D'banj dumps GLO for MTN in surprise new deal

Dbanj signs new MTN deal.Kokomaster, D'banj has parted ways with Michael Adenuga's Globacom and pitched tent with rival, MTN. A highly placed source tells Thenetng that 'the deal happened a few weeks ago and Dbanj is very happy about it'.This will be the 2nd time Dbanj will fail to renew a deal with Globacom. D'banj and Globacom fell out in 2010 when the pop singer reportedly entered the company's bad books and all efforts at reconciliation failed. Despite multiple interventions, the telco refused to extend his N70M two-year contract, settling instead for pop Twins Psquare for a four year deal worth over N240m. But in 2013, a chance meeting with Glo's billionaire owner Mike Adenuga led to a new endorsement deal, one of the costliest signings of 2013. That arrangement has now expired, and insiders say a renewal is not on the cards. What's not certain is whether Globacom desired a renewal in the first place. 'D'banj is a content evangelist. Ideally he should have been with MTN in the first place. Glo really doesn't do much with music content so I assume D'banj has been counting his losses seeing he would have earned huge cheques from MTN's several VAS products', a telecoms insider said.Dbanj and MTN are partnering with BOI (Bank Of Industry) to pioneer a new service called 'The Cream Platform'.A rep from D'banj's company, DKM tells us that, 'It's more of a partnership between MTN and DKM to launch a platform of visible hope for the creative industry where creative content will be found, housed, financed, nurtured, published, marketed,distributedand sold with track-able monitoring by content owners without leaving their comfort zones. With the support of the Bank of industry who is providing funding for DKM, this initiative and the launching of a new publishing company'D'banj, a charming entertainer and businessman, has in recent times worn more suits than denim; flying around the world to pitches and presentations, hoping to build solutions for some of the industry's problems.In April at NECLive, he announced a nationwide distribution platform in partnership with SLOT and Gabosky.Sources say his new deal with MTN is a further step in exploring such solutions ' helping distributing entertainment products better, monetizing and monitoring music content and catalogues, and experimenting with markets within the African Union.
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