… [you need to] go out and do certain things and make a change.



“I spent a better part of my life [in England] and the manner in which I was treated as a black young girl growing up, I knew instinctively that I had to do something to change that and I wasn’t able to until I was 40…,” said Abudu, who also walked away with the FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Businesswoman Award at the 2024 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Awards.



“Often, when I am asked what I would say to my younger self, it would have been to have the courage to say ‘Mo, you need to go out there and start telling stories about who you are, about who your continent is, the history, the culture and the traditions.”

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Mo Abudu, Idris Elba And Seal Come Together For Film Collaboration With Afreximbank

Afrobeats took center stage in 2023’s global music scene.



Major award ceremonies, including the MTV Video Music Awards, introduced new categories recognizing the success of Afrobeats artists, notably elevating Adedamola ‘Fireboy DML’ Adefolahan. His collaboration with Jon Batiste and Jon Bellion further propelled him to the forefront.



In a festive December surprise, the 27-year-old artist dropped two singles on the same day: Obaa Sima (meaning a perfect woman in Twi, a variety of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana) and Outside featuring Nigerian rapper Emeka ‘Blaqbonez’ Akumefule. Fireboy DML explains in an exclusive interview with FORBES AFRICA that the move was inspired by “the spirit of the season”.



Honored for his chart-topping single Peru, achieving Platinum status in the US. and two times’ Platinum in the UK with over 500 million streams, Fireboy DML also received accolades at the 2023 BRIT Awards and the 2023 BMI London Awards.



From his 2019 debut album Laughter, Tears, and Goosebumps to the recent Playboy, the English graduate from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Southwestern Nigeria highlights the evolution of his music, expressing that “each album represents different phases of my life and experiences”.



Collaborating with diverse artists, including Madonna, Fireboy DML emphasizes the universal nature of music. “Music is freedom — the creative process is the same, and talent is talent,” he opines.



Proud of the global recognition that Afrobeats is receiving, Fireboy DML declares, “This is our time.”



Beyond music, his social media presence with over 5 million Instagram followers, where he displays his style, is influenced by a belief that “an artist should always look the part”. He attended notable shows at New York Fashion Week and envisions a deeper involvement in 2024, emphasizing the synergy between music and fashion.



Recounting a significant moment, he shares performing alongside Ed Sheeran for 90,000 people at the Wembley Stadium in London.



For eager fans, Fireboy DML announces: “I will be releasing my fourth studio album.”

66th GRAMMY AWARDS  Red carpet arrivals

A Year In The Life Of Fireboy DML

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The Oscars are adding a new award in 2026—the Academy Award for Achievement in Casting— marking the first new category added to the movie awards show since 2001.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The award, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/coming-2026-oscars-add-academy-award-casting-directors-107068249#:~:text=%E2%80%9CCasting%20directors%20play%20an%20essential,said%20in%20a%20joint%20statement." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multiple</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2024/02/motion-picture-academy-creates-casting-category-first-new-competitive-oscar-since-2001-1235819319/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>, will make its debut at the 98th Academy Awards in 2026, when movies from 2025 will be eligible for the recognition, the Academy said in a statement to the Associated Press and other outlets.



The creation of the award is a win for the Academy Casting Directors branch, which was created in 2013 and currently has nearly 160 members,&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2024/02/motion-picture-academy-creates-casting-category-first-new-competitive-oscar-since-2001-1235819319/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Deadline</a>&nbsp;reported.



The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film was the last award added to the awards show, debuting in 2001.



Eligibility rules and voting for the casting award will be issued in 2025.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Awards for casting have been given out by several other arts organizations including the Emmys, Spirits and the BAFTAs. Carmen Cuba, the casting director of shows like “Stranger Things” and “Mr. &amp; Mrs. Smith,” has been vocal about the need for a casting category at the Oscars. In a 2021 interview with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-04-06/casting-directors-call-to-be-included-in-the-oscars" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Los Angeles Times</a>, Cuba said casting directors are the first people hired and are dealt full plates of work when kicking off a movie or TV show. “If 23 categories are eligible, we should be too,” she told the Times. The power of casting was well on display for this year’s Best Picture nominees. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” was lauded for its expansive and talented cast, boasting the likes of Best Actor nominee Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor nominee Robert Downey Jr. and Best Supporting Actress nominee Emily Blunt.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-04-06/casting-directors-call-to-be-included-in-the-oscars" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Casting directors call to be included in the Oscars</a> (Los Angeles Times)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/01/22/oscars-2024-these-are-the-most-hotly-contested-categories-with-oppenheimer-expected-to-lead/?sh=845c41245ad7">Oscars 2024: These Are The Most Hotly Contested Categories—With ‘Oppenheimer’ Expected To Lead</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

96th Oscars Nominations Announcement

Oscars Introduces First New Category In Decades: Best Casting

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



ESPN, Fox Corporation and Warner Bros. are coming together to create a new sports streaming service,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-06/espn-fox-and-warner-bros-join-forces-for-sports-streaming-site?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=bd&amp;cmpId=google" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multiple</a><a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/fox-warner-bros-discovery-and-disney-create-new-sports-streaming-venture-c9836792" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;outlets</a>&nbsp;reported Tuesday—in a move that will add another platform in the already-crowded streaming wars.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



ESPN, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery are teaming up on the new platform that will include major college and professional sporting events, including NFL, NBA, MLB, College Sports, UFC, the FIFA World Cup and more,&nbsp;<a href="https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2024/02/espn-fox-and-warner-bros-discovery-forming-joint-venture-to-launch-streaming-sports-service-in-the-u-s/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to a press release.



The new service will be available to subscribers of ESPN+, Hulu and Max, and each of the three companies will own one-third of the entity.



The new platform—which doesn’t yet have a name or pricing structure—is expected to&nbsp;<a href="https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2024/02/espn-fox-and-warner-bros-discovery-forming-joint-venture-to-launch-streaming-sports-service-in-the-u-s/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">launch</a>&nbsp;in fall 2024 and will combine each company’s sports offerings, making them available in one place and working to give “a new and differentiated experience to serve sports fans, particularly those outside of the traditional pay TV bundle.”



Forbes has reached out to the three media companies for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Sports have been migrating to the streaming world in recent months as cable television viewership continues to drop. Amazon spent an estimated $1 billion in March 2021 to partner with the NFL, for example, for the streaming rights to Thursday Night Football games. In an effort to be “the most complete streaming service,” Discovery got the rights to stream the MLB playoffs, some NBA and NHL games and more on Max last year, CNN&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/media/max-sports/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>. Disney CEO Bob Iger has said in the past that they’re working to move ESPN from its role in linear TV to “the preeminent digital sports platform,” the Hollywood Reporter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nfl-mlb-nba-streaming-tv-sports-1235756577/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;late last year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Earlier this week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2024/02/06/roger-goodell-addresses-streaming-only-super-bowl" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> people won’t see a streaming-only Super Bowl in his time. When asked if one could happen in the future, he said “one of the secrets of our success is we are really committed to broadcast television,” adding 90% of NFL games are on broadcast, Sports Illustrated reported.

Golden State Warriors v Brooklyn Nets

ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery Launching New Sports Streaming Platform

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



The biggest night in music turned out to also be one of the biggest moments for 22-year-old Tyla Laura Seethal, famously known as Tyla. On Sunday, the South African singer made history when she took home her first Grammy award for Best African Music Performance for her song Water. The continent could not contain its excitement, taking to social media to celebrate her big win.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



“I did not think I would win a Grammy at 22 years old,” Seethal beamed as she accepted the award at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, US.



Utilizing the power of social media, while still in high school, Seethal gained traction by posting covers on her platforms for her followers to see. The Johannesburg-born singer was then discovered which led to her national success as an artist.



However, it was Water and social media platform TikTok that subsequently landed her international recognition especially as the world began moving to her signature ‘Water Challenge’ dance compilation. From global singers Jennifer Hudson to Ciara, fans followed the slight bump routine, mistaken for twerking but in essence is a style of contemporary dancing in South Africa known as Barcadi.



“I knew it was going to be an amazing song,” Seethal said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine after winning her award. “I just didn’t know it was going to do this. It has literally changed my whole life.”



The Best African Music Performance Award is one of three categories added to the Grammys in 2024, its 66th edition. The Recording Academy hailed this a breakthrough in acknowledging the commercial and cultural reach of African music.



“Giving African music its own category would highlight and celebrate the diversity and richness of Africa,” Shawn Thwaites, project manager at The Recording Academy, said in a roundtable about the new category in November last year. “This is a great step forward!”



Seethal was nominated alongside Asake and Olamide (Amapiano), Ayra Starr (Rush), Burna Boy (City Boys), and Davido featuring Musa Keys (Unavailable).



Social media expressed its enthusiasm as Seethal told the world “God literally decided to changed my life last year”. 



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Imagine your first ever award being a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GRAMMYs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GRAMMYs</a>, Tyla is blessed <a href="https://t.co/1Ea3oGSqko">pic.twitter.com/1Ea3oGSqko</a>&mdash; The Instigator (@Am_Blujay) <a href="https://twitter.com/Am_Blujay/status/1754333973478514914?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">Tyla is the true definition of &quot;staying true to yourself&quot;. The girl is South African through and through🔥🔥❤️🇿🇦 I love her please &quot;What the heck!&quot;🥹🥹 So cute Congratulations Tyla<a href="https://t.co/Ya2W6iUQM3">pic.twitter.com/Ya2W6iUQM3</a> <a href="https://t.co/VLm4F7xvyi">pic.twitter.com/VLm4F7xvyi</a>&mdash; Mahlatse🙇🏾‍♀️🙏🏾 (@Matema_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Matema_/status/1754435693902774743?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">TITBIT: Tyla wins a Grammy for Water Tyla’s “Water” won ‘Best African Music Performance’ At 22, she is the youngest South African and to win a Grammy. She is also the youngest African Grammy winner. Tyla was the only artist in her category with no album — Burna Boy,… <a href="https://t.co/3a8uOS2XSn">pic.twitter.com/3a8uOS2XSn</a>&mdash; Kgopolo (@PhilMphela) <a href="https://twitter.com/PhilMphela/status/1754387598510887231?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Seethal’s album is due to drop in March this year, a month before she is to take the stage at the Coachella music festival. Her eponymous album is meant to be a celebration of being African as she combines the sounds of Amapiano, Afrobeats along with pop and RnB in her music.



“The album is literally an introduction of myself and my sound,” Seethal said at her post-win press conference. “I have been working on it for two years. I have never released a project before. I have been perfecting my sound… and I am so excited for the release. There are a lot of bangers on there.”

66th GRAMMY AWARDS  Premiere Ceremony

South African Singer Tyla Wins Her First Grammy, Making Her The Youngest From Africa To Hold The Gong

A Brazilian producer and a Kenyan singer came together to create a song last year that soared up music charts globally, and collaborating with an India-born director for the video, it is now a milestone for African sound.



A decade ago, who knew Africa would boast a full-fledged creative economy?



The continent is front and center on the global stage today especially when it comes to its music, which has seen rapid strides with collaborations between homegrown artists, producers, and directors and creative talent from across the world.



Into this mix, we are now seeing one of the biggest cross- cultural collaborations in the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) genre yet, described by critics as “a song that will give you an undeniable earworm” (catchy piece of music that sticks).



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<iframe loading="lazy" title="Zerb - Mwaki (Feat. @Sofiya_Nzau) [Official Music Video]" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y6iMvNkAQt4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Brazilian music producer Matheus Zerbini Massa, popularly known as Zerb, released the single Mwaki in October last year. The song, featuring Kenyan singer Sofiya Nzau, has been globally soaring up charts such as Shazam TOP 200 GLOBAL Popular Songs and Spotify Global Viral 50.



Its success has come as no surprise for the team’s creators. “To be honest, [I am not surprised at how big the song has become], not really,” Massa says to FORBES AFRICA. “It’s very unique. Every person I have [passed on] the song to has said it’s one of their favorites on the EP. Usually, when we are not doing music that is in English, we think it’s harder to break barriers. And this song [has been] the opposite. Because it has connected with people from all over the world.”



Mwaki, which predominantly features Nzau’s vocals, is in Kenya’s Kikuyu language. Nzau knew the song would go viral but was not sure about the extent of it.



“I’m just grateful that it’s still doing [well],” Nzau says. “We are in a season where Africans are accepting that we don’t have to [sing in] English to be heard outside of Africa. And the fact [is] that even audiences outside of Africa are willing to listen to our music… I am glad to be part of a campaign like this.”Mwaki paints a colorful picture with a strong African narrative 


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-273__-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-61091" style="width:480px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-273__-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-273__-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-273__-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-273__-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-273__.jpg 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">(Image supplied)</figcaption></figure></div>


Literally, Mwaki means fire but at its core, it’s a song of longing.



Nzau shares that it’s about fighting for something you love and not being afraid. “It’s the story of a woman who is in love with a man her parents are not in approval of, but she’s willing to fight for him, she’s willing to cover him. Just so she can be with him. Just so she can experience love.”



Following the song’srelease, therewasacollectiveneed to prolong the cultural and creative celebrations commemorating the diverse and enriching elements conveyed in the song and bringing them to life visually.



How can a collaborative depiction of culture, creativity and achievements be effectively portrayed? That is where director Mikhail Mehra comes in, literally.



“I feel like I’m the chaos guy,” Mehra jokes, speaking with FORBES AFRICA on a Zoom call from his home in Los Angeles. “People call me when it’s like chaotic and insane and they’re like ‘can you pull this off’?”



Mehra,born and raised in Mumbai, India, remembers that first call with Jake Udell, the American music manager and founder of TH3RD BRAIN, the independent record label that Massa is signed up with.



“Jake called me a couple of weeks before Christmas and he’s like ‘listen, man, I got this amazing song, do you think you can pull off this music video [during] this timeline, and can you deliver it to us in the second week of January?’&#8221; 


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-94__-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-61094" style="width:608px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-94__-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-94__-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-94__-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-94__-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-94__.jpg 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">(Image supplied)</figcaption></figure></div>


And Mehra responded: “Uh, yes.” It was to be shot in Kenya.



Alec Udell, Co-CEO of TH3RD BRAIN, says that it was about more than just filming in Kenya, it was about contributing to the country, especially since most of the crew was from the country.



“For the music video, we asked ‘where do we shoot’?” Alec says. “It wasn’t a business decision; it was more of a creative decision. How can a music video feel authentic for the song if it’s not shot in Kenya? It didn’t feel like there was anywhere else in the world that made sense to shoot it and get the authenticity of it, which I think was important.”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-250__-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-61092" style="width:664px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-250__-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-250__-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-250__-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-250__-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-250__.jpg 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Hell’s Gate National Park in Nairobi (Image supplied)</figcaption></figure></div>


Africa’s creative economy is growing, generating billions but in comparison with the rest of the world, the uptake is slower. The continent’s share remains significantly low, accounting for only around 2.9% of global creative goods exports, representing $58.4 billion and less than 1% of the African GDP, according to the United Nations Development Programme report on Accelerating Creativity and Innovation in Africa. And when projects do emerge, their coverage demonstrates that notonly is Africa misrepresented, it is underrepresented. Furthermore, negative stereotypes, poor narratives, and mystifying clichés continue to be propagated in the stories that come out of the continent.



