| 👋 Good morning. It's been a pirate-y week. First came a debate about whether a circulating link to African books was pirated. Then, Showmax sent a goodbye email to subscribers, with some blaming piracy for its struggles. And now, Emmanuel Analike of Netnaija Media Enterprises - a site famous for hosting pirated films from almost everywhere - has been arraigned in Abuja by the Nigerian Copyright Commission. Safe to say the piracy conversation isn't slowing down. Phew. | Let's get into it ⬇️ | In this edition: This week in pop culture, Showmax's exit, is it piracy or policy failure, a personality test, an IWD playlist, and some fresh stats | If you're enjoying this, don't forget to subscribe and join The Juice community. We're building this together ♡. | | | | | | Quick Question | If you could return to this world as either a rich person who never finds love or a poor person who always has true love, which would you choose? | Answer at the bottom of this newsletter. |
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| | 🗞️ THIS WEEK IN POP CULTURE | | | | | | 🎵 MUSIC | While there are talks about Afrobeats investment facing a halt, Wizkid tops Chartmaster's list of all-time best-selling African artiste. He has over 10 billion total streams on Spotify and is the first African artist to achieve this. |
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| | | | | ☆ CELEBRITY | Rema just bagged a nomination for "Most Handsome Man Alive 2026" by Netizen's Choice Magazine. We rarely ever laud Nigerian men, but that face card is hard to ignore. Well deserved! |
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| | | | | 📽️ FILM | ShowMax announced a discontinuation of its service in the near future. Seeing the email this morning broke our hearts. While we are on the lookout for a solid replacement, we join African cinephiles all over to mourn this loss. |
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| | | | | 📚 LITERATURE | The publishing company, Roving Heights was called out for poor work ethics. The claims are still unverified, but word is the whistleblower is now being threatened by the co-founder. Messy. |
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| | | | | ↝ TRENDING | Apparently, if you are a woman from an upper economic class, you are not entitled to opinions. Jola (ISWIS) has been facing a lot of backlash lately for giving opinions such as "don't pirate". Yes, privilege can blind you, but bullying is not any good now, is it? |
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| | | 🍋 MAIN SQUEEZE | Showmax is exiting. It should concern you | | | | | | If you've ever watched Flawsome, Wura, Real Housewives of Lagos, or spent a Saturday night arguing about Big Brother Naija - this concerns you. | Showmax is gone. | The platform that spent a decade building something that actually looked and sounded like us, with stories in Yoruba, in Swahili, in Afrikaans, on budgets that took the continent seriously, has been discontinued. Folded into a French company's super app. | It started in 2015 as a defensive move. A small team inside a South African pay-TV company trying to beat Netflix to the continent before Netflix got there. Nobody expected it to become a cultural institution. But it did. | Then Canal+, a French media giant, paid $3 billion for MultiChoice, Showmax's parent company. And then, the announcement came. Ten years. Just like that. |
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| | | | | ZOOM IN | Here's what's gone: a library that housed some of the most-watched Nigerian content of the past decade. The second season of Real Housewives of Lagos broke first-day streaming records in Nigeria. Flawsome built a dedicated following around four women navigating ambition in modern Lagos. The truth is the future of content is uncertain. | And Showmax wasn't even the first domino. Amazon exited Nigeria quietly in 2024. Netflix denied its leaving, but we know the real truth. | The platform has halved its Nigerian original commissions every year since 2023. Nineteen Nollywood titles in the first half of 2023. Ten in the first half of 2024. Five in the first half of 2025. | Filmmaker Kunle Afolayan called it the "fatal last supper" at the Zuma Film Festival. Projects were cancelled mid-production. Filmmakers woke up to emails. |
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| | | | | ZOOM OUT | So here's where we actually are: Nigeria has the largest film industry on the continent, and it is running out of places to send its films. The international streamers came in, raised the bar, got everyone dependent on their commissioning cycles, and then the naira collapsed, the numbers stopped making sense, and one by one, they started leaving. | Nollywood has survived before. It was born in the chaos of home video, piracy, and no infrastructure. But surviving isn't the same as thriving, and the question now is structural: who distributes African film to African audiences when the foreign platforms leave, and the homegrown ones get swallowed? | The answer has to come from us. New models, new platforms, new coalitions between filmmakers and local distributors and diaspora audiences. Because the alternative - waiting for the next foreign company to come save us - already played out. We know how that story ends. |
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| | | 🔪 The Peel | Is it Piracy or Policy failure?
