“We have all the right ingredients to succeed and scale up and build a big business. We have great technology. We have great content. We have a great team and we have strong brands. You put all of these together, the sky is the limit,” proclaimed Joe Kawkabani, CEO of OSN.
He was joined by Elie Habib, co-founder of Anghami, for an exclusive interview with Campaign Middle East editor Justin Harper.
In late November, OSN+ and Anghami, music and entertainment streaming platforms, announced a deal to merge. The merger will combine Anghami’s technology and music catalogue with OSN+’s library of video content.
When I asked for soundbites to describe the merger, Habib said: “I like bold. I like ambitious. I like transformative to both industries, to both companies and to provide a new media giant in the region. But at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. And we do believe that you just need to wait to launch the new product.”
CONTENT IS KING
In simple terms, the merger will create two products housed under one company. The two products will remain separate, but interconnected.
“That app will be tightly coupled which means that the user using the Anghami app can immediately jump over to the OSN ecosystem and vice versa. The building infrastructure would be also connected to throughout and will be able to provide us some functionalities from one app into the other,” explained Habib.
“We’re taking the music that we’ve been working on for a long period of time and merging it with the best of what OSN does and creating basically a tech company that has at its core media, music and video and talking to the same user base.”
Kawkabani added: “This will enable us to serve and recommend better content for our clients and hyper-personalise the experience, which we believe is key in streaming service and stream operation.” There are also plenty of new features that will be added later on, such as a recommendation engine, along with 4K and Dolby Atmos.
TIMING IS RIGHT
When Kawkabani met Habib in 2019 the idea to merge was born, but the timing wasn’t right. The two platforms later collaborated on a Game of Thrones season 8 partnership which proved to be a success.
Kawkabani added: “So the idea stuck in my head. When I got involved in OSN, I invited Elie to join the board, and he got to understand the business better. So we then put our heads together and put the plan together, and got the blessings of both sets of shareholders and boards. And here we are.”
There’s a lot of demand for quality Arabic content in the region, and Anghami and OSN feel they can play a big role with their combined scale and size. “We can provide customers a different kind of local content that basically will appeal hopefully to their tastes.”
Startling figure time: Only 1 per cent of Anghami’s music catalogue is in Arabic, but it generates more than 60 per cent of its traffic.
“The demand in Arabic is super important. Unfortunately, there’s a lack in production of Arabic content at the same time in music and video. We have to be really picky about how we build up a new slate of Arabic video content,” said Habib.
ATTRACTING ADVERTISERS
For advertisers, there will be new infrastructure built in both apps to cater to them. “I think that the message is we have 120 million registered users and two-and-a-half million paid subscribers. And great content too. That’s something that Anghami has been doing quite well in terms of growing the advertiser base,” added Kawkabani.
Anghami and OSN+ will combine its expertise in free content, freemium, premium and subscription models and apply them across their streaming platforms.
Talking about new features for advertisers, Kawkabani revealed that “we’re going to be releasing something around that towards the end of the year. There’s definitely interest and we definitely think with our combined user base, advertisers would want to reach that.”
“We’re providing something that is unique in the region, a proposition whereby we complement not just on music, Arabic or international, but also on podcasts, on audio books, on movies, series and much more. Right now, let’s just step up and really get into a premium positioning across the region and increase our user base.”
The merger is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2024.
