KKBOX, Taiwan’s biggest cloud-based music service provider, said Tuesday it is looking to expand further into new markets in Asia and hopes to become a leading regional subscription service brand
June 14, 2013 Leave a comment
Music service KKBOX eyes further expansion in Asia
CNA
2013-06-13
KKBOX, Taiwan’s biggest cloud-based music service provider, said Tuesday it is looking to expand further into new markets in Asia and hopes to become a leading regional subscription service brand.
The market share leader in Taiwan and Hong Kong, KKBOX is now eyeing the Thai, Indonesian and Australian markets after successfully gaining a presence in Japan on June 1, Izero Lee, KKBOX’s CEO, was quoted as saying by local media.Lee said his company has been actively making plans to expand into overseas markets, and he personally has spent three quarters of his time traveling through Southeast Asia this year looking for opportunities.
To support its expansion ambitions, KKBOX has increased its workforce to 180 people, from 120 last year, with half of them working in research and development, Lee said.
The company currently operates in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan, supporting various systems such as Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
The expansion plans come as more people are listening to music online because of the growing popularity of mobile devices, KKBOX Asia-Pacific managing director Alex Wang said.
Compared with downloading songs to digital devices, listening to music online does not take up memory and gives users more choices, he said.
Digital music subscription services have gained growing acceptance among consumers and helped revitalize the music industry, Wang said, citing a report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry that showed overall global recorded music trade revenues growing in 2012 for the first time since 1999.
Juniper Research, a United Kingdom-based market research firm, said in a report in April that global revenue from music subscription services is expected to rise by more than 40% to US$1.7 billion this year.
KKBOX said it has acquired more than 10 million registered users and 1 million paid users globally since its streaming service was launched in 2005, and it is now considering listing in Taiwan to raise funds.
The service offers more than 10 million music tracks, and the number is expected to hit 20 million by the end of the year, Wang said.
KKBOX’s shareholders are Japanese mobile operator KDDI (with a 67.5% stake in in the company), Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC (11%), and the company’s management (21.4%).
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