eMusic keeps an eye on the Asian market

After the jubilant successes in Europe in 2006, the eMusic digital music business is preparing for the next massive 'landing' in Asia.

When launching a digital music download service in September last year in Europe, eMusic became the first service to open in all 27 EU member states, 'taking over' iTunes in a number of major markets such as the UK. and Germany.

In an effort to seek further market expansion, the New York-based business is aiming to target the Asian market, with the main focus being Japan.

Mr. David Pakman, eMusic chairman, said: ' Expanding to international schools is always in our work plan. Asia is an attractive market but also challenging . ' EMusics confidently declares that they are Europe's second-largest digital music provider, although no official data confirms this yet.

Last week, when answering the press, Mr. David Pakman proudly said: ' Within 150 days of launching the service, we have sold 4.5 million songs and no doubt about it. That helped us get the runner-up position in this field. Overall, according to us, the number of tourists in Europe is higher than in the US, so it can be seen that the demand for legal and handy digital music services will have great potential '.

Source: emusic.com In the US, the largest music market in the world, EMusic is second only to iTunes and 'outperforms' other famous brands like Rhapsody, MSN Music, Napster, Yahoo.

EMusic makes itself a 'personal identity' in the digital music market, that is, its songs can be played on any digital music device, including iPods. Whereas iTunes music can only be played on iPods, iPods cannot listen to music from other services such as Napster or Rhapsody.

"Play hard" music giants

EMusic's wise policy of creating its own identity has made no one of the four Vivendi's music giants Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group and Warner Music agree to cooperate in providing services.

Pakman said he continues to negotiate with the giants that hold two-thirds of the global music, but if they do not provide MP3-format music, his label will not use music. they.

Instead, eMusic is releasing about 2 million songs by 13,000 independent brands that are different from all: jazz, blue, classic and many others, serving about 250,000 of its subscribers.

Pakman did not complain about this. He said: ' Today, old-fashioned customers are very disadvantaged with retailing, although this is still a pretty decent market segment. Such customers still tend to prefer unauthorized services. But it is still better to create a diverse choice for customers and meet the tastes of more people . '

Not only selling music and collecting monthly fees, eMusic also has a team of 120 music experts who give advice, help customers evaluate and review songs. EMusic chairman said: ' We have two million catolog songs and sell over two-thirds of that quarter on a quarterly basis .'

Currently, the destination that EMusic is aiming at is Asia. According to an IFPI report released last weekend, Japan is the first market to have digital music sales enough to make up for the decline in revenue from CDs.

But according to Mr. Pakman, up to 70% of songs sold in the country of the rising sun are indigenous traditional music, so copyright registration is required before launching the service. To do that, music experts need to register with a Japanese company and the preparation process may take several years.

Do Duong