Although Mwaki has a strong narrative, Mehra did away with a storyline for the music video and worked stylistically to ensure there would be no clichés.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-84___-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-61096" style="width:405px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-84___-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-84___-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-84___-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-84___-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mwaki-Video-Shoot-behind-the-scenes-PMG-2023-84___.jpg 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">(Image supplied)</figcaption></figure></div>


Filming was at Hell’s Gate National Park in Nairobi amidst its cliffs, gorges, rock towers, volcanoes and plumes of geothermal steam. “I wanted it to be a visual treat. So, colors and textures [were] important. We knew we wanted dance [incorporated heavily] and I wanted a lot of dancers… I knew I wanted it to be big.”



“The director’s vision was to give the music video a sense of grandeur,” Kenyan producer Fuad Mbigi chips in.



“To film in a big, beautiful location with a gorgeous African savannah backdrop with as many dancers as possible… The song is a global hit so it only makes sense that the video too is grand.”



“I see African influence everywhere in the West,” Mehra concurs. “…So, it just feels natural. And it feels very obvious to me why [the continent] could be having a moment. And one could argue that this is one moment in a long series of moments.”



“The song has proven that music is a universal language,” Massa adds.



“And it proves that with music, we can combine different cultures and different sounds from different parts of the world. I’m a Brazilian producer, with a Kenyan singer and we got one of the biggest songs in the world right now.”



Nzau adds that collaborations like this have allowed her to see the doors of opportunity open wider and that Africa can “be viewed as big as other countries or other continents”.



“I want African artists to believe that whatever we have here, languages, culture, traditions, instruments, or anything African is good enough to be used and to represent us. Other than us just trying to copy and fit in, we just [continue] to create our own because everything we do here is all beautiful.”

Mwaki Video Shoot behind the scenes PMG 2023 109___

FOR THE RECORD: An African Song Soaring Up Charts Filmed In Kenya

The South African comedian’s Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series garnered praise from President Cyril Ramaphosa. 



Renowned South African comedian Trevor Noah has etched his name in history with a prestigious Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Series for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah this week. This significant win at the 75th Annual Emmy Awards highlights Noah&#8217;s influential presence in the global entertainment sphere and underscores the impact of South African talent on the international stage.



In a category brimming with talent, Noah&#8217;s victory over eminent late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and Stephen Colbert underlines his distinct voice in the variety talk series landscape. This Emmy is his first in the Outstanding Talk Series category, adding to his 2017 win for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series and illustrating his consistent prowess in the industry.



President Cyril Ramaphosa extended warm congratulations to Noah in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, recognizing his role as a global ambassador of South African talent. &#8220;Winning outstanding talk series in a very competitive scene is no laughing matter,&#8221; Ramaphosa stated, celebrating Noah&#8217;s contribution to showcasing South African excellence on the global front.



In his acceptance speech, Noah remarked, &#8220;I told you! I told you we would beat John Oliver if he wasn&#8217;t in our category. We did it!&#8221; He also expressed deep gratitude toward his team and offered special thanks to Jon Stewart, acknowledging Stewart&#8217;s role in his journey. &#8220;Thank you for calling me up and asking me to come join you on this crazy journey,&#8221; Noah said.



Reflecting on his most memorable episode, Noah mentioned “Trump and the African Dictator,&#8221; highlighting its significance in bringing African perspectives to American television. This episode, according to Noah, exemplified the groundbreaking nature of his work on the show.



Noah&#8217;s accolades extend beyond the Emmys. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Stand-Up Comedian in Television and is nominated for a Grammy for Best Comedy Album. Additionally, he is set to host the Grammy Awards for the fourth consecutive year, showcasing his versatility and appeal as a host and entertainer.



Despite his departure from The Daily Show in September 2022, Noah&#8217;s impact continues. The search for his permanent replacement on the show is ongoing.

75th Primetime Emmy Awards – Press Room

Emmy Wins And More Global Nominations For Trevor Noah A Celebration Of South African Talent

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The Emmy Awards hit a record low for viewership Monday night, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/emmys-ratings-record-low-1235873962/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multiple</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/business/media/emmy-awards-ratings.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>, attracting 4.3 million total viewers—a 27% drop from the 2022 Emmys, which brought in 5.9 million viewers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Monday’s 75th Emmy Awards aired on Fox and scored a 0.85 rating among adults 18-49, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/emmys-ratings-record-low-1235873962/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Variety</a>, which cited preliminary data from Nielsen, representing the lowest viewership total on record.



The awards show ran at the same time as an NFL playoff game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as well as the Iowa caucuses.



The show created&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/best-social-media-reactions-to-the-2024-emmy-awards" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">buzz on social media</a>&nbsp;and was a highlight for Fox despite the poor ratings, becoming the network’s most-watched Monday unscripted telecast in more than eight-and-a-half years.



This year’s installment of the Emmys was delayed by four months due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, bucking its yearly tradition of airing in August or September.



Cast and producers behind “Succession,” “The Bear” and “Beef” dominated several categories, with “The Bear” bringing in the most Emmy wins of any show with&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2024/awards/news/emmy-2023-2024-hbo-wins-by-show-platform-1235872548/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10 total</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The drop in Emmy viewership this year may also be due to awards show fatigue, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-01-16/fox-telecast-75th-emmy-awards-ratings-low" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Los Angeles Times</a>&nbsp;reported, noting the quick turnaround from the Golden Globe Awards’ Jan. 7 broadcast and the Critics Choice Awards’ Sunday broadcast, which meant many of the same award winners from the Emmys had already made repeated appearances on stage days before. The Emmys broadcast on Fox meant cable-cutters had to flock to either YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. Both platforms have monthly subscription costs totalling more than $70. Most other prestige award shows have recorded favorable rebounds in recent years including the Oscars, Grammys and last week’s Golden Globes, which had a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-01-08/golden-globe-awards-9-4-million-viewers-cbs-robert-downey-jo-koy#:~:text=A%20new%20owner%20and%20TV,when%20it%20aired%20on%20NBC." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">50% jump</a>&nbsp;in viewership from last year and raked in 9.4 million viewers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://variety.com/2024/awards/news/emmy-2023-2024-hbo-wins-by-show-platform-1235872548/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">‘The Bear,’ ‘Beef’ Lead 2023 Emmy Wins, HBO Nabs Most Wins by Network</a> (Variety)

75th Emmys Bring In Just 4.3 Million Viewers—An All-Time Low

If you find yourself in Nigeria&#8217;s largest city, Lagos, this December, here’s where some of the hottest parties may be happening.



The vibrant and pulsating heartbeat of Nigeria&#8217;s nightlife scene is Lagos, the country&#8217;s largest city and a melting pot of electrifying energy. In December, the city transforms into a kaleidoscope of dazzling lights and infectious beats, offering a nightlife experience like no other. From the upscale lounges of Victoria Island to the rhythmic streets of Ikeja, Lagos boasts a diverse array of hotspots where the night comes alive with an unmistakable Nigerian flair.



Venture into the trendy district of Victoria Island, where high-end clubs beckon with sophisticated vibes and A-list DJs spinning the latest Afrobeats tunes. The glittering skyline provides a stunning backdrop as revelers dance the night away, embracing the city&#8217;s opulent side. For those seeking a more grassroots vibe, the bustling streets of Ikeja reveal a different facet of Lagos nightlife. Here, you will find open-air bars, live music joints, and spontaneous street parties, creating an authentic and immersive experience that captures the spirit of the city.



December in Lagos is a celebration of life, music, and community, making it the perfect time to explore the diverse nightlife spots that define this metropolis. Here are some of the top ones:



The New Afrika Shrine: Closer To Fela&#8217;s Legacy



In the vibrant heart of Ikeja, Lagos State, The New Afrika Shrine is a living testament to Fela Kuti&#8217;s enduring legacy and his vision for a cultural haven that transcends boundaries. As Femi Kuti, Fela&#8217;s eldest son and torchbearer, says on its website, &#8220;The New Afrika Shrine is probably the most important thing I have ever done, aside from my children.&#8221;



The roots of the Shrine trace back to Fela&#8217;s inspiration from the Mbari Artists and Writers Club, a cultural hub in Ibadan, founded in the spirit of post-colonial optimism. Fela&#8217;s cousin, Wole Soyinka, co-founded Mbari, influencing Fela&#8217;s belief that a space could be both a performance venue and a progressive salon. The original Shrine, Fela&#8217;s home until his passing in 1997, became a symbol of community empowerment, offering jobs and opportunities to the urban poor, or as Fela affectionately called them, the &#8220;sufferheads&#8221;.



Unable to revive the original Shrine, Fela&#8217;s family, led by his daughter Yeni and son Femi, crafted The New Afrika Shrine in 2000.



With no entrance fee for most events, &#8220;its doors are open 24/7&#8221;, welcoming everyone, regardless of nationality or socioeconomic status. Femi performs regularly with his band, The Positive Force, and Seun, Fela&#8217;s younger son, graces the stage with Egypt 80.



Femi emphasized the positive revolution the Shrine embodies, breaking down societal barriers. &#8220;The poor people sit with the rich people, the white people sit with the black people, and nobody feels different,&#8221; he said, echoing the sentiment of his latest album, One People One World.



The New Afrika Shrine is a thriving community hub that fuels the local economy. Femi noted, &#8220;Before it opened, the area around it was all bush. Now there are buildings everywhere. There are clubs, hotels, event centers. We have created a prosperous little city.&#8221;



The Shrine&#8217;s allure extends beyond Lagos, drawing a diverse array of global icons, from Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill to Anthony Joshua and Naomi Campbell. Even President Emmanuel Macron of France, reliving his Lagos days as a junior diplomat, graced the Shrine in 2018.



As Femi Kuti summed it up, &#8220;The Shrine for me is all about positive revolution,&#8221; and indeed, the beat of positivity resonates within its walls, creating an atmosphere where, as the saying goes, &#8220;You never know who you might bump into at the Shrine. You do know you are going to have a wonderful time.&#8221;



Secrets Palace: Luxury Meets Entertainment



Situated in Lekki, Lagos, Secrets Palace defines itself as a &#8220;high-end nightlife establishment&#8221;. Celebrating its two-year anniversary, the venue has become synonymous with luxury.



&#8220;At Secrets Palace, our mission is to create a refined and sophisticated haven for gentlemen in Lagos, Nigeria, where they can unwind and indulge in adult entertainment while experiencing the epitome of luxury and class,&#8221; says its website.



Step through the doors, and you are welcomed into a sumptuous and exclusive ambience where opulence meets comfort. The venue&#8217;s decor is all elegance and style. Patrons are assured privacy and discretion and &nbsp;it’s a popular destination in Nigeria’s nightlife circuit.



Quilox: Luxury, Style And Celeb-Spotting



For a decade now, Quilox Nightclub with Bar, sited in Victoria Island, Lagos, prides itself as the epitome of Nigeria&#8217;s elite nightlife.



&#8220;We have hosted the hottest parties in Lagos!&#8221; it declares on its website, inviting patrons to immerse themselves in a world where style and luxury converge. The venue is adorned in a striking red, gold, and black theme. A space for dancing, dining, mingling, and networking, it’s a regular haunt for A-listers and celebrities. Quilox also hosts private events with the capacity to host parties ranging from 40 to 400 guests.



Cubana: High-Profile Leisure



With locations in Ikeja and Victoria Island, Cubana has become synonymous with high-profile leisure.



At the heart of the island location is Club Pablo, a 1,000-person capacity luxury night club.



The Grind, a rooftop restaurant and lounge enveloped in steel and glass, offers an indoor-outdoor dining experience. Here, Cubana redefines the traditional open-air bush bar with its contemporary twist, known as Cubana Hut ‘n’ Grill.



Cubana spans major Nigerian cities, with branches in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu, and Owerri.



&#8220;Anytime you are in Nigeria, check us out, and I bet you, you will not regret it. Enjoyment is our business,&#8221; asserts the club, inviting guests to experience Cubana Lounge, located in the heart of Abuja.



Afefeyeye Restaurant And Bar: A Culinary Haven



In Ikeja, Lagos, Afefeyeye Restaurant and Bar is fast becoming a testament to the intersection of gastronomy, culture, and vibrant entertainment. Affiliated with Kunle Afolayan Productions&#8217; KAPHub, this culinary gem has been igniting taste buds for over two years.



Nollywood actor and producer Kunle Afolayan, the visionary behind Afefeyeye, shared his passion during the opening, stating, &#8220;This is a brand born out of pure love for food, culture, and a good time.&#8221;



The restaurant&#8217;s Yoruba name translates to &#8220;lavish leisure&#8221;.



The menu reflects both African and intercontinental cuisine. Afolayan invites guests to experience a culinary journey infused with passion and creativity. Afefeyeye is a destination where culinary artistry and cultural richness converge.

Young men and women dancing against illuminated red spotlights at nightclub

Dancing Into 2024: Lagos’ Top 5 Nightlife Havens

Nigerian Afrobeats artist Mohbad passed away at the age of 27 on September 12. Posthumously, he surpassed global icons on the charts and experienced a surge in streaming.



Ilerioluwa Aloba, popularly known as Mohbad, passed away at the age of 27 on September 12, leaving a mark as an Afrobeats artist from Nigeria. Posthumously, Mohbad reportedly surpassed global icons such as Nicki Minaj and Eminem, securing the 46th spot among the world&#8217;s best-selling digital artists.



In the week following his demise, Mohbad&#8217;s track Peace soared to the second spot on Billboard&#8217;s Hot Trending Songs chart. Simultaneously, Blessed peaked at number four, and Light marked its entry at number 20 on the Nigerian Official Top 50 Albums chart. Notably, Times Square&#8217;s billboards in New York also paid tribute to the late Nigerian star.



Mohbad&#8217;s posthumous resurgence extended to streaming platforms – TurnTable Charts reported a 702% surge in his music streams since his passing.



Tributes from artists globally, including Meek Mill, Lil Durk, and Kodak Black, underscored Mohbad&#8217;s international influence. In Nigeria, over 50 songs were dedicated to his memory, flooding streaming platforms with heartfelt original recordings and covers. The candlelight procession held across several states, notably at Muri Okunola Park in Lagos, Nigeria&#8217;s largest city, drew notable artists like Davido, Zlatan, Chike, Skales, and Falz.



Stakeholders highlight the complexity of audience reactions to an artist&#8217;s work, especially in the wake of tragic events. Some have attributed the influx of streams to newfound awareness rather than a sudden change in appreciation, emphasizing the diverse ways people connect with music and artists.



Music critic Abiola Fasanmi tells FORBES AFRICA, &#8220;Mohbad was not just an artist; he was a visionary. His posthumous success is bittersweet, but it reflects the undeniable talent he brought to the world.



&#8220;It&#8217;s unprecedented for an artist to climb global charts after their passing. Mohbad&#8217;s music resonated profoundly, capturing the essence of Afrobeats and transcending cultural boundaries.&#8221;



Commenting on the Billboard rankings, Fasanmi observes: &#8220;To see Mohbad surpass industry giants posthumously is a testament to the authenticity of his art. He had a unique ability to connect with listeners on a deep emotional level.



