Asia’s 1st online music store
p2pnet.net News:- Temporarily stymied in their efforts to get their weak-kneed online music ’stores’ happening in Europe, Big Music and its adherents haven’t forgotten Asia where, apparently, “the first up-to-date online music store” is slated to go online in March.
Apple and Roxio want to start iTunes and Napster II outlets in Japan this year, but in Asia, “the legal digital music market is much smaller with the few sites that are set up generally unable to offer the latest songs, according to Singapore-based digital music service provider Soundbuzz,” an Agence France-Presse story here quotes Soundbuzz director and co-founder Shabnam Melwani-Reis as saying.
“There isn’t any current compelling music available for download in Asia.”
[It's the same in North America, Mr Melwani-Reis - Ed]
Soundbuzz is helping to set up a music portal in Singapore similar to Australia’s BigPond Music, which it also helped to develop, and believes offering the latest hits is the only way to succeed, says AFP going on, ‘The tracks have to be available online when the CD is available in stores,’ Mr Melwani-Reis said. ‘We have not been able to do this before because we did not have the licence, but with the new portal this will be possible’.”
Soundbuzz is also helping clients set up similar operations in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as revamping an existing Indian portal, says AFP and, “Soundbuzz’s chief executive officer, Sudhanshu Sarronwala, said setting up legal alternatives would entice many music lovers away from free file-sharing programmes and websites.”
The story has a 19-year-old Singaporean student, “who regularly illegally downloads music from Kazaa, mIRC and Morpheus and only wanted to be known as Siti,” saying she’d be willing to pay for her favourite songs – (iTunes) is the most ‘in’ thing in the market at the moment, so I wouldn’t want to miss out on this,” she said.
It also has 21-year-old undergraduate “John” saying he’d “continue to use free share networks” because among other things, “There’s a high likelihood that the site would only have your usual top 40 hits and pop music staples they play on (radio station) Perfect 10 – a lot of which isn’t what I listen to.”
