Jan 7 2008 saw world’s number three mobile device manufacturer Motorola Inc’s acquisition of pan-regional music provider Soundbuzz Pte Ltd. With over 90% of all digital music content sales in Asia sold via mobile channels, Magz Osborne eyes the opportunities for music – and audio visual – sales to mobile
Magz Osborne, 1 March 2008
Asia’s largest online and mobile music company, with 50-plus partner stores attracting the majority of online and wireless purchases, Soundbuzz also operates its own on-line store, www.soundbuzz.com, as well as providing content and/or technology infrastructure.
The company has licensing agreements with all 4 major international music majors plus more than 45 major domestic labels and independent music labels. As a spokesperson explains, “In markets like India, labels like Saregama dominate due to the fact that 95% or more of the music consumed in those markets is domestic repertoire so the international labels have far less traction. Domestic majors with which Soundbuzz has licensing agreements include (among others): Saregama, Tips, Venus, Inreco and T-Series out of India; Star Records, Universal Records, RS Promotion in South East Asia; and Shock, Central Station and Roadshow in Australia.”
Following its acquisition by Motorola, the spokesperson says it is business as usual for Soundbuzz. “We will continue to provide white label services to telco clients in our key markets and will remain handset-agnostic. Soundbuzz will continue to focus on our key markets of India, South East Asia and Australia.”
“This transaction with Soundbuzz,” said Bill Wenre, Motorola’s senior vice president, future solutions and technology for mobile devices, “will provide Motorola with one of the most extensive music libraries in the Asia Pacific region, advance our music and video offerings in Australia and South East Asia, and build on the success of our MotoMusic services in China.”
With www.motomusic.com.cn, Motorola created in 2005 the first integrated platform in China for mobile music. Now Motomusic web and wap sites are customized for each region of North Asia, allowing consumers to experience the latest and hottest hits from artists of every music genre on any Motorola music handset. Consumers can access Motomusic to download ring tones, full tracks, music videos and other exclusive content. The newly upgraded Motomusic supports web 2.0 and other community features allowing users to stay connected to the latest new releases and share their favorite music experiences.
Motomusic is available in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Partnering with more than 20 leading international and local music labels, the Motomusic website is the first and largest legal music download site in Mainland China.
The cost of online and mobile music downloads varies quite markedly depending on the market, the type of service, and the prices charged to consumers by our clients, say Soundbuzz who, on average, sell about 200,000 online music downloads each month and 3million mobile music derivatives (ie ringtones, truetones, ringback tones, full over-the-air songs). “We don’t measure registered users as Soundbuzz is predominantly a provider of white label services to telcos and other clients. The ratio of domestic versus international repertoire sold is market dependent, although in Asia you can safely say that around 90% of music consumed is domestic repertoire.”
From Motorola’s perspective, since its launch in July 2005 through June 2007, new member registration at www.motomusic.com.cn and wap.motomusic.com.cn had grown to 3.5million registered users. “Daily page views had increased by 696% over the same period, with the highest daily page views recorded being more than 6.5million - on the day that a partnership with top-selling Mandarin artist, Jay Chou, was announced. Motorola is seeing about 60% of its total handset sales in China derived from sales of music-enabled phones.”
Echoing Bill Werner, the Motorola spokesperson says the company’s acquisition of Soundbuzz will help aid the expansion plans of its Motomusic, online and mobile music delivery platform across Asia, particularly in the key markets of India and South East Asia. “We see enormous potential for over-the-air video downloads, given improving mobile infrastructure in our key markets plus improved storage capacity on mobile handsets.”
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