“The surge in streaming numbers reflects the collective grief and celebration of Mohbad&#8217;s artistry.”

mohbad

Posthumous Feat: From Afrobeats Star To Global Music Charts Domination

It has been a stellar year for African music across the globe. With the recent announcement from The Recording Academy on the nominees for the 2024 Grammy Awards, Africa joined the artists in celebrating their spots in what the Academy called &#8220;history”.



In a statement released in November, one of three newly- added categories for the 2024 Grammys is the Best African Music Performance award. It is being hailed a breakthrough acknowledging the commercial and cultural prowess of African music.



&#8220;Giving African music its own category would highlight and celebrate the diversity and richness of Africa,&#8221; Shawn Thwaites, project manager at The Recording Academy, said in a roundtable about the new category. &#8220;This is a great step forward!&#8221;



Africa’s Grammy nominees for 2024 include Ayra Starr, Burna Boy, Davido and Musa Keys, Asake and Olamide, all for Best African Music Performance, and Trevor Noah for Best Comedy Album. As FORBES AFRICA, we decided to compile our own list of the biggest African hits of 2023 that got the world on its feet. With the help of the numbers on social media, trends, Spotify listens and YouTube views, the list has been whittled down to the following artists who have scaled global heights. Although some of the music was released before 2023, it seems they are still trending.



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table class="has-fixed-layout"><tbody><tr><td>Song</td><td>Artist</td><td>Country</td><td>Spotify Listens</td><td>YouTube Views</td><td>Total</td><td>YT Release Date</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>CALM DOWN</td><td>Rema feat Selena Gomez</td><td>Nigeria</td><td>1,112,827,855</td><td>706,057,845</td><td>1,818,885,700</td><td>Sep-22</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>PEOPLE</td><td>Libianca</td><td>Cameroon</td><td>498,353,247</td><td>218,903,109</td><td>717,256,356</td><td>Jan-23</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>RUSH</td><td>Ayra Starr</td><td>Benin</td><td>281,167,683</td><td>264,455,804</td><td>545,623,487</td><td>Sep-22</td><td>2024 Grammy nominee for Best African Music Performance</td></tr><tr><td>PERU</td><td>Fireboy DML &amp; Ed Sheeran</td><td>Nigeria</td><td>283,657,974</td><td>189,399,170</td><td>473057144</td><td>Dec-21</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>WATER</td><td>Tyla</td><td>South Africa</td><td>155,090,107</td><td>39,605,600</td><td>194,695,707</td><td>Oct-23</td><td>2024 Grammy nominee for Best African Music Performance</td></tr><tr><td>UNAVAILABLE</td><td>Davido feat Musa Keys</td><td>Nigeria-South Africa</td><td>98,950,916</td><td>72,345,505</td><td>171,296,421</td><td>Apr-23</td><td>2024 Grammy nominee for Best African Music Performance</td></tr><tr><td>CITY BOYS</td><td>Burna Boy</td><td>Nigeria</td><td>61,573,500</td><td>23,431,043</td><td>85,004,543</td><td>Sep-23</td><td>2024 Grammy nominee for Best African Music Performance</td></tr><tr><td>MNIKE</td><td>Tyler ICU</td><td>South Africa</td><td>31,970,236</td><td>27,545,449</td><td>59,515,685</td><td>Apr-23</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>LONELY AT THE TOP</td><td>Asake</td><td>Nigeria</td><td>35,859,656</td><td>22,932,185</td><td>58,791,841</td><td>Aug-23</td><td>2024 Grammy nominee for Best African Music Performance with Olamide, &#8220;Amapiano”</td></tr><tr><td>HAMBA JUBA</td><td>Lady Amar, Cici, Murumba Pitch and JL SA</td><td>South Africa</td><td>13,336,755</td><td>14,165,502</td><td>27,502,257</td><td>Apr-23</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>ME AND U</td><td>Tems</td><td>Nigeria</td><td>16,206,894</td><td>7,270,381</td><td>23,477,275</td><td>Oct-23</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">*The list is but a small representation of the enormous potential and success of Africa&#8217;s musicians ** All data is as of November 12 2023</figcaption></figure>

Green Modern Split Screen Tutorial YouTube Thumbnail (11)

The Biggest And Best Music In Africa (As Per The Numbers)

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Mariah Carey and Brenda Lee’s weekslong battle at the summit of the Billboard Hot 100 took a turn Monday as “All I Want for Christmas Is You” notched its record-breaking 13th total week atop the chart, dethroning Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” after it led the chart for the first time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



Carey and Lee swapped places atop the Hot 100 this week, with “All I Want for Christmas Is You” reaching the summit for the fifth holiday season in a row—making the 1994 holiday anthem the first song to ever reach No. 1 in five consecutive calendar years, Billboard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/billboardcharts/status/1736820015448408131" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dipped</a>&nbsp;to No. 2 on the Hot 100, two weeks after Lee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/12/04/mariah-carey-dethroned-brenda-lees-rockin-around-the-christmas-tree-from-1958-tops-hot-100-for-first-time-breaking-records/?sh=1d1afa7e202f">became</a>&nbsp;the oldest person to lead the chart at 78 years old—a record she extended the following week, when she turned 79 and topped the chart for a second straight week.



This week, “All I Want for Christmas Is You”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">became</a>&nbsp;the first song with six distinct runs atop the Hot 100—it rose to the top each holiday season since 2019, including two nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 in 2020—breaking a tie Carey held with Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” and Harry Styles’ “As It Was.”



Carey has now spent a total of 92&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">weeks</a>&nbsp;atop the Hot 100, the most of any artist by a significant margin: Rihanna ranks second with 60 weeks on top of the chart.



Carey <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">joins</a> Boyz II Men as the second artist to have three separate songs spend at least 13 weeks on top of the Hot 100, one of which is their collaboration “One Sweet Day,” which led for 16 weeks between 1995 and 1996.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Billboard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/brenda-lee-rockin-around-christmas-mariah-no-1-1235515850/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;in November that Carey and Lee would likely be locked in a tight chart battle the entire holiday season, marking the first time a holiday song has challenged “All I Want for Christmas Is You” for the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 since it began its annual trip to the top in 2019. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/12/04/mariah-carey-dethroned-brenda-lees-rockin-around-the-christmas-tree-from-1958-tops-hot-100-for-first-time-breaking-records/?sh=1d1afa7e202f">reached</a>&nbsp;No. 1 on the Hot 100 on Dec. 4 and spent two weeks at the top, making it just the third holiday song to lead the chart and making the song, released in 1958, the oldest to ever rank No. 1. Amid the tight chart battle, both Carey and Lee have stepped up promotional efforts. Lee released the song’s first-ever music&nbsp;<a href="https://youtu.be/TFsZy9t-qDc?si=br_zihXwOltqRaX7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">video</a>&nbsp;in November to celebrate its 65th anniversary, featuring cameo appearances from country stars Trisha Yearwood and Tanya Tucker. She also joined&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@brendaleeofficial" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TikTok</a>, posting videos promoting the song and reflecting on its long history. Carey released a new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/mariah-carey-festive-lambs-edition-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-video-1235546135/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">video</a>&nbsp;for her hit on Dec. 8, leading to a 10% rise in streaming for the song this week, Billboard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>. Carey is also promoting her holiday music on a Christmas tour, including a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/mariah-carey-oh-santa-ariana-grande-jennifer-hudson-live-nyc-1235549232/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">show</a>&nbsp;at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 9 where she was joined by Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">NEWS PEG</h2>



Holiday music monopolized the entire Hot 100&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/billboardcharts/status/1736820015448408131" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">top five</a>&nbsp;this week. Behind Carey and Lee, Bobby Helms ranks No. 3 with “Jingle Bell Rock,” Wham! took the No. 4 spot with “Last Christmas,” and Burl Ives hit No. 5 with “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” Lee leads Carey on this week’s Streaming Songs chart, Billboard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>, though the battle was close: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” had 42.4 million streams, above “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which had 42.2 million. Carey made a big jump from No. 7 to No. 3 on the Digital Song Sales chart, with sales up 68% from last week thanks to her song’s discounted 69-cent price on iTunes, Billboard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



The rise of music streaming has made holiday songs highly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/12/12/heres-how-much-mariah-carey-and-brenda-lee-earn-per-year-from-their-holiday-classics/?sh=3b2fb21073ad">profitable</a>&nbsp;because each play is monetized. Billboard previously estimated that “All I Want for Christmas Is You”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/pro/how-much-mariah-carey-make-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">generated</a>&nbsp;$6.16 million in revenue for Carey and her label in 2021, based on 94,000 downloads and 823 million streams. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/pro/how-much-brenda-lee-rockin-around-the-christmas-tree-make/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">generated</a>&nbsp;about $4 million in revenue in 2022, and Billboard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/pro/how-much-brenda-lee-rockin-around-the-christmas-tree-make/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;it is on track to earn more this year thanks to its rising popularity. The increasing popularity of streaming, plus the removal of Billboard chart&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/12/05/holiday-songs-rarely-hit-the-hot-100-before-2012-heres-what-changed/?sh=1e764ab82f7f">rules</a>&nbsp;that previously forbade songs that had fallen off the Hot 100 to return, have paved the way for holiday songs to dominate the Hot 100 every December.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you-number-one-hot-100-13th-week-1235560875/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ Jingles Back to No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100</a>&nbsp;(Billboard)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/12/04/mariah-carey-dethroned-brenda-lees-rockin-around-the-christmas-tree-from-1958-tops-hot-100-for-first-time-breaking-records/?sh=1d1afa7e202f">Mariah Carey Dethroned: Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’ From 1958 Tops Hot 100 For First Time, Breaking Records</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/12/12/heres-how-much-mariah-carey-and-brenda-lee-earn-per-year-from-their-holiday-classics/?sh=3b2fb21073ad">Here&#8217;s How Much Mariah Carey And Brenda Lee Earn Per Year From Their Holiday Classics</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

2023 Billboard Music Awards – Show

Mariah Carey Leads Billboard Chart Again With ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’—Breaking Even More Records

The man behind the success of the The Real Housewives of Nairobi has an equally interesting story.



Amidst the ever-changing landscape of entrepreneurship, Eugene Mbugua is a role model in Kenya, embarking on a journey that found its roots in the most unexpected of places — a high school canteen. Nestled within the hallowed halls of Nairobi&#8217;s Upper Hill Boys High School, Mbugua took his first steps into the world of business by joining a student-owned canteen that offered break snacks. This early foray ignited the flames of entrepreneurship within him, leading him to become a shareholder in the venture and explore unique avenues, such as selling creatively-adorned envelopes to fellow students, designed for penning letters to girlfriends in other boarding schools, whose letters were sent via post.



When he moved on to university, he continued his quest to explore the world of business. He dabbled in various enterprises, from a shop selling bootleg DVDs to a haven for video game enthusiasts between classes. “I also tried my hand in different businesses varying from event management to a tour company; they all failed,” says Mbugua.



It was during his last year of university that the tide turned. A chance encounter with the world of film-making after high school, courtesy of a cousin who brought him to a film set, ignited a passion that would change his life&#8217;s course. This newfound love led him to pursue a course in television production at university, while concurrently managing his small businesses and exploring various job opportunities in the field.



Throughout this tumultuous journey, Mbugua held onto a dream – the dream of creating his own TV show.



“This whole time I pitched to quite a number of different TV stations. Eventually about a month prior to my graduation, our first show Young Rich was bought by a local station”. It focused on young entrepreneurs and quickly became a top-ranking, award-winning TV show. “That was our first milestone, the premiere of our first TV show Young Rich in 2013. It’s what set the ground for everything else that came”.



Mbugua and his team at D&amp;R Studios went on to produce more than 20 television shows, establishing a prominent presence in Kenya&#8217;s media landscape. Their latest sensation, The Real Housewives of Nairobi, is capturing audiences&#8217; attention not just in Kenya but on an international scale, thanks to collaborations with platforms like Showmax and NBCUniversal.



After a successful run of their reality show Kyallo Kulture, Mbugua got into the beauty space, forging partnerships with entities and personalities that allow the studio to not only take advantage of their clientele base but also tap into their huge following to provide value for audiences and broadcasters.



He recently launched a cosmetic line called Unapologetic in partnership with media personality and entrepreneur Betty Kyallo.



What makes Mbugua’s journey particularly fascinating is his ability to adapt and innovate. One major pivot came in 2020-2021 when D&amp;R Studios attracted investment and established a governing board.



“We took in investment and set up a board which now governs the company and to which I answer to as CEO. The board’s input has often helped us expand our view of what our business is capable of and has also helped us put together governing structures needed to scale new heights,” says Mbugua.



This strategic move allowed him to expand the company&#8217;s horizons and put in place the structures needed for scaling greater heights. As an avid reader now learning to play the saxophone, he finds inspiration in books.



Challenges abound in the film and television industry, with the rapid growth of digital media and technological advancements like AI rendering some job roles obsolete. However, Mbugua and D&amp;R Studios seem to have met these challenges with a proactive attitude. Mbugua predicts that streaming services will continue to thrive, offering on-demand content to an audience reluctant to return to traditional TV schedules. Self-publishing through platforms like TikTok and YouTube will also gain momentum, providing fame and fortune for emerging talent.



“What I think will provide the most disruption however is artificial intelligence. If one is able to use these tools well, it is possible to generate very good content very quickly and this might build some new fortunes and destroy others.”



For aspiring entrepreneurs entering the industry, Mbugua, an alum of the FORBES AFRICA 30 Under 30 list, offers an essential piece of advice: “Start where you are with what you have and embrace new technology quickly. In a rapidly-changing media landscape, early adopters are handsomely rewarded.”

Eugene Mbugua; image supplied

Kenya’s Early Adopter In Showbiz On The Next Big Disruption

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



“The Night Agent” was the most viewed title on Netflix during the first half of 2023, the company announced Tuesday, giving its first sweeping&nbsp;<a href="https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;on viewership numbers beyond its weekly Top 10 list following demands from viewers and Hollywood writers for more transparency.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



“The Night Agent,” which came out on March 23, came out on top with 812.1 million hours viewed between January and June of this year.



Season two of “Ginny &amp; Georgia,” season one of Korean drama “The Glory,” season one of “Wednesday” and “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story”&nbsp;<a href="https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rounded out</a>&nbsp;the top five shows in terms of viewing hours during the first half of 2023.



The report, called “What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report,” was presented as a simple spreadsheet with four columns, showing the title, the release date, whether the title was available worldwide and the viewing hours, and is the first time Netflix is sharing viewership details after years of declining to share them with anyone, Bloomberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-12/netflix-releases-viewer-data-on-every-show-film-for-first-time" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



Over 60% of Netflix original titles released during the first half of this year made the platform’s weekly Top 10 lists, which show the 10 most viewed shows and films of the week, but not viewership numbers, Netflix&nbsp;<a href="https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>, showing that the platform’s originals are popular among viewers as writers for streaming services demand additional residuals if their shows are successful.



Non-English titles generated 30% of all viewing hours globally, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>, and Netflix original titles released before this year appeared to have “staying power,” Netflix said, such as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which came out in October 2022, but generated 80 million viewing hours in the first half of 2023.



