Dubai: Anghami, the UAE-based Arabic music streaming platform, now wants to create music as well. In another venture where digital meets offline, Anghami is launching a ‘Lab’ in Dubai where musicians and other content creators can tap into their creativity and come up with the lyrics and high notes.
The music thus created will be streamed exclusively on Anghami. The Anghami Lab is a joint venture with Addmind, a hospitality-focussed business, and will also come up in Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Cairo, Beirut, Doha and, well beyond these shores, in London, New York and Los Angeles.
Not just music studios, the Anghami Labs will serve up cuisines – a fusion of Arabic and international recipes - and feature lounges too. “Addmind is a leading expert in conceptualizing and operating hospitality spaces, and this is a great opportunity to further reinforce the value we provide digitally to be converged offline in a unique user-to-guest experience,” said Eddy Maroun, Co-founder and CEO of Anghami.
This is the first major new initiative that Anghami is venturing into after the announcement of a merger with Vistas Media via a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) deal. It will see the local digital platform list on Nasdaq in New York within the next few weeks.
Tony Habre, CEO of Addmind, said: “Anghami is more than just a streaming platform, they have elevated the value of the music industry in the Middle East as a whole. Anghami Lab is an amazing and unique concept that embodies our rich Arab culture with an international twist - which we are thrilled to bring to fruition and scale.”
Addmind operates nine hospitality brands, including White, Iris and Clap.
“The SPAC merger process has a number of technical milestones that must be met before completion," the company said. "The filing of the merger proxy is the next step in the technical process of the proposed business combination between Anghami and Vistas Media Acquisition Company (VMAC).
"We have been working towards completion, but these processes invariably take some time. We look forward to completing the remaining steps of the process.”