| | | | | 🔍 THE DISCOURSE | If you have been on X (formerly Twitter), then the "Piracy or No Piracy" discourse must have trickled down to your timeline. And if you live under the sea like Spongebob, don't worry, I'll get you all caught up. | A few days ago, someone shared a Google Drive link with 200 scanned copies of African books. Their action split the literary community into two: Yay Piracy and Nay Piracy. | So, what is piracy? It is the unauthorised use, reproduction, or distribution of copyrighted material. Going by this definition, regardless of the uploader's intention, his action could be termed piracy. |
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| | | | | PEELING IT BACK | Now let's discuss the Nay Piracy side. There is the belief that "real artists" shouldn't care about money, and it has shown in the conversation with some writers insinuating they care more about being read than being paid. | All these add up to why piracy doesn't seem as big a deal as it is. But it affects earnings. Writing, editing, and marketing are all labour that should be compensated. | We are forgetting that we live in a capitalist world, so the question "Are you really a writer if you write for money?" is a deeply unserious question when your metre box is beeping. | Creative industries struggle to scale in economies where piracy is normalized. When we pirate, we may unintentionally weaken the very ecosystem we claim to love. |
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| | | | | ANOTHER LAYER | The Yay piracy side of the argument also seems to have understandable reasons. Books are expensive—relative to average income—and the prices keep doubling as the naira crashes. | In 2023, I got Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends for N5500, and today it is being sold for N13,000. Public libraries feel like a term that belong in La La Land in the country we live in. | Academic journal access is locked behind paywalls. Digital libraries are almost non-existent or inaccessible. In a country like ours, where access is structurally restricted, piracy becomes a workaround. | I know we want to see piracy as a moral failing, an individual one, but if there is no legal infrastructure for access, moral purity becomes a luxury position. |
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| | | | | THE CORE | If the right to education is a basic right, there should be publicly funded libraries. | Digital library systems will be a priority. There would be investment in local publishing and the creative economy at large. It is the government's duty to stabilize the economy so that breaking bread does not become a luxury. And that is who I've been side-eying since this argument started.
| When we start seeing piracy as the systemic issue that it is, then maybe, just maybe, we will be inclined to hold the government accountable. And progress won't be so far off. |
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| | | 💡 JUICE BOX | | | | | | If you could return to this world as either a rich person who never finds love or a poor person with true love, which would you choose? | | Previously… Last week, it was between Visibility and Impact; click here (pls click it so my employers can see workings) if you missed it. The votes are in: Visibility - 48% Impact - 52%
We asked people on The Juice Team, and here's our answer. We're planting our flag on visibility. Think about it: a brilliant idea hidden in the dark doesn't change the world—it just sits there. Visibility is the necessary engine of impact. Without an audience to receive, interact with, or be transformed by your work, the impact simply doesn't exist. |
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| | | 🎵 PRESSED BY THE JUICE | This Week's Playlist | | It's Women's Month, so of course our playlist is women-coded. Looking for some smooth tracks to pre-game with your girls this weekend or just to remind yourself of the baddie you are, this playlist is for you. | From Ayra Starr, Tems, to Niniola, we basically assembled the baddie avengers just for you! | Don't forget to save, we update frequently. | Interested in guest curating? Reply to our mail, thejuice@pulse.ng | |
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| | | FRESH STATS | 50% | The surveyed percentage of Nigerians who admit that they have cheated on a partner. Streets rough gan. | | Today's email was brought to you by Shalom Tewobola and Praise Okeoghene Vandeh. | Editing by: Shalom Tewobola | Designs by: Daniel Banjoko | Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. | Have a story or product that needs to be seen? Submit here. |
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