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Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-12/netflix-releases-viewer-data-on-every-show-film-for-first-time" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told reporters</a>&nbsp;the lack of transparency over viewership data caused “mistrust over time” with writers and other creatives, and that people have asked for more details on what audiences are watching “over the last 16 years of streaming.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Viewership numbers could explain why Netflix decides to cancel shows, as it has been previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netflix-originals-cancelled-oa-altered-carbon-sense8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;the streaming service renews or cancels shows based on viewership and other data points, including how many accounts watch only one episode of a series, how many subscribers finish an entire season and the total amount of subscribers who watch a series.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Hollywood writers launched a five-month strike that started this summer, demanding more compensation from streaming platforms through higher wage floors, the regulation of mini-rooms (or&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/writers-guild-contract-negotiation-mini-room-1235568173/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">smaller</a>&nbsp;writers rooms that pay less), additional money from streaming residuals and transparency over viewership for their shows, the Wall Street Journal&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/hollywood-writers-reach-agreement-with-studios-streamers-to-end-strike-57fb5dd" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>. Writers, studios and streamers reached a tentative agreement in September that included a success-based residual in which writers for TV series and films on streaming services can receive a bonus if 20% or more of a streaming service’s U.S.-based subscribers watch the show within three months of its release,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/how-wga-streaming-residual-will-work-1235602660/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to the Hollywood Reporter.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/09/25/wga-and-studios-reach-exceptional-tentative-deal-to-end-writers-strike/?sh=4da6b38f1eb5">Hollywood Writers And Studios Reach ‘Exceptional’ Tentative Deal To End Strike</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netflix-originals-cancelled-oa-altered-carbon-sense8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Why Netflix keeps cancelling your favourite shows after two seasons</a> (Wired)

Watching Netflix On iPad

This Show Topped Netflix Viewership Earlier This Year—And It Might Not Be What You Think

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The first “Grand Theft Auto VI” trailer shattered the record for YouTube’s most-viewed trailer launch of all-time on Monday, according to YouTube, raking in more than 93 million views in 24 hours.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The GTA VI trailer, which was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/12/04/grand-theft-auto-vi-trailer-finally-drops-after-years-of-anticipation-and-leak-on-x/?sh=4b02bf0e7198">released prematurely</a>&nbsp;by Rockstar Games due to a leak, became YouTube’s most-viewed trailer launch ever in addition to setting a view record for a non-music video debut, according to a statement from the video platform.



The 90-second trailer, which also broke a Guinness World Record for most viewed video game reveal on YouTube in 24 hours, has more than 123 million views as of Thursday and is still YouTube’s No. 1 trending video after being published Monday.



The views brought in by the trailer don’t come as a surprise given the&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/1730587560726892883?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announcement post</a>&nbsp;for the trailer posted last week on X, formerly known as Twitter, racked up 2 million likes and well over 150 million views.



Some details of GTA VI’s setting, main characters and story were revealed in the trailer, confirming a range of leaks and theories that floated online for the past few years.



YouTube creators have generated more than 250 million views off videos related to GTA VI, according to YouTube.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



<a href="https://ir.take2games.com/static-files/08f13511-2824-4d6e-9571-c857636f7ca6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">190 million</a>. That’s the number of “Grand Theft Auto V” units sold in the game’s 10-year lifespan, making it the third-best-selling video game of all-time behind Tetris (No. 1) and Minecraft (No. 2).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The “Grand Theft Auto” franchise is a powerhouse in gaming and has set numerous records across its eight game series. The franchise’s most recent installment, GTA V, released in 2013 and has maintained an online multiplayer base ever since. Despite Rockstar Games updating GTA V’s multiplayer feature, players have clamored for another installment for more than three years. GTA VI, which will release in 2025, was subject to leaks and theories that gave information on the upcoming video game. One leak caused by a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/1571849091860029455?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1571849091860029455%7Ctwgr%5Ed08388a58d881d13cb040dff021339d47726c990%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ign.com%2Farticles%2Fgta-6-everything-we-know-news-leaks-and-pre-trailer-intel" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">network intrusion</a>&nbsp;last year revealed two of the game’s main characters as well as its setting, both of which were confirmed by the GTA VI trailer this week.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/12/04/grand-theft-auto-vi-trailer-finally-drops-after-years-of-anticipation-and-leak-on-x/?sh=4b02bf0e7198">‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Trailer Finally Drops After Years Of Anticipation—And Leak On X</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/11/14/grand-theft-auto-hype-sends-take-two-stock-to-2023-high/?sh=64cb175541f7">‘Grand Theft Auto’ Hype Sends Take-Two Stock To 2023 High</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

In this photo illustration, the Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6)

‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Breaks Record For YouTube’s Most-Viewed Trailer Launch Ever

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Two unnamed players from Netflix’s “Squid Game: The Challenge” are threatening to sue the streaming giant and the game show’s producers over claims they experienced hypothermia and nerve damage while shooting the show, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2023/11/squid-game-the-challenge-contestants-threaten-injury-lawsuit-1235635675/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Deadline</a>, which cited British personal injuries firm Express Solicitors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Express Solicitors said in a statement the contestants are seeking compensation for the alleged injuries suffered while filming in the U.K. early this year.



The injuries were allegedly sustained while the contestants played the “Red Light, Green Light” game, which tasks players with crossing a field of play and having to suddenly stop their advances anytime an announcer says “red light.”



Express Solicitors told Deadline the contestants were left with injuries “after spending time being stuck in painful stress positions in cold temperatures.”



The lawsuit threat comes several months after Netflix acknowledged that three players required medical attention while filming at a former Royal Air Force base in Bedford.



A spokesperson for the show confirmed to Deadline that no lawsuit has been filed by any of the contestants.



Express Solicitors did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$4.56 million. That’s the cash prize for the show, which currently has five out of 10 episodes out on Netflix and will be won by one of its 456 contestants.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“We have sent letters of claim on behalf of contestants injured in this show,” Daniel Slade, chief executive officer at Express Solicitors, said in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.expresssolicitors.co.uk/blog/express-solicitors-in-the-news#news1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a statement</a>. “From what we’ve been told they pushed the boundaries of safety in the name of entertainment.”



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The show’s contestants called out the show this year in an interview with&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/netflix-squid-game-reality-show-frozen-inhumane-welfare-1235511809/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Variety</a>, saying the shooting conditions were “absolutely inhumane and had nothing to do with the game.” Contestants weren’t paid to participate in the show and were reportedly told the shoot would take about two hours to complete, though some players participated for nearly seven hours. The shoot also took place during a cold snap in the U.K., when temperatures dropped to 32 degrees fahrenheit and contestants collapsed, according to Variety, which reported cold and fatigue had hit players who dealt with eight hours of prep time before the game started. The game show is based on the South Korean dystopian drama, Squid Game, which raked in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/netflix-squid-game-is-even-bigger-than-you-thought-2-billion-hours-big/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more than 1.5 billion&nbsp;</a>of streaming hours from users and became one of Netflix’s most popular shows of all time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://deadline.com/2023/11/squid-game-the-challenge-contestants-threaten-injury-lawsuit-1235635675/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Contestants Threaten Lawsuit After Claiming They Suffered Hypothermia &amp; Nerve Damage During Filming</a>&nbsp;(Deadline)



<a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/netflix-squid-game-reality-show-frozen-inhumane-welfare-1235511809/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Inside Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Reality Show Disaster: ‘The Conditions Were Absolutely Inhumane’</a> (Variety)

Opening Of Gamescom In Cologne

‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Players Threaten Netflix With Lawsuit Over Alleged Injuries

The achievement has garnered acclaim from industry insiders, including entertainers, who praise this triumph as a testament to the international success and growing influence of Afrobeats.



At the 2023 Billboard Music Awards held on Sunday, Nigerian sensation Rema and global pop icon Selena Gomez secured the Top Afrobeats Song award for Calm Down, while another Nigerian talent Burna Boy emerged as the Top Afrobeats Artist.



Calm Down soared to the number 3 position on the Billboard Hot 100, marking Rema&#8217;s debut on the chart and adding to Gomez&#8217;s tally of top 10 hits.



Spurred by the release of his seventh studio album, I Told Them, Burna Boy set a new record in September by becoming the first African artist to debut two songs on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart within a single calendar year, with Sittin’ On Top Of The World featuring rapper 21 Savage making its debut at number 80 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Last Last, one of his chart-topping singles, catapulted Burna Boy to his first number 1 position on the Billboard US Afrobeats Songs chart, making him a trailblazer as only the fifth artist to lead the list last year.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/GettyImages-1677330587-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-59844" style="width:688px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/GettyImages-1677330587-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/GettyImages-1677330587-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/GettyImages-1677330587-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/GettyImages-1677330587-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/GettyImages-1677330587-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">NEWARK, NEW JERSEY &#8211; SEPTEMBER 12: Rema attends the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards at the Prudential Center on September 12, 2023 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>


The Billboard Music Awards introduced new categories this year, including Top Afrobeats Artist and Top Afrobeats Song, recognizing the genre&#8217;s growing influence in the global music landscape. Afrobeats, a contemporary genre, blends traditional African rhythms with modern styles like highlife, hip hop, and dancehall. The genre&#8217;s evolution traces back to Afrobeat, pioneered by the late Nigerian legend Fela Kuti.



The global embrace of Afrobeats is evident in the expansion of awards categories at major ceremonies. The MTV Video Music Awards (VMA), the Grammys, and the American Music Awards have all introduced categories recognizing outstanding achievements in Afrobeats.



Rema&#8217;s success with Calm Down extends beyond the Billboard Music Awards. The track previously earned accolades at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) for Best Afrobeats Song, MTV Europe Music Awards (EMA) for Best Afrobeats, and Trace Awards for Song of the Year and Best Global African Artist in the same year.



During the acceptance speeches at the Billboard Music Awards, Gomez expressed gratitude to Rema for choosing her to be part of the remarkable song, while Rema celebrated the victory as a symbol of unity and the global dominance of Afrobeats. Both artists acknowledged their fans and collaborators for their unwavering support.



Accepting the Billboard award, Gomez said, “Thank you guys so, so much for this award. This is honestly Rema’s doing. He chose me to be a part of such an incredible song. So I want to thank him and thank all of you for streaming and listening and I wish we could be there. But thank you!”



“This honor for Calm Down is a celebration of unity and the global domination of Afrobeats. I want to say a big shoutout to Selena Gomez, Mavin Records, Josie Ward as well as the amazing fans who supported us all the way to this point. I want to say a big thank you to Billboard — I’m very grateful. All the way from Nigeria, Rema. One love,” said Rema.



Burna Boy, accepting the top Afrobeats artist award, said: &#8220;Thank you, everyone. I appreciate you. Big up, Billboard Music Awards. Big up to everyone involved. This is dedicated to Africa and every artist coming out of Africa now, you get me. This is for you and yeah, man, the future’s bright. You guys are gonna see the vision. This is just the tip of the iceberg but you’re gonna see the whole vision soon. Salute, love.&#8221;



Expressing elation at the triumph of Burna Boy and Rema, Nigerian artist Onyebuchi Steven, popularly known as Gorimakpa, acknowledges the significance of this achievement in solidifying Nigeria&#8217;s dominance in the global music arena.



&#8220;As Afrobeats continues to assert its influence on the global music scene, the success of Burna Boy and Rema at the Billboard Music Awards serves as a milestone, reinforcing Nigeria&#8217;s position as a powerhouse in the world of music,&#8221; Gorimakpa tells FORBES AFRICA.



The artist highlights the role of the internet in this triumph, emphasizing the impact of social media and digital streaming platforms in propelling Nigerian music to international acclaim. &#8220;The success of Burna Boy and Rema serves as a testament to the global appeal of Afrobeats, encouraging artists to leverage digital platforms and connect with a diverse audience worldwide.&#8221;



He further expresses optimism about the impact this recognition will have on the future of Nigerian music. &#8220;I believe that this achievement will further inspire and motivate the next generation of Nigerian artists to continue pushing boundaries and make their mark on the international stage.&#8221;



Nigerian event host and compere Sadiq Ola Adebimpe, popularly known as Sceed Barms, adds to FORBES AFRICA: &#8220;It&#8217;s evident that the world is listening, and the numbers songs by our artists attract on the digital streaming platforms are not only from this part of the world [Nigeria]. Burna Boy and Rema have become the most-streamed artists in Nigeria on Spotify this year, and winning these awards is a great reward for their tireless efforts in advancing Afrobeats.



&#8220;What this means for the Nigerian music industry is that our artists are truly making us proud, both at home and beyond. The continuous growth of Afrobeats is a testament to the dedication of our artists, who serve as the forefront soldiers, tirelessly contributing to the industry and the genre.&#8221;

Burna Boy Performs At Rogers Arena

‘Reinforcing Nigeria’s Position As Music Powerhouse’: Rema And Burna Boy Win Big At Billboard Awards

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Shares for Netflix rose by over 15% on Thursday, the largest single-day gain for the firm in nearly three years, after the streaming service reported growth that exceeded analyst expectations, and price increases.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Netflix shares rose by 15.92% to $401.30 as of Thursday morning, following a more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/10/18/netflix-earnings-subscribers-swell-to-record-247-million-as-stock-soars/?sh=5f4a761f64df">10% jump</a>&nbsp;to over $390 after the company released its third-quarter earnings report on Wednesday.



This is the largest single-day gain for Netflix since January 20, 2021, when shares rose by 16.86% to $586.34 after the company&nbsp;<a href="https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/FINAL-Q420-Shareholder-Letter.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;it had eclipsed the 200 million subscriber mark and announced it was considered stock buybacks.



Netflix added $8.54 billion in revenue and nine million net paid subscribers through a three-month period ending September 30, matching and exceeding estimates of $8.54 billion and 6.08 million, respectively.



A letter to shareholders on Wednesday also indicated Netflix was raising the price of its basic and premium plans to $11.99 and $22.99, up $3 and $2, respectively, as part of an effort to be competitive with other streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Paramount+.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



247.2 million. That’s how many global paid subscribers Netflix has, according to its latest earnings report.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Prior to the nearly 17% single-day gain for Netflix in 2021, the previous high for the streaming firm was a gain of 16.8% on October 18, 2016. The increase followed an announcement from Wells Fargo, which upgraded its price target for Netflix shares to $700 per share, up from $510, adding to similar announcements from other analysts, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/netflix-stock-soars-13percent-on-subscriber-growth-and-possible-buybacks.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CNBC</a>.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Netflix reported earnings up to $3.73 a share on Wednesday, as chief executive Greg Peters said the firm was “incredibly pleased” with its recent growth, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-18/netflix-will-raise-prices-after-best-subscriber-growth-in-years?utm_content=business&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>. Shares for the company have jumped by nearly 36% this year, and by just over 47% since October 2022. The stock crashed about 75% in the first half of 2022, after Netflix&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/04/19/netflix-shares-plunge-over-20-after-company-says-it-lost-subscribers-for-the-first-time-in-10-years/?sh=77df0caa1650">reported</a>&nbsp;its first loss of subscribers in a decade. Netflix has continued to report subscriber growth, after announcing a crackdown on password sharing and a cheaper subscription tier that includes ads. The company also added a paid sharing option—requiring users to pay extra for accounts they share with others—that was called a “primary revenue accelerator in the year” by chief financial officer Spencer Neumann.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/10/18/netflix-hikes-prices-for-some-plans-as-subscriber-numbers-surge/?sh=73f2ded756e0">Netflix Hikes Prices For Some Plans As Subscriber Numbers Surge</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/10/18/netflix-earnings-subscribers-swell-to-record-247-million-as-stock-soars/?sh=5f4a761f64df">Netflix Earnings: Subscribers Swell To Record 247 Million As Stock Soars</a> (Forbes)

In this photo illustration the Netflix logo seen displayed

Netflix Shares Surge 15% After Subscriber Growth—Largest Single-Day Gain Since 2021

In its latest product launch, the unicorn AI startup is bringing bots that make it sound like you’re talking to well known people like Taylor Swift into your group chat



Inside Character.AI’s disheveled Palo Alto, California headquarters, employees at first appear to be hard at work, glued to their computer monitors. But rather than coding, many of them are engrossed in lively group chats with their colleagues and the AI chatbot characters that Character has become known for. Now, thanks to a new group chat function the startup launched Wednesday, they were chatting with work friends along with bots that anyone can build to create the illusion that you’re actually talking to the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte, Tony Stark or Lucifer.



