CRÉATION AFRICA: Turning SA’s music hits into successful businesses and generational wealth

Polymath music promoter, financier and creative maven Ninel Musson arrives in a bundle of energy. She’s matching the spring air in Joburg: alive with possibilities.

First question: what’s on her playlist? “Oh, man, there is so much great music. It’s hard to choose. There’s new music from so many great South African artists.”

It’s a brilliant Thursday morning, and tomorrow means a new playlist. “I came up in an R&B era, and I love that it’s getting a lot more love now. But I’m always listening to a playlist of South African greats as well, including Tresor ... and the iconic AKA.”

She co-founded the independent talent management agency Vth Season, a record label whose artists included AKA, Tresor and Ami Faku.

“We learnt to do business while the industry and the infrastructure were still catching up locally,” she says. “We got to break a lot of new artists, new music, new ways of rolling out album launches... But there were many, many challenges behind the scenes... Okay, this is the case study now. What have I learnt?”

Only after stepping back from the record label did Musson have time to reflect. 

“And honestly, a lot of that work is now in the curricula that have become Music Business Lab programmes and syllabi.” Music had drawn Musson away from the conventional financial management career she studied for and into cultural entrepreneurship.

“Music is our stories and our vibe, literally. And the fact that other people are loving that right now is just giving us the economic value that I think we’ve always been waiting for.”

More than promising projections

For her, Africa’s creative economy needs more than promising projections.

“We don’t want to be high potential forever... We want capital to move into the space. We want investors to take the space seriously. We want great songs and music to be cultural assets and high-value assets... as part of what could shape generational wealth.

“The job creation potential in our industry, especially music, is really, really significant.”

Music reaches into film, fashion, advertising and gaming. The challenge is turning that cultural influence into businesses, jobs and intellectual property that Africans own, long after the music has stopped playing.

“I was looking at how money is lost in the industry, how difficult it is to build sustainable music businesses... And one of the most obvious things is skills development and training... And I was like, hey, we should put this all down and make a programme.”

That was the seed of Music Business Lab (MBL), which Musson now leads as co-founder. One speciality is music publishing: helping composers, songwriters and rights holders register works, manage copyright and collect royalties. Its courses extend across the music value chain, from artists to managers and those working behind the scenes.

“All of the MBL programmes provide learning that you must be able to apply right now, like go into the office tomorrow and put something new into place that improves your systems or increases your revenue,” Musson explains.

Playing it forward

Musson’s faculty is made up of working music professionals, teaching with real contracts, costly mistakes and African case studies, rather than just theory. A senior publishing executive from Warner Music Group and representatives of Downtown Music Publishing are among those who have taught.

“I’ve turned all of my contacts in the industry into professors. They now teach.

“They’ve learnt these lessons, in many cases, the hard way... You’re now sharing this with 50 other people who need to know, and they won’t make that same mistake again.

“There’s nothing else like it. I hear that from students all the time... Students graduate with a certificate from the University of Pretoria as well as a short course.”

Musson says MBL has graduated more than 100 independent music publishers and is approaching its fourth publishing cohort. Its publishing course has a relationship with the University of Pretoria.

“Another programme is called MBL Bootcamp, which was made more broadly with emerging music entrepreneurs in mind... We’ve actually done two of these programmes already.

“We wanted to put students through a venture-sprint-type programme... and then layer music industry information over that.”

Run with Constitution Hill, the Bootcamp takes entrepreneurs through value propositions, business models and pitching, with music industry knowledge built into each stage.

“They immediately translate it into their business plans or their strategies... How you look at your contract when it comes in, how you look at the negotiation for a sync deal. How you look at your rates that you’re setting up.”

Création Africa helped Musson refine MBL and think about how it could grow. MBL was selected as one of 15 finalists for the seven-month business incubation programme organised by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of France and the French Institute of South Africa (Ifas), to support cultural entrepreneurs across South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi. 

“It made me focus even more on building the business, not doing the business, which is something that, as a founder, you often get sidetracked into doing... The way we’ve now shaped our business model has come from some of those finance coaching sessions.

“We had incredible mentors. For me, particularly, I would say the finance and business model sessions were probably most useful.”

The next step is a virtual platform

The grant gave her space to invest in the organisation, including a fractional chief of staff and faculty leadership, rather than simply funding individual projects. This was a chance to build an institution that could grow.

“And then I also think just being in a cohort and realising that everybody, even though they may not have been in music, is doing something really amazing in a particular part of the creative and cultural space.”

Musson is looking beyond South Africa, exploring collaborations in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. The next step is a virtual learning platform for music entrepreneurs across the continent.

“I think our exciting next steps are going to be around more of the virtual programmes that we can offer broader reach on... That will allow us to actually offer the programming to individual learners wherever they are.”

The courses also address AI, from its impact on songwriting and production to its possible benefits for marketing, distribution, content management and royalty collection.

“I think programmes like Création Africa are super important. And I’m really happy to see them being repeated and enlarging the size of the cohort.”

Africa has proved it can make music the world wants to hear. Musson wants Africans to build and own the businesses that make it work. DM

Our writing about Création Africa is made possible in partnership with the French Institute of South Africa (Ifas). Création Africa is an initiative of The French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of France in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi, and Ifas.