Nigeria’s leading music platform iROKING.com - from the same company that made Nollywood video website iROKOtv.com - is making huge inroads in the online music business as they continue to attract subscribers from across the continent and world.

Officially launched just six months ago, iROKING has already attracted over 100 000 subscribers with new users being introduced to the platform on a daily basis.

“We are a digital business, starting first in movies with iROKOtv and then we saw a huge opportunity in music. iROKING came out of a gap that we identified, we saw that there was a breakdown in terms of the distribution of content online,” explains Michael Ugwu, chief executive of iROKING.

Looking towards the USA similar platforms like Vivo for inspiration Ugwu and his colleagues began talking with and signing some of Nigeria’s biggest music artists, which has lead to the site managing 80 artist channels at present.

“It was off the back of that, that we saw that there was a lot of traction with people downloading these videos and were getting on average 7.5 million views a month. There wasn’t an iTunes or Spotify and although there had been some guys trying similar projects nothing robust and engaging had emerged,” says Ugwu.

iROKING soon began to diversify from simply offering music videos to offering audio. This allowed them to fill the gap in terms of music video licensing and generating revenue for local artists from this activity.

“We had artists like Terry G and Flava who had their content on iTunes for years but never received a dollar for it so that became something big for us as we approached these platforms and asked how the content got on the particular platform,” says Ugwu.

By removing the artist’s content and properly licensing their work iROKING has been able to pay them the royalties owed and create a transparent model previously lacking in the Nigerian music industry.

“Its allowing the artists to see what is really going on and moving the scene away from YouTube and music lockers,” Ugwu comments.

The music industry worldwide is under real pressure as piracy and content sharing cuts into the profits. And while iROKING is seeking to do their part in combating this piracy, Ugwu sees a lack of knowledge surrounding intellectual property as the big issue in the African music scene.

“For [a] lack of education artists will put their content anywhere and everywhere so it’s not the fault of someone who goes and takes it for free. Revenue is driven by live performances, live performances come through visibility and visibility comes from hyper-distribution of content,” explains Ugwu.

When iROKING works with artists they explain that it is not about stopping this hyper-distribution but instead about control and management. It is in this spirit of gaining visibility that the mobile platform has become a vital conduit in distributing an artists content, it is this mobile platform that iROKING wants to leverage to build its brand.

Ugwu and his team are already exploring that space, “Most Africans will first experience the internet through their phones and in terms of what iROKING is doing is we have mobile music apps which are still in beta. We have IOS and Android and are looking at doing something for feature phones which is actually the big, big play in Africa.”

Consumers are able to get the app from the iTunes store, the Google play store and its also accessible for Symbian and Window, with the second version due to be released in six weeks.

“In terms of the feature phones we are pushing something out for that because if you look at a country like Nigeria with 170 million people the market for feature phones is somewhere between 70% and 80%. You can’t ignore that,” says Ugwu.

Looking into the future Ugwu and iROKING are focused on driving usage before aggressively monetising the product. He explains that the experience with this sort of platform is still relatively new in Africa and so the aim is simply to get people using iROKING.

“Our catalogue stretches back to 1963 and so I want as many people as possible using iROKING.com. I want my mom using iROKING.com.”

With music and mobile playing such a big role in the daily life of Africa a platform like iROKING finds itself well placed to bring the two together and provide a soundtrack for the continent.