“The feature was good enough that people stopped working sometimes to use it,” cofounder Daniel De Freitas told&nbsp;Forbes. De Freitas, the company’s president, has been particularly partial to gathering team members together to play Ship AI, a chatbot programmed to act like a text-based adventure game that lets group chat participants pretend to be astronauts exploring outer space.



The group chat feature is Character.AI’s latest move in cofounder and CEO Noam Shazeer’s bet that people will want to interact with a variety of different chatbot personas, rather than having a single, all-encompassing AI companion. By allowing the company’s subscribers, who pay $9.99 per month, to interact with each other and some of the startup’s 18 million AI bots in chats at the same time, Character is hoping to establish dominance as the go-to app for AI-powered entertainment while adding to its immediate revenue stream. Shazeer said that after “some period of time,” the company plans to make the feature free “because our goal is to empower everyone with AGI,” or artificial general intelligence.



Backed by nearly $200 million from VCs including Andreessen Horowitz, and valued at $1 billion in a March funding round, Character.AI has wowed the startup community with its engagement time — it claims registered users who send at least one message on a given day spend an average of two hours on the platform. Since its initial launch in September 2022, 20 million users have signed up for Character.AI, though traffic to its website has been declining since its May 2023 peak, per analytics provider SimilarWeb. Also in May, the startup began monetizing through its subscription service, which gives customers priority access to its platform (servers have often been overloaded, and non-paying users have to wait longer to get on) and early access to new features. Character.AI declined to share any statistics on its subscribers or its recent growth traction.



The group chat feature, which&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;tested out, is still rudimentary. In the initial iteration of Character.AI’s group chat, human users are able to chat with one another as on any messaging platform. To invoke a bot’s response, however, a user must manually tap on the icon for the specific bot they want to speak, or a dice icon which selects one of the bots in the group chat to respond at random. The bots can respond to users’ questions, as well as to one other (though in the latter case, the human must still prompt the bot to respond).



In a group chat with three&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;reporters and Character.AI’s most popular AI personas for singer Taylor Swift and NFL player Travis Kelce, a human user asked, “Tell us your deepest insecurities about dating Taylor” and tapped on the icon for Kelce’s bot.



“My biggest insecurity about dating @Taylor-Swift is that other guys will be jealous of me because they want to date her too. But I’m not afraid of the competition, she’s a great girl and I’m going to show her a great time. I won’t let her down,” the bot wrote.



After the Taylor Swift bot was prompted, it responded: “Haha, I love the confidence, Travis! Let’s meet up after the season, and I’ll let you show me a great time ;)”



There are other, more practical issues: the feature is only available on Character.AI’s mobile app, and the chatbots appeared to only respond to the most recent message from a human user.



The cofounders say product updates with better functionality are coming soon. The underlying AI is also about to improve dramatically, Shazeer told&nbsp;Forbes, because the company is beginning to receive fulfillment on an order of “many thousands” of Nvidia’s new line of H100 GPUs after a months-long delay due to supply chain shortages. The company plans to put the chips to use to train new large language models, he said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“AI is underhyped because the things that are going to be possible in the coming years are going to be really, really impressive compared to what’s possible now.”Naom Shazeer
</blockquote>



Part of the urgency to launch the product now, before a new model is ready, may have to do with several generative AI tools launched by Meta in late September. In an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2023/09/26/mark-gets-meta-zuckerberg-talks-ai-and-that-musk-mma-fight-thats-never-going-to-happen/">exclusive interview</a>&nbsp;with&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;last month, Mark Zuckerberg outlined a vision of bringing AI “characters” to his company’s various products. “You’ll be able to talk to them in WhatsApp and Messenger and Instagram, and they&#8217;ll be embodied as avatars in virtual reality,” he said. These include an AI assistant called “Meta AI” and 28 other characters that users can talk to in group chats. “That looks familiar,” Character.AI’s Twitter account&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/character_ai/status/1707130316920635432/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">quipped</a>&nbsp;after Meta’s announcement.



Shazeer said the group chat feature had been in the works for several months before Meta’s announcement, and he views Zuckerberg’s move into the space as something of a compliment. “It is great to see other companies getting inspired and building similar products — it’s a real testament to what we’re doing and to the engagement that we’re getting,” Shazeer said.



De Freitas and Shazeer, a coauthor on the seminal research paper on “transformers” that catalyzed the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/02/02/inside-chatggpts-breakout-moment-and-the-race-for-the-future-of-ai/">generative AI boom</a>, met while working as AI engineers at Google, where together they developed an early large language model that would become the foundation for Bard. But in 2021, they left the company because they said they’d run into bureaucratic roadblocks implementing the technology into consumer-facing applications. Shazeer, a 20-year veteran who joined prior to Google’s IPO, said he departed despite a personal plea from CEO Sundar Pichai.



“He talked to me to see if he could encourage me to stay,” Shazeer told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in a July interview. “But, basically I wanted to get this technology out to as many people as possible and just empower everyone with flexible AI. I think it was the right decision.” Shazeer said the company would have needed to release the chatbot they were working on to a wide audience for him to consider staying. “It just felt like Google was not going to be very comfortable launching something that could say anything, and that you really had to be a startup to launch something like that,” he said.



The pair founded Character.AI in November 2021, a year before public appetite for AI swelled when OpenAI released ChatGPT. Google unveiled Bard this past February. Still, Character.AI has continued to carve a niche for itself. The vast majority of the startup’s bots have been created by its user base, who can upload examples of what they want the character to say and give the model feedback to help it improve, Shazeer said in the interview this month.



Startup challengers Replika and Chai have emerged, but the space remained devoid of Big Tech challengers until Zuckerberg’s announcement last month. But Shazeer claims to be unfazed by these competitors. “We’re competing against the $2 trillion industry of legacy entertainment” — say, games, books and movies — “because people want a lot of the same things like fun, the social experience and interesting content. Those things are identical regardless of whether more companies are noticing our space,” he said.



Enter the group chat. Shazeer acknowledged that Character.AI has kinks to work out in the new feature to improve its usability, such as expanding its context window so that the AI can appear to remember longer durations of the conversation. “Right now the system is operating just based on a context window of a few thousand words, so characters are only reacting to whatever happened recently, which is highly suboptimal,” Shazeer said.



The bots also remain prone to “hallucinations” in which the AI outputs false information. After&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;asked the startup’s flagship bot Character Assistant how it was trained, the bot stated it had access to, among other things, customer service calls and transaction data from banks like Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Shazeer and De Freitas said this was incorrect and the bot had made up the answer.



Up to now, Character.AI’s chatbots have been built on the same foundational model that it trained in summer 2022 using 1,000 Nvidia A100 GPU chips. After its full order is fulfilled, the startup will be able to train new AI models on 40 times the amount of computing power as its current model, Shazeer said. All the compute access is being rented from Google Cloud and other cloud providers for now; Shazeer said Character.AI is considering eventually building its own GPU cluster, but has made no firm decisions.



Character.AI is betting that the new models will bring its technology closer to AGI, expanding the range of use cases beyond entertainment. For Shazeer, this is one reason he claims to not be worried about declining traffic. “Really I think AI is underhyped because the things that are going to be possible in the coming years are going to be really, really impressive compared to what’s possible now,” he said.



That goes for Character.AI’s group chats too. In time, he said, the bots in the group chat will be able to respond to human messages automatically. In the future, a fictional AI character could “just step in and say something that will bring you together with somebody,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a magical moment when that happens.”



Rashi Shrivastava contributed reporting.

Einstein And Musk Chatbots Are Driving Millions To Download Character.AI

Character.AI’s $200 Million Bet That Chatbots Are The Future Of Entertainment

<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-eswatini-and-south-africa-dj-and-record-producer">eSwatini and South Africa | DJ and record producer</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-spotify-monthly-listeners-1-8-million-youtube-total-average-views-33-million-views">Spotify Monthly Listeners:1.8 Million YouTube Total Average Views: 33 Million views</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-social-media-net-worth-instagram-2-million-twitter-390-k-facebook-236k-tiktok-1-7-million">SOCIAL MEDIA NET WORTH Instagram: 2 Million Twitter: 390.K Facebook: 236K TikTok: 1.7 Million</h3>



Words and Curation: Chanel Retief|Art Director: Lucy Nkosi | Photography: Katlego Mokubyane Photography Assistant: Sbusiso Sigidi Studio: NewKatz Studio, Johannesburg| Videographer: @astro.vn | CNBC Africa Videographer: Thabo Mathebula| Video Editor: Chanel Retief| Styling: Bontlefeela Mogoye and Wanda Baloyi | Outfits supplied by: Kworks Design; Imprint South Africa; House of Suitability; LSJ Designs| Hair &amp; Makeup: Makole Made



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“What do I do to make sure I stay relevant? I’ve been granted this beautiful blessing. How do I make it the rest of my life?”
</blockquote>



ZWANE, ALSO known as Uncle Waffles, is a true depiction of Generation Z, the demographic cohort shaped by the digital age and shifting financial landscape. Speaking to FORBES AFRICA about her trending accomplishments, Zwane says becoming an artist was not her initial plan. Destiny ordained it. And how.



“During the Covid-19 lockdown, I was working for a broadcasting company. I was doing small interviews with creatives here and there,” Zwane says. “And then one day I interviewed a DJ.” Zwane asked the DJ if she too could learn the art.



“It went from just a conversation to a couple of sessions, to eight hours a day for nine months, to falling in love with something I didn&#8217;t think I could love. I took a risk; I put out a small post I edited on Picsart, [and here I am].”



Through the star power of social media, the eSwatini- born DJ was able to reach millions of viewers and that kick-started her career. Raised by a single mother who believed she could be whatever she wanted to be, gave her the added confidence.



Indeed, it is risky business becoming an artist.



“She encouraged me to just go for it,” Zwane says. “As much as she was always like ‘do it but have a backup plan’, she always believed that because I am creatively inclined, I should just go for it. So when I was packing my bags and going to find gigs, she always believed in me.&#8221;



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Following the release of her debut single Tanzania, which reportedly took three months to perfect, Zwane’s creation was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as the eighth best Afropop song of 2022, with critics describing her as “a global ambassador for Amapiano”. From across the world, she has received praise from award-winning A-list artists such as Beyoncé, Ciara and Drake, who have described her as a “top DJ [with] top sound”, giving further impetus to her fame.



“There is this really cool DJ out right now, her name is Uncle Waffles,” American singer, actor, and television personality Kelly Rowland reportedly said in May.



. “&#8230;She is so cool. She just played at Coachella, but I have known about this girl for at least about a year now.”



However, as successful as she has been, it has not been without roadblocks.



Still young and entering the industry the way she did, staying relevant is crucial to Zwane.



“Being thrown into the industry, I had to learn while running. Because the typical stories [are] that you blow up, and then it falls away, you kind of disappear into the mix. So for me, I&#8217;ve blown up, [but] what do I do to make sure I stay relevant? I&#8217;ve been granted this beautiful blessing. How do I make it the rest of my life?”



For artists, it is not only about the music anymore. The stance taken by many entering the sector is that it&#8217;s also about positioning yourself as a brand. Beyoncé had athleisure brand Ivy Park, which was in collaboration with Adidas on several collections.



American rapper and singer-songwriter Travis Scott launched not only a burger with McDonald’s but also a sneaker with Nike.



Luckily for Zwane, it’s no different as she has gained several endorsement deals in this short span with some of the biggest brands in the business, including South African multinational mobile telecommunications company MTN, and supplements brand, Slow- Mag. Recently, the talk of the town in South Africa has been her collaboration with one of the world’s most popular fast-food brands, KFC.



In September, Zwane launched a new campaign for the brand featuring a food item in her name, the Uncle Waffles Burger. Despite mixed reviews, the significance of this “one-of-a-kind” burger was highlighted by KFC as showcasing “her journey in music and life at a time when her international success is gaining momentum”.



“This is why we chose to create a campaign that shared real-life locations that have contributed to Uncle Waffle&#8217;s success,” Hloni Mohope, Marketing Director at KFC Africa tells FORBES AFRICA. “Social posts dropped clues daily so fans could physically discover and unlock the beautifully-designed custom QR code artworks at each location. This allowed them to tangibly experience and follow Uncle Waffles&#8217; meteoric rise. This story-telling aspect has really resonated with fans and helped us spread the beauty of Amapiano and celebrate Uncle Waffles. We are so proud to have partnered with such a force. This campaign has seen two giants with great taste create magic and bring it [to] the people!”



&#8220;I want to become a holistic brand who dabbles in everything,” Zwane attests.



Part of this challenge – and something she has enjoyed doing – is the art of storytelling. Although there are those who downplay her DJing, especially as she is dancing, Zwane’s belief has always been to change the narrative.



“What you realize is that internationally, they don&#8217;t understand the music,” says the ‘Princess of Amapiano’ (as dubbed by Billboard). “But they can only understand it through you. You&#8217;re the one that tells the story. So they watch you, they understand that you&#8217;ve told the story, and you&#8217;ve gained a huge audience of people by doing so.”



Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, Spotify’s sub-Saharan Africa Managing Director, wrote in August that in her opinion, young African artists are taking over the global stage and contributing to the growth of the African market, which could even rival markets like Korean pop (k-pop) in the international arena.



“This young population continues to grow rapidly while African talent across both spheres of music and sports is booming in abundance. This is demonstrated by the rise in popularity



and proliferation of African genres like Amapiano and Afrobeats internationally,” Muhutu-Remy wrote.



It’s Zwane’s time, from performances at the prestigious Coachella and the Met Gala (“fashion’s biggest night out”) after- party in May, attended by some of the world&#8217;s biggest names in the entertainment and music business, to having a BBC RADIO 1 Residency, Zwane wants to see more young women take center stage but hopes that they don’t feel the imminent pressure to always be viral or trending.



Her advice: “Your success can come at a rate that&#8217;s perfectly fine to you. The idea that you blow up and your life changes tomorrow is not as easy. You can literally be me with just a little more time.



But maybe you could even do better than me because you had more time. You have got to figure out who exactly you want to be.”



