Warner Music has announced a deal to acquire Middle East and North Africa based music distribution company Qanawat Music. CEO Adnan Al-Obthani will remain in his position, while also continuing to work for the distributor’s current parent company Qanawat FZ.
“Warner Music has a long-term vision for developing the market here in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as a commitment to connect Arabic artists with a global fanbase”, says Al-Obthani. “We’ve built this business up over 20 years and were determined that we would only partner with a company that we could confidently trust to look after our artists’ best interests. This will be a new chapter for Qanawat Music and we couldn’t be more excited”.
Warner’s Alfonso Perez-Soto adds: “With this new deal, we have a massive opportunity to export exciting talent from the Middle East and North Africa - there is an important and growing Arabic diaspora worldwide that we can tap into and which will help amplify the music. We’ve recently seen huge global success with our artists from Sub-Saharan Africa and we’re eager to repeat this achievement by building a proper distribution and upstreaming structure for the best talent from the Arabic world. This acquisition will also see Warner Music expand its footprint in the region, gaining representation in Dubai, Cairo and Casablanca for the first time”.
The deal is still subject to regulator approval.