How I’m Focused on Promoting Talents in Entertainment Industry — Afolabi Akanji
Afolabi Akanji is a businessman and a media practitioner who hails from Ikirun, Osun State in the Southwestern part of Nigeria. With about 20years of experience in leading media companies.
Having started with Optima Sports Management International. He joined the pioneer team of 3D Impact Media West Africa and thereafter moved to satellite TV where he worked with the giants in the industry, DSTV Media Sales an arm of Multichoice Africa with its tentacles spread across Africa.
Afolabi who later co-founded TMA Trending Media Africa (a media sales representative company) which has gone ahead to revolutionize the cultures in the media realm by being the media representative of the popular Bollywood channel “Zee World” among other prominent channels.
He founded TREIDAK GROUP. Treidak has an entertainment promoting arm whose focus is to bring talented crossover artists in the industry to the limelight both home and abroad.
Afolabi Akanji has since become an entertainment addict. On what brought him to the industry, he said: ” what brought me to entertainment is love for music. I enjoy listening to music.” Of particular importance, one of the musicians who inspired him is SB, a talented artist who is ardent at blending various sorts of genres of music. The relationship between Akanji and SB, therefore, moved from him, Akanji, being a fan and thereafter being a friend and ultimately, business slides in.
Narrating the story of how he discovered SB. He said: ” I stole his CD from a friend’s car.” According to him, one of his friends was playing SB’s CD in his car and he sort of liked it and asked his friend to give him the CD to which the friend refused. And when his friend stepped out of the car, he found a way to “steal” the CD. He would discover later that SB played at a lounge five houses away from him in Lagos and that was how their friendship cum business journey began.
SB alongside a couple of emerging artists has since been the face of Treidak entertainment.
Narrating the transformative change which has since upended SB’s musical career, he said: “Working with him has helped both platforms, especially him because he is the face out there. He has grown in leaps and bounds when it comes to popularity, exposure, and expansion. According to him, SB has become a household name in the US and has become better due to the exposure. In his own opinion, the sky is too low to be the limit for SB’s Musical Career.
On what qualifies an artist to feature under Treidak entertainment, he said such an artiste must be sure and able to prove himself beyond talent.
Afolabi is not without hope for Treidak. When asked what he thinks of the brand in the next five years, he said: ” great, great songs.” However, he added that he wasn’t expecting just any type of song but songs that are “inspirational and generational” enough to withstand the test of time. In his word, “evergreen songs.”