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Meet Cover Star: Lungelihle Zwane (Uncle Waffles)-“I WANT TO BECOME A HOLISTIC BRAND”

A new deal between Hollywood studios and writers will for the first time require streamers like Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ to report viewership numbers of original and syndicated content, shining a light on what experts have called a “black hole” of information that has allowed companies to largely avoid justifying in-house programming decisions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/09/27/hollywood-writers-strike-ends-deal-finalized-after-148-day-work-stoppage/?sh=e88fb758cbf3">new contract</a>&nbsp;negotiated between the Writers Guild of America union, which ended its 148-day strike on Wednesday, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will force services to report to the union how many hours a show has been streamed domestically and across the world, a first for a collection of streaming companies that have historically kept a dark veil over the information.



Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Paramount+, Netflix, Hulu and HBOMax are among the companies that have shared what the&nbsp;Verge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23891835/wga-contract-summary-ai-streaming-data" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">called&nbsp;</a>“weird metrics or meaningless self-referential rankings” instead of the actual viewership data available for broadcast networks and cable channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, Fox News, CNN and others.



The data was a sticking point in the tense union negotiations as writers called for measurable performance metrics that could be translated into residuals—long-term payments sent when their show or movies rerun or are purchased—for union members who work on hit shows.



Writers have for decades been paid every time their show or movie is re-aired on its original network or on cable television, or when someone buys a DVD, but that stopped on on-demand streaming platforms, and writers who’ve had network shows become popular on streaming services complain they have not been adequately compensated for its secondary success on those platforms.



It’s possible the numbers studios provide will be subject to nondisclosure agreements and therefore not released to the public, but the WGA may still be able to release aggregated data.



Representatives for WGA, Netflix and Hulu did not immediately respond to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;request for comment Wednesday.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Not knowing the numbers is “very frustrating,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-09-14/wga-writers-strike-sag-aftra-actors-strike-netflix-ratings-data-transparency?_gl=1*ywpsu6*_gcl_au*MTQ5MzQ4MjQ4OS4xNjk1ODIwNzQ4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said&nbsp;</a>Gloria Calderón Kellett, the co-showrunner for Netflix’s reboot of&nbsp;One Day at a Time, which was canceled. “Because you just don’t know what you don’t know. You are in this black hole.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Historically, a lack of data has led to a lack of accountability for streamers when it comes to making programming decisions. Without viewership information, Nexflix and other companies have been allowed to make decisions on canceling and renewing projects without any transparency, and they can claim a project has or hasn’t been successful on a whim. Viewers have expressed discontent about the cancellation of shows that seemed to do well in the public eye—like&nbsp;Daredevil, Warrior Nun, The OA&nbsp;and&nbsp;Inside Job—only to be shut down by the streamer. It has also shielded companies from having to admit when a high-budget show flops. Netflix CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters told Bloomberg earlier this year that the streamer has “never canceled a successful show.” Netflix is slightly more transparent than its competitors, it does provide a weekly top-10&nbsp;<a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">breakdown&nbsp;</a>of the top movies and shows by country, but it only covers the most popular programs and provides no indication as to what isn’t doing well. Others, like Disney+, will on occasion release how many people watched a popular show’s premiere or finale but not in any kind of context to other services or shows on the same platform. Nielsen, the media data company that tracks viewership behavior, provides a top-10 list of streaming platform ratings based on the devices people use to stream (think smart TVs or video game consoles).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



15.2 million. That&#8217;s how many views Netflix says its original film&nbsp;Love At First Sight, the most-watched English movie of the week, got between September 18 and September 24.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Sharing streaming data with the public could put publicly traded companies like Netflix, Disney and Paramount in the hot seat when it comes to their shareholders. Michael Smith, a professor of information technology and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;he doesn’t think sharing the data privately with the WGA will have a dramatic impact on how stocks perform, but that they could be impacted if the world knows an expensive project ultimately flopped. Measuring the performance of a streaming company now is largely based on revenues, costs and an aggregate number of subscribers (which not all streaming services have made public), Smith said, but streamers have fought tooth and nail against revealing streaming data because of a potential impact to share prices. He added that streamers differ from traditional broadcast channels that rely on viewership numbers to sell ad space, while platforms like Hulu have more flexibility in their advertising options. “I think this is the most interesting part of the (WGA) deal,” Smith said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/09/27/hollywood-writers-strike-ends-deal-finalized-after-148-day-work-stoppage/">Hollywood Writers Strike Ends: Deal Finalized After 148 Days Of Work Stoppage</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daniellechemtob/2023/09/26/forbes-daily-another-strike-on-the-horizon-as-sag-aftra-authorizes-second-walkout/">Another Strike On The Horizon As SAG-AFTRA Authorizes Second Walkout</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/09/26/swifties-take-nfl-ratings-soared-for-chiefs-game-as-taylor-swift-cheered-on-travis-kelce/">Swifties Take NFL: Ratings Soared For Chiefs Game As Taylor Swift Cheered On Travis Kelce</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

Stay at home and watch TV

What’s Really The Most-Watched Netflix Show? Hollywood Writers’ Deal Could Bring Streaming Data To Light

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



DC Comics’ late-summer superhero movie&nbsp;Blue Beetle&nbsp;grossed roughly $9.8 million on its opening day at the U.S. box office, taking down Mattel’s&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;after a month on top of the box office charts, though&nbsp;Blue Beetle’s opening still pales in comparison to rival Marvel’s recent releases, a lackluster start for DC’s latest movie, which cost a reported $104 million to make.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Blue Beetle&nbsp;has pulled in more than $13 million since its opening, including $3.3 million in Thursday previews,&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2023/08/box-office-blue-beetle-strays-barbie-1235522235/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Deadline</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/box-office/box-office-blue-beetle-previews-1235698810/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Variety</a>&nbsp;reported, taking down&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;after 29 straight days on top of the U.S. box office, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Box Office Mojo</a>.



The DC movie is projected to make between $25 million to $32 million through Sunday,&nbsp;Variety&nbsp;reported, though&nbsp;Deadline&nbsp;puts it at $25 million, making it DC’s latest underperforming film as it struggles to compete with rival Marvel.



Its opening could also finish with less than half of the $55.1 million DC’s&nbsp;The Flash&nbsp;pulled in domestically over its opening weekend in June, though&nbsp;The Flash&nbsp;also struggled to meet expectations, falling short of its $70 million opening weekend projection, after the film faced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/02/14/a-detailed-look-at-flash-star-ezra-millers-rough-2-years-harassment-burglary-charges-and-more/?sh=29e8e15029b7">controversy</a>&nbsp;over harassment and disorderly conduct charges against star Ezra Miller.



By comparison, Marvel’s&nbsp;Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3&nbsp;pulled in $118.4 million in its opening weekend in May, while&nbsp;Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania&nbsp;grossed $106.2 million in its opening weekend in February and Sony’s&nbsp;Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse&nbsp;grossed $120.7 million in its first weekend.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



The DC movie has a 91% audience score and a 75% critics’ score on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blue_beetle" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rotten Tomatoes</a>, though critics have not been universally friendly, giving it a score of 61 out of 100 on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.metacritic.com/movie/blue-beetle" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Metacritic</a>. A review in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/16/dc-latino-superhero-film-blue-beetle-review" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Guardian</a>&nbsp;lauded the movie for setting a “milestone for representation” as the first live-action Latino superhero film, but confessed the movie “suffers from overplayed beats,” due to the “fatigue from oversaturation” of a seemingly never ending string of Hollywood superhero movies. A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/movies/blue-beetle-review.html#:~:text=The%20plot%20is%20boilerplate%20and,family%20members%20steal%20the%20show." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times</a>&nbsp;review didn’t pull any punches either, calling the plot “boilerplate” and the superhero “not particularly compelling.”



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



Barbie&nbsp;is just under $30 million short of surpassing&nbsp;The Super Mario Bros. Movie&nbsp;as the year’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office. Since its release,&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;has pulled in $545.8 million in the U.S. and another $660.6 million internationally, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl1077904129/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a>&nbsp;from Box Office Mojo, putting it just behind the Universal Pictures and Nintendo blockbuster, which has grossed more than $574.2 million domestically since its release on April 5.&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;still has $110 million to go to catch up with James Cameron’s&nbsp;Avatar: The Way of Water, which has grossed more than $684 million in the U.S. since its December release.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/08/06/barbie-tops-1-billion-at-global-box-office/?sh=6c5fe75c7520">‘Barbie’ Tops $1 Billion At Global Box Office</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/08/13/barbie-and-oppenheimer-continue-box-office-dominance-for-fourth-week-raking-in-combined-525-million/?sh=65ef9f762019">&#8216;Barbie’ And &#8216;Oppenheimer&#8217; Continue Box Office Dominance For Fourth Week—Raking In Combined $52.5 Million</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/08/12/barbie-breaks-500-million-at-us-box-office-further-cementing-itself-as-summers-blockbuster/?sh=744fe19b43f9">‘Barbie’ Breaks $500 Million At U.S. Box Office—Further Cementing Itself As Summer’s Blockbuster</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

New Barbie Movie Sparks Barbie-mania Across U.S.

End Of Barbiemania? ‘Blue Beetle’ Unseats ‘Barbie’ With $9.8 Million Opening

The BK Arena in Rwanda’s capital city Kigali was the stage for some electrifying performances as global artists enthralled basketball fans and excited locals at the grand opening of the first-ever week-long Giants of Africa festival on August 13.



The event, graced by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Masai Ujiri, the co-founder of Giants of Africa and president of Toronto Raptors, saw the two leaders rallying the youth to be fully immersed in sports as this is an untapped frontier.



“Everyone in this arena is a giant. It is time we don’t keep being reminded. We should know it and continue being the giants that we are and should be. We have got to decide and make that choice. Knowing every one of us in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, everyone has the possibility of being a giant and should be,” Kagame told the audience.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-59223" style="width:536px;height:358px" width="536" height="358" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 536px) 100vw, 536px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image credit Giants of Africa</figcaption></figure></div>


Rwanda is currently hosting Giants of Africa with 250 youth from 16 African countries taking part in activities centered around sports, entertainment, culture as well as national dialogue. The event is part of the country’s strategy to grow sports and make Rwanda a sporting hub.



“President Kagame came for an All-Star Game in 2016 to America. He asked me what it would take to build such an arena and get things done. His studious leadership saw that in just about 12 months, we had the BK Arena here in Kigali,” said Ujiri.



For the last two decades since its inception, Giants Of Africa has been able to play a catalytic role in mainstreaming sports as a tool for economic development and cultural diversity.



“Masai, I thank you for creating this great idea of identifying young people and bringing them here. These young people are being reminded that we are as good as anyone anywhere else. Through the sixteen teams representing sixteen countries, we should grow and work with each other to fulfil this dream for our continent,” added Kagame.



As part of the partnership between Giants of Africa and Rwanda, achievements include the construction of several basketball courts in the country, as well as equipping youngsters with skills for the game. The dazzling lights and thrilling performances at the arena also saw the President urging African youth to be united in growing the continent with their abundant talent.



“I am you; you are me. The best way to bring that out is through talented sportsmen. These young men and women will be giants in basketball and in everything else.”



Ujiri, who gave an emotional account of his encounters from Africa, affirmed that Giants of Africa will continue scaling up investments to make basketball a formidable game for Africans.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Opening-night-image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-59222" style="width:510px;height:340px" width="510" height="340" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Opening-night-image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Opening-night-image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Opening-night-image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Opening-night-image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Opening-night-image-credit-Giants-of-Africa-2048x1366.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Opening night; image credit Giants of Africa</figcaption></figure></div>


“I am overwhelmed and many years ago I had the opportunity to come here. That’s where this journey began for me. We believe in Africa. Every day, we dream, we preach and believe in Africa,” he said to rousing applause from a charged crowd at BK Arena.



Rwanda is also betting big on fusing sports and entertainment to diversify revenue lines. This year’s festival was headlined by Tanzanian artist Diamond Platnumz.



The closing ceremony slated for August 19 will be star-studded. Celebrated Rwandan artist Bruce Melodie, Nigerian singer Davido and Tiwa Savage are also expected to perform.

Star-studded event; Image credit Giants of Africa

Giant Festival In Kigali To Uplift Africa’s Youth Through Sport And Culture

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Barbie&nbsp;was pulled from theaters in Algeria this week, joining a growing list of countries that, despite the summer blockbuster’s widespread success, have banned the film because of its themes of gender and sexuality or because of the film’s alleged use of a controversial map. (Say what?)



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Algeria:&nbsp;Algeria’s Ministry of Culture and Arts notified cinemas in the cities of Algiers, Oram and Constantine earlier this week to “immediately” pull the movie, the Algerian news outlet 24H&nbsp;<a href="https://www.24hdz.com/le-film-barbie-interdit-en-salles-en-algerie/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;(a source confirmed the news to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/algeria-bans-barbie-movie-media-official-source-say-2023-08-14/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>).



Kuwait:&nbsp;On Thursday, officials in Kuwait announced they were banning the film because it promoted “ideas and beliefs that are alien to the Kuwaiti society and public order,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kuna.net.kw/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=3105733&amp;Language=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a>&nbsp;a statement published by the state-run KUNA news agency. (The statement did not cite any specific scenes that Kuwaiti censors found objectionable.)



Vietnam:&nbsp;Before the film premiered, officials in Vietnam&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/03/barbie-movie-banned-in-vietnam-over-controversial-map/?sh=7ec28cfc4ba7">announced</a>&nbsp;they were banning&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;over a scene that included a map that appeared to show China’s contested territorial claims in the South China Sea—Warner Bros.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/07/warner-bros-defends-child-like-map-that-got-barbie-banned-in-vietnam/?sh=2702920437bd">disputed</a>&nbsp;the claim, describing the drawing as “child-like.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



Before it was banned,&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;had sold out Algerian theaters every day since its July 19 release, the Algerian news outlet 24H&nbsp;<a href="https://www.24hdz.com/le-film-barbie-interdit-en-salles-en-algerie/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



It’s not uncommon for countries, particularly Gulf nations, to ban movies or TV shows because the content goes against certain religious beliefs. A number of countries in the Middle East, for example, have&nbsp;<a href="https://deadline.com/2022/05/everything-everywhere-all-once-banned-middle-east-1235016780/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">banned</a>&nbsp;films that include gay characters, such as&nbsp;Everything Everywhere All At Once, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, Eternals&nbsp;and&nbsp;West Side Story.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-we-don-t-know">WHAT WE DON’T KNOW</h2>



It’s unclear how many other countries may ban the box office hit.&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;is scheduled to premiere in theaters in Lebanon on August 31, but some officials have said they might follow the lead of other Middle Eastern countries and ban the movie from theaters. Lebanese culture minister Mohammad Mortada asked the interior ministry to ban&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;because he said it contradicts “values of faith and morality” and promotes “homosexuality and sexual transformation,” the Associated Press&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/mideast-barbie-movie-censorship-955390b933747bfc3f662022db2e4d9b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>. Mortada also said&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;questioned the necessity of marriage and ridiculed the role of mothers, the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/arts/barbie-ban-kuwait-lebanon.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Barbie&nbsp;was nearly banned in the Philippines earlier this month. Following news of Vietnam’s decision to not air the film, officials in the Philippines launched a weeklong review of the film that included two review sessions and conversations among multiple government departments,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=741736454626335&amp;set=pcb.741736844626296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a>&nbsp;a press release from the country’s Movie and Television Review and Classification Board. The board&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=741736454626335&amp;set=pcb.741736844626296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">decided</a>&nbsp;the map included in the film did “not depict the ‘nine-dash line,’” a term used to describe China’s contested claims over the South China Sea, and instead the map “portrayed the route of the make-believe journey of Barbie.” In the statement, the board&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=741736454626335&amp;set=pcb.741736844626296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">noted</a>&nbsp;it has previously sanctioned filmmakers and distributions for exhibiting the fictitious nine-dash line in their films.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$1,187,042,188. That’s how much money&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;has grossed worldwide since it premiered in mid-July,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl1077904129/?ref_=bo_hm_RECENT_WEEKEND_WIDGET_1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a>&nbsp;Box Office Mojo. Domestically&nbsp;Barbie&nbsp;has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl1077904129/?ref_=bo_hm_RECENT_WEEKEND_WIDGET_1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">earned</a>&nbsp;more than $526 million, making it the second-highest-grossing movie of the year&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/08/12/barbie-breaks-500-million-at-us-box-office-further-cementing-itself-as-summers-blockbuster/?sh=4ba5ebde43f9">behind</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;Super Mario Bros. Movie.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Barbie&nbsp;has dominated the U.S. box office since it first opened in theaters in July and taken the top box office spot for the past four weeks. The film tells the live-action story of Mattel dolls Barbie and Ken. With an all-star cast—Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Ncuti Gatwa, Michael Cera, Simu Liu, America Ferrera and Dua Lipa—and pop soundtrack produced by Mark Ronson, the film’s release was long awaited by many.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/03/barbie-movie-banned-in-vietnam-over-controversial-map/?sh=7ec28cfc4ba7">‘Barbie’ Movie Banned In Vietnam Over Controversial Map</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/arts/barbie-ban-kuwait-lebanon.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kuwait And Lebanon Look To Ban ‘Barbie’ For Moral Reasons</a>&nbsp;(New York Times)

The European Premiere of Barbie in London

‘Barbie’ Banned In Algeria—Here’s Where Else You Can’t See The Box Office Hit

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Disney’s streaming unit beat expectations even as it shed 12 million Disney+ subscribers, according its latest quarterly earnings report released Wednesday afternoon, as the entertainment giant contends with turbulence while struggling to return profits to prior glory.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Disney’s $22.33 billion of revenue and $1.03 earnings per share largely tracked consensus analyst estimates of $22.5 billion and $0.96, respectively, as tracked by FactSet.



The conglomerate’s park and linear television units continued to beef up the bottom line, as the units’ $1.1 billion and $1.9 billion in quarterly operating profit were in line with expectations, respectively, while Disney bled $512 million in its flashier direct-to-consumer media business including Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu, far below projections of a $758 million loss.



The company reported a staggering 12 million decrease in Disney+ subscribers, though its subscriber loss in the U.S. and Canada was a milder 1%.



Disney incurred $2.7 billion in restructuring costs during the quarter in which the company concluded its round of roughly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/22/media/disney-layoffs/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">7,000</a>&nbsp;layoffs globally.



Shares of Disney registered a roughly 1% in after hours trading as investors digested the mixed-bag report.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Disney’s earnings release comes amid a turbulent stretch for the company’s stock, which is down 20% over the last five years, far underperforming the S&amp;P 500’s roughly 60% return over the timeframe. The slump comes after a brief surge in Disney’s share price as investors&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/11/21/disney-shares-jump-9-on-return-of-bob-igers-magic/?sh=14889bd28b2f">heralded</a>&nbsp;the November return of the company’s long-time CEO Bob Iger. But Disney’s stock is down 4% since Iger’s reclamation of the throne, well below the S&amp;P’s 13% gain during the period, as investors&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/05/11/disney-stock-set-for-worst-day-since-ceo-bob-igers-comeback/?sh=38001ff940da">grew impatient</a>&nbsp;with a lack of results in Iger’s cost-cutting vision to grow profits as streaming losses mounted.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Much of Disney’s bottom-line issues come as the legacy media sector grapples with a decline in the popularity of linear television: Its $1.1 billion in operating profit for its media and entertainment unit during the first three months of 2023 was down from $1.9 billion the year prior and nearly $3 billion five years ago. Overall, Disney’s operating profit during the most recent quarter was roughly a fifth less robust than it was during the same period five years ago ($4.2 billion).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



How Disney’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/08/08/penn-entertainment-sells-barstool-sports-back-to-founder-dave-portnoy-in-deal-rebranding-sportsbook-as-espn-bet/?sh=52dfb7d968d2">$1.5 billion</a>&nbsp;agreement with sports gambling operator PENN Entertainment announced Tuesday – and subsequent launch of an ESPN-branded sportsbook – will drive sales at Disney’s sports segment. Iger&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/13/disney-open-to-finding-espn-strategic-partner.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;last month the company is open to offloading an equity stake in ESPN.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Even amid entertainment companies’ challenges as consumer preferences shift, Disney “should survive and thrive in this environment due to its diversification, multiplatform media offerings, large vault of content, and pricing premium,” Daiwa analyst Jonathan Kees proclaimed in a Tuesday note previewing earnings.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/08/08/penn-entertainment-sells-barstool-sports-back-to-founder-dave-portnoy-in-deal-rebranding-sportsbook-as-espn-bet/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MORE FROM FORBESPenn Entertainment Sells Barstool Sports Back To Founder Dave Portnoy In Deal Rebranding Sportsbook As ESPN BETBy&nbsp;Brian Bushard</a>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/05/11/disney-stock-set-for-worst-day-since-ceo-bob-igers-comeback/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MORE FROM FORBESDisney Stock Set For Worst Day Since CEO Bob Iger&#8217;s ComebackBy&nbsp;Derek Saul</a>



<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-apple-deal-1235559416/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTERA Disney Sale to Apple? Don&#8217;t Count It Out This Time</a>

Disney plus : Illustration

Disney Plus Subscribers Dwindle — But Streaming Unit Beats Estimates

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Google and Universal Music Group are discussing whether to license artists’ melodies and vocals for AI-generated music, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6f022306-2f83-4da7-8066-51386e8fe63b?list=intlhomepage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to the Financial Times, following a recent trend of music produced by artificial intelligence that has faced backlash—and support—from music labels and artists.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Universal Music—which represents artists like Drake, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift—and Google are working to develop a tool for users to create AI-generated music using an artist’s voice, lyrics or sounds, the&nbsp;Financial Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6f022306-2f83-4da7-8066-51386e8fe63b?list=intlhomepage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



A deal would pay copyright holders for the right to create the music, while artists would have the choice to opt in.



Warner Music Group is also discussing a similar product with Google, according to the&nbsp;Times.



Neither Google nor Universal Music immediately responded to requests for comment from&nbsp;Forbes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Warner Music CEO Robert Kyncl&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.wmg.com/events/event-details/q3-2023-warner-music-group-earnings-conference-call" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;during the company’s earnings call Tuesday that “with the right framework in place” artificial intelligence would be able to “enable fans to pay their heroes the ultimate compliment through a new level of user-driven content.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



Drake voiced his opposition to AI-produced music earlier this year after he was featured in several deepfakes,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/drake-reacts-ice-spice-munch-ai-1235303454/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suggesting</a>&nbsp;after one song was released: “This is the last straw.” Sting said there was “going to be a battle” between “human capital” and AI, which he said “doesn’t impress me at all,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65627089" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to the BBC.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



Several artists have supported the development of AI-generated music, including Grimes, who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/grimes-drake-the-weeknd-ai-music-1234726521/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;anyone could create songs using her voice “without penalty” as long as she receives a 50% split on royalties. Paul McCartney&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/06/13/ai-you-need-is-love-artificial-intelligence-helps-create-final-beatles-song-paul-mccartney-says/?sh=4c263c571275">announced</a>&nbsp;in June a new Beatles song would be released later this year, after McCartney said AI was used to “extricate” John Lennon’s voice from an old demo tape to create “the final Beatles record.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Regulations and restrictions for music generated by artificial intelligence have increased in recent months. Universal Music sent a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/aec1679b-5a34-4dad-9fc9-f4d8cdd124b9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter</a>&nbsp;to streaming services in April requesting they prevent AI programs from accessing its platforms to train on copyrighted lyrics and melodies. Universal Music general counsel Jeffrey Harleston&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoCJun7gkbA&amp;ab_channel=CNBCTelevision" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;during a Senate hearing last month that “an artist’s voice is often the most valuable part of their livelihood and public persona.” The U.S. Copyright Office noted it will only offer copyright to works “created by a human being” and not “register works produced by a machine.” Google&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/technology/ai/musiclm-google-ai-test-kitchen/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">released</a>&nbsp;an experimental AI tool for created music in May, which develops a song based on a text prompt. Meta&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/irenebenedicto/2023/08/02/meta-launches-tool-to-create-music-using-ai-heres-what-to-know/?sh=41419a9e444d">released</a>&nbsp;its own AI tool for creating music earlier this month, which is trained on 20,000 hours of licensed music owned by Meta.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6f022306-2f83-4da7-8066-51386e8fe63b?list=intlhomepage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google And Universal Music Negotiate Deal Over AI ‘Deepfakes’</a>&nbsp;(Financial Times)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/irenebenedicto/2023/08/02/meta-launches-tool-to-create-music-using-ai-heres-what-to-know/?sh=41419a9e444d">Meta Launches Tool To Create Music Using AI—Here’s What To Know</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/05/03/ai-generated-music-is-here-sung-by-stars-like-drake-and-ariana-grande-but-it-may-be-very-illegal/?sh=612b5343aa32">AI-Generated Music Is Here—‘Sung’ By Stars Like Drake And Ariana Grande—But It May Be Very Illegal</a> (Forbes)

Headphones, Amplifying Equipment, Studio Audio Mixer Knobs And Faders. Sound Engineering Equipment. Selective Focus. The photo is covered with sand and noise. Wireless and electronic technologies. Equipment in a nightclub, on television, radio studio.

Google And Universal Music Group Negotiating AI-Generated Music Tool, Report Says

An in-depth look at investment in some of the continent’s most promising entertainment industries reveals areas of growth, challenges and what the future might hold.



Africa’s heartbeat is in rhythm with the passion, culture and creativity of its people. On a continent of 1.4 billion people according to estimates by the United Nations (UN), there are effectively 1.4 billion stories to tell, each one unique and brimming with potential.



The question is: what is the narrative, and who is telling the story? 



Africa’s prospects in creative industries like art, fashion, film and television, crafts and architecture, among others, are well-documented. An oft-quoted fact comes from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) 2021 report African Film: A Booming Industry. It illustrates the potential in the film and audio-visual industries, which could result in generated revenue of $20 billion per year.



Speaking on the outlook for entertainment and media in Africa over the next few years, Charles Stuart, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) South Africa’s Entertainment and Media Partner, says to FORBES AFRICA:



“We look at consumer spend in terms of what’s covered from a cinema perspective. [It] is growing; it’s just taking longer to recover to where it initially was. Is cinema dead? No, we are not seeing that.”



But where is investment for this forecasted to come from? With the growth of video-on-demand (VOD) and over-the-top (OTT) services, and a burgeoning appetite for authentically African media and content, venture capital (VC) is poised to be at the forefront of development on the continent, for film and television in particular.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-show-me-the-money-jerry-maguire-1996">“Show Me The Money” (Jerry Maguire, 1996)</h4>



The African Private Capital Association (AVCA) indicates that 58 private capital investments, with a total reported value of $346 million, were recorded in Africa’s creative industries over the last decade (2012-2022).



“Starting from a low base of only four investments in 2012, private capital investments in Africa’s creative industries more than tripled, reaching a total of 13 in 2022,” says AVCA.



Notably, VC investments attracted the largest share of these. They accounted for about 67% of the total number over the 2012-2022 period, followed by private equity investments at 33%.



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:36% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="429" height="522" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/venture-capital-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-59059 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/venture-capital-1.png 429w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/venture-capital-1-247x300.png 247w" sizes="(max-width: 429px) 100vw, 429px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“WE LOOK AT CONSUMER SPEND IN TERMS OF WHAT’S COVERED FROM A CINEMA PERSPECTIVE. [IT] IS GROWING…
<cite>Charles Stuart, Entertainment and Media Partner, PwC South Africa</cite></blockquote>
</div></div>



“These investments spanned various sectors, including the development of online gaming platforms, music and video streaming developers, operators of music websites, live broadcasting, film streaming platforms, providers of advertising and marketing services, and clothing designers, among others,” says AVCA.



Jeff Schlapinski, Managing Director, Research, at non-profit, independent membership organization, Global Private Capital Association (GPCA), echoes these sentiments. 



“Africa’s VC investments in media and entertainment companies reached $31.2 million across six rounds in 2022, a new record in terms of deal value.”



However, Schlapinski notes that investments into this sector have, historically, represented a very small percentage of investment activity in Africa’s venture ecosystem (~1% of the $2.75 billion invested in VC in Africa in 2022, according to GPCA).



“The significant growth of the venture capital asset class in recent years, along with the increased allocation of capital towards technology or technology-enabled businesses, has contributed to the growth of investments in this sector as well,” says AVCA.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">Economies In The Spotlight</h4>



According to AVCA, the increase in the number of investments in Africa’s creative industries strongly indicates investors’ increasing interest and recognition of the sector’s potential. A handful of countries attracted the biggest chunk of that investment over the 10-year period (2012-2022).



“In terms of their geographic distribution, South Africa has attracted the largest share of private capital investments in Africa’s creative industries at 24%.” Following South Africa is Egypt, accounting for 14% of these investments. The country has also emerged as a significant technology hub on the continent in recent years.



“Nigeria and Kenya, two of Africa’s largest private capital markets, have each accounted for 10% of these investments,” says AVCA. Speaking on 2022, in particular, Schlapinski notes that the markets that led VC investments in media and entertainment – in terms of deal value – were South Africa with $22.5 million, Nigeria with $5.7 million and Egypt at $2 million.



They represent three of the four most active countries for overall VC investment with Kenya rounding off the top four.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">The Redefinition Of Main ‘Stream’</h4>



Regarding three of sub-Saharan Africa’s emerging economies, namely South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, streaming service, Netflix, released its Socio-Economic Impact Report earlier this year, where it reveals its impact since entering the market.



Over the 2016–2022 period, it invested $175 million in content and in the overall creative environment in these countries specifically.



South Africa received the bulk of this investment, accounting for at least $125 million. In addition to that, over the same period, it invested in upwards of 425 licensed titles in these economies, further opening up the market to a host of proudly African films and television series.



Expanding on PwC’s outlook for Africa, Stuart says that success for OTTs necessitates an understanding of the type of content you put out there.



“You can have a wonderful distribution platform [but] if you’ve got nothing good to show – which is part of cinemas’ challenges over the last while; some of those big titles and also the lack of big titles has worn out in terms of what we’re seeing.”



He emphasizes the fact that content is always going to be king.



“Coming back to Africa, the culture and the richness and the heritage that we have, if you drive around, you’ve got Shaka [iLembe], there’s Rosemary’s Hitlist (both documentary series) advertised on billboards. You’re seeing the importance of local content to the success of your streaming platforms. Initially, when a Netflix entered Africa, it didn’t do really well. All it was doing is, ‘here’s the international content’. People were familiar with it but we like our African stories as well,” says Stuart.



With streaming platforms, the cost base is mostly fixed, so, in reality, he says that it’s the subscriber base that drives the growth.



“How do you really translate things into profit? It’s getting more people to subscribe to your service. What they were lacking a lot in the early days was this local content – that really resonated with it. What many of the streamers have learned is that it is about finding that balance between your international content, supplemented with your local content. When you look at a lot of the communication coming out of Apple, Netflix, Amazon, there’s continued communication around the fact that they are investing in local content.”



Stuart adds, “There’s still opportunity for your local players but it’s not an easy industry. For every bit of content that ends up on Netflix, there’s probably 10 pieces of content that doesn’t end up on Netflix.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">A Continent Up For The Challenge</h4>



The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) recently took an in-depth look at the continent’s Culture and Creative Industries (CCIs) in its African Trade Report 2022: Leveraging the Power of Culture and Creative Industries for Accelerated Structural Transformation in the AfCFTA Era.



It noted that some of the obstacles hindering the growth of CCIs include policy frameworks, finance, infrastructure, intellectual property rights, standards and norms in the area of cross-border trade, accurate data, language barriers, colonial legacy and an extroverted model.



Furthermore, it states that “a positive outcome of the pandemic has been the necessitated shift to digital solutions and online streaming, which has helped boost the performance and resilience of creative industries underpinned by digital models and platforms”.



While Africa does have its fair share of challenges, PwC’s Africa outlook for 2023-2027, which is expected to be released in September, sheds light on infrastructure investments, particularly in the telco space, which has a fundamental impact on streaming platforms, data consumption, and the growth of mobile gaming on the continent.



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:39% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="333" height="420" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/venture-capital-2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-59060 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/venture-capital-2.jpg 333w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/venture-capital-2-238x300.jpg 238w" sizes="(max-width: 333px) 100vw, 333px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“AFRICA’S VC INVESTMENTS IN MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT COMPANIES REACHED $31.2 MILLION ACROSS SIX ROUNDS IN 2022, A NEW RECORD IN TERMS OF DEAL VALUE.”
<cite>—Jeff Schlapinski, Managing Director, Research, GPCA</cite></blockquote>
</div></div>



“For the first time, in this year’s entertainment and media outlook, there’s a telco outlook that has gone with it. One of the aspects that has been covered as part of that telco outlook this year is telco capex spend – how much are the telcos actually looking to spend from a capex perspective in the various markets,” says Stuart.



A glance at the numbers in the assurance, tax and advisory services provider’s Perspectives from the Global Entertainment &amp; Media Outlook 2023–2027: Resetting expectations, refocusing inward and recharging growth for the three aforementioned sub-Saharan African regions seems to indicate an appetite for investment. This includes the convergence of the creative and technology industries.



“When we look at capex spend – and there is some further breakdown in terms of broadband, mobile broadband – in Kenya in 2022, there was $470 million worth of spend in the capex space and that’s going to grow each year at around 2.2%. By 2027, telcos are forecast to be spending around $520 million on their capex infrastructure in Kenya. The vast majority of that – about 85% – is going to be in the mobile space. That probably comes as no surprise given the strong mobile- first characteristics that the market has.”



Stuart adds: “Nigeria is going to be spending more than three times that, so almost $2 billion by 2027. There is a lot of investment in Nigeria. You’ve got your big players – Glo, MTN – they’ve been spending in terms of upgrading the network. They’re already sitting at about



$1.8 billion and it’s going to be a bit above and below that over the forecast period; fairly consistent with that level. Again, the vast majority of that is sitting in the mobile space. South Africa is spending $1.6 billion and that’s actually going to drop a little bit over the forecast period. It makes sense in a way because a lot of the 5G stuff is already in progress. There’s a lot of spend happening at the moment but over time, that does mean it will slow down.”



Data consumption is expected to continue its increase, leaving telcos with solutions to find from an economic and infrastructure perspective. “The challenge that telcos and, particularly, the content providers have is the monetization of that because [it’s] very expensive to upgrade this. There’s obviously downward pressure on data prices but money needed to be spent to upgrade the infrastructure to cater for the increasingly data-heavy world that we live in.



About 80% of data consumption is sitting in the video space, and there are various other categories around communications, music etc. Does it mean that people are watching more than listening to music? Not necessarily. Video [is] just much more heavy from a data usage perspective,” says Stuart.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">African, Tech Savvy &amp; Proud</h4>



Another notable point in the report is the impact of the continent’s youth on the growth of the mobile gaming sector.



“The fastest growing segment of video games we’re seeing is in what we call casual and social gaming. That’s your Candy Crush, it’s mobile games that people either play on a free-to-play model or ‘freemium’ where it’s free to start but then you might start paying for things down the line. A lot of that is also funded potentially through advertising that appears in those games so that’s where a lot of that growth is coming from,” says Stuart.



These developments have also opened up an emerging avenue in the cinema space and he adds that this could create opportunities in emerging economies that are primarily tech and mobile-focused.



“Video games are seen as one of the access points to the youth. [They] engage in it and we’re seeing things expanding. During Covid, the Fortnite platform, which people access from a video games’ perspective was used to host music concerts – Travis [Scott], I think, was who appeared on the Fortnite platform and had thousands and thousands of people watching his show, whereas you previously wouldn’t have seen it. There’s a bit of multi- functionality within the video games space.



“What we are seeing in the cinema space is interesting. We’ve always had, traditionally, other sorts of areas like Lego, and then you’ve got Lego: The Movie. We are now starting to see video games that have movie titles and movie franchises attached to them. Why? Because you’ve got this audience that’s already engaged with your content in the video games space and how do you try and stay engaged with them but in a different media format? It could be a series on OTT or it could be an actual big screen film. Maybe that’s some sort of element of opportunity within Kenya and Nigeria – as video games continues to grow, that could help to spur some growth as that content is repackaged into the cinema space,” Stuart concludes.

singer on stage with crowd reaching for him

Where Does Venture Capital Feature In Africa’s Entertainment Sector?

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The U.S. women’s national team game against the Netherlands was last week’s most-watched show on television as it broke records for the highest-ever English language viewership of a group stage match in women’s FIFA World Cup history.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The match, which saw the two teams draw 1-1, was watched by 6.4 million people last Wednesday, Nielsen data shows, and is the second U.S. game from this year’s World Cup to score record viewership.



The Netherlands match was the most-watched ever in a group stage and the July 21 game, a 3-1 win over Vietnam, was watched by 5.3 million people, making it the third most-viewed group stage game in Women&#8217;s World Cup history behind the 2019 U.S. game against Chile in second place.



The game against the Netherlands was the most-watched broadcast show last week by almost 1 million viewers—CBS&#8217;s&nbsp;60 Minutes&nbsp;saw 5.6 million viewers in second place, followed by Tuesday&#8217;s episode of&nbsp;America&#8217;s Got Talent&nbsp;with 5.8 million watchers and&nbsp;Celebrity Family Feud, which drew 3.6 million.



Viewership numbers for the final group-stage match for the U.S., a game played against Portugal Monday, have not been released but likely won’t hold up to the others because of timing—the Portugal game aired at 3 a.m. ET as opposed to 11 p.m. and 9 p.m. for the Vietnamese and Netherlands matchups, respectively.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



The next game. The 0-0 tie against Portugal allowed the U.S. team to finish second in Group E and narrowly advance. The team will play its first World Cup knockout stage game at 5 a.m. Sunday against Sweden. The World Cup is now down to its last 16 teams.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The U.S. team has won the FIFA Women&#8217;s World Cup four times—more than any other country. The Americans are the current champions after winning the 2019 tournament in France and they also won the title in 2015 in a game that became the second most-watched soccer game in American history with 26.9 million viewers,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blogs/thegoalkeeper/most-watched-soccer-games-united-states-world-cup-copa-america.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;Philadelphia Inquirer.&nbsp;No country has ever won three consecutive men&#8217;s or women&#8217;s World Cups and the feat is rare at the professional level in any sport. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2022/06/15/major-sports-teams-three-peat-last-50-years/7635754001/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">last American team</a>&nbsp;to do it was the Los Angeles Lakers, which won the NBA Championships in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Other teams include the Chicago Bulls from 1996 to 1998, New York Yankees from 1998 to 2000 and the WNBA&#8217;s Houston Comets, which won four championships from 1997 to 2000.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Fox News continued its domination in the cable sphere last week, Nielsen data shows, with nine of the 10 most-watched cable shows. All five episodes of the round-table talk show&nbsp;The Five&nbsp;were in the top 10, with Wednesday&#8217;s airing the most watched at 3.1 million viewers. MSNBC&#8217;s&nbsp;Rachel Maddow Show&nbsp;was the only non-Fox show to break in—2.5 million people watched the Monday episode, ranking it ninth place. Fox News saw a 26% jump in ratings&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/26/fox-news-ratings-surge-26-amid-post-tucker-carlson-shakeup-and-trump-interview/?sh=4e84af1d180e">two weeks ago</a>&nbsp;when it premiered its reshuffled lineup with Jesse Watters in the 8 p.m. spot once held by Tucker Carlson, and last week’s numbers show viewership has climbed even higher. Fox News averaged 1.84 million primetime viewers for the week of July 24, up from 1.81 million in the previous week.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/27/womens-world-cup-hits-record-tv-viewership-for-group-stage/?sh=6a248029358e">Women’s World Cup Hits Record TV Viewership For Group Stage</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/26/fox-news-ratings-surge-26-amid-post-tucker-carlson-shakeup-and-trump-interview/?sh=1033bef0180e">Fox News Ratings Surge 26% Amid Post-Tucker Carlson Shakeup—And Trump Interview</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2023/07/21/womens-world-cup-highest-paid-alex-morgan-megan-rapinoe/?sh=ceabde45acdd">The Highest-Paid Players At The 2023 Women’s World Cup</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2023/07/21/money-equity-and-taxes-make-news-early-at-the-2023-womens-world-cup/?sh=54fbd7196386">Money, Equity And Taxes Make News Early At The 2023 Women’s World Cup&nbsp;</a>(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/manasipathak-1/2023/07/18/netflix-will-follow-united-states-at-womens-world-cup/?sh=c4b66c12524c">Netflix Will Follow United States At Women’s World Cup</a> (Forbes)

South Africa v Italy: Group G – FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023

The Women’s World Cup Was TV’s Most-Watched Show Amid Record-Breaking Viewership

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer are bringing audiences back to the cinemas.



&nbsp;‘Barbenheimer’ fever is gripping South Africa too.



The word, coined by social media users days ahead of the simultaneous release dates of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, has turned the spotlight on the thumping return of the big screen, post-pandemic.



“The results for the opening weekend of Barbie and Oppenheimer were way beyond our forecasts and our expectations,” says Lynne Wylie, Chief Marketing Officer at Ster-Kinekor (network of movie theaters in South Africa), to FORBES AFRICA. “It was Ster-Kinekor’s biggest opening weekend by far in the post-Covid environment, and we are thrilled that more and more people are once again experiencing the joy of watching a film in a cinema.”



In the United States (US), ‘Barbenheimer’ generated more than $235.5 million in ticket sales, according to CNBC, on its opening weekend. Barbie smashed expectations by earning $155 million, becoming the biggest movie launch of the year and the biggest box office debut by a female director. Oppenheimer collected a reported $80.5 million, making it one of Nolan’s most-acclaimed and commercially successful films.



A full-fledged international box office phenomenon, according to Google Trends, interest in the two films also continues to soar in South Africa.



Despite being starkly different, with one being a sweetly subversive comedy starring Margot Robbie as the popular doll and the other with Cillian Murphy portraying the father of the atomic bomb, the two movies have managed to pull audiences in for an unlikely double feature.



“There’s something really fun about coming back [to the cinema], and I know our show is sold out,” Daniela Lamparelli, a member of the theater audience last weekend in Johannesburg watching Barbie first, followed by Oppenheimer, tells FORBES AFRICA. “It’s going be really fun to watch it and hear everyone’s reactions. It’s quite a nice experience to watch it in a cinema with lots of people. When cinemas are quite empty, you feel like watching movies at home.”



Much like the rest of the world, South Africa’s cinemas have struggled to get audiences back to theaters after the pandemic. According to a recent report in News24, cinema attendance at Ster-Kinekor was <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/tech-and-trends/news/has-barbenheimer-fever-hit-south-africa-20230720">below 50%</a> of 2019 pre-pandemic levels until recently. Restoring a sense of normalcy is a mountainous endeavor, given factors such as the rise of streaming giants such as Netflix, Disney+, and Showmax.



The theatrical window of exclusivity, or the time frame between when a movie is shown in cinemas and when it becomes available on streaming platforms, has also shrunk significantly. Reportedly, toward the end of the 1990s, movies would have six-month runs at theaters before they were found on other platforms. Today, a movie can be released in cinemas and streaming services on the same day.



“The pandemic and lingering economic impact are still hard felt on South Africans’ pockets, and with cheaper streaming offerings, going to the movies has become more of a luxury than ever before,” Gabi Zietsman, a film critic, tells FORBES AFRICA. “They are only willing to shell out money for the big blockbusters or films that demand to be seen on a big screen. Otherwise, they’ll just wait for it to go on streaming and save their money.”



Wylie says one of the major benefits of cinema is that you get to see the big blockbusters first as they were meant to be seen, on the big screen, which is “something no streaming platform can offer”.



“Great movie experiences, like great moments in life, live large in our hearts and minds. Watching a film in a cinema is also an interruption-free experience – you are able to be completely absorbed in what is playing out on the screen for the duration of the film.”



Power outages, or what is known as load-shedding in South Africa, are also why cinema audiences are being affected. South Africa is experiencing daily power cuts reaching up to 10 hours. Audiences aren’t willing to travel to a theater if there’s a chance that their movie-going experience will be interrupted. With mobile data, they can binge-watch multiple shows and movies on streaming platforms to their hearts’ content.



“While load-shedding has impacted our cinemas and affected some of the screening timings, the fact that we have already installed generators at 34 out of our total 44 cinema complexes around the country ensures that people can always come and watch a movie,” counters Ster-Kinekor’s Wylie. “Twenty one of these sites also have uninterrupted power supply systems installed to enable a completely uninterrupted movie experience.”



Data from IMDbPro reveals that the number of Hollywood films being released has also decreased since the pandemic. For countries like India, with a booming and thriving Bollywood industry, less overseas content to show in cinemas isn’t a major concern. But for South Africa, a small number of films are being produced locally, making the nation dependent on the US for pulling audiences back in to theaters.



For now, the ‘Barbenheimer’ effect reigns.



“This phenomenon wasn’t created by studios – it was birthed by audiences and fans organically,” Zietsman says. “That doesn’t mean we won’t ever have such a cultural event at the movies again. Audiences just want something new and different that they can participate in, like dressing up, and if it’s also critically good, then you’ve got a winner. Oppenheimer had the prestige, Barbie had the brand recognition, and everyone involved in both was just passionate about their work, and that passion is infectious.”

Category: Entertainment