Apple has finally joined the music streaming party by launching Apple Music, which will be available in at least 100 countries. Much has already been written about the impact it will have on the streaming market in Europe and the US – but what is the outlook for streaming in Asia?
No music streaming kingpin – yet
Apple Music will not be entering a crowded market – music streaming services are relatively new in many countries, and no international or regional players have yet secured a commanding position.
Although Spotify was founded as far back as 2006 in Europe, it didn’t launch in Asia until April 2013, and it is still yet to launch in several Asian countries, such as Thailand, Japan and Korea. Pandora may have an estimated 80 million users, but it is still limited to the US, Australia and New Zealand, so it has no Asia presence and is still far from being a truly international offering. Tidal is perhaps somewhere in the middle – it is currently available in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand but still unavailable in a number of Asian countries.
The music streaming market in Asia is rather more fragmented at a country level, with a number of hugely successful national sites, such as MelOn in Korea, Recochoku in Japan and Alibaba-owned Xiami in China. To succeed in these markets, international services such as Apple Music cannot simply roll out their US or European offerings and expect the users to follow – they will need to localise substantially to meet the expectations of local users.
The biggest competitor: piracy
In Asia, conversion from another music streaming service is trumped by a more widely used method: pirate services.
Piracy in Asia remains rampant. In Singapore, seven out of 10 young people confess to actively engaging in piracy, raising two challenges. First, how do you convert users who are accustomed to accessing all of the music they want for free and with few perceived repercussions? And even if you do convert those users, how do you convert them at a price point that is profitable for the service, the labels and the artists, when the users are used to a price point of…free?
Undoubtedly the launch of paid streaming services will help to address the piracy issue, but it will take more than these services to fix the problem in Asia –whether it’s education about the impact of piracy on creative industries, firmer enforcement against pirate sites, or an effort to stem the tide of advertising dollars that fund many these services.
Navigating content and censorship rules
Music streaming services will have to navigate a dizzying number of local content and censorship rules in Asia. Content regulation in Asia remains a perceived barrier to entry for Apple in the video space, with it currently offering only a slimmed down version of iTunes in some countries due to fears that it would have to censor content. Although content rules and censorship will be less of a headache for music streaming than they are for video streaming, regulators will still be watching closely for content that fails to comply with local “community standards” or, in some countries, that cuts across national or government interests.
For regulators, meanwhile, the challenge is to balance the need to uphold local content rules with the fact that these rules are a perceived barrier to entry which is limiting the legitimate offerings available to consumers. And with a limited range of legitimate services on offer, these same users are the ones who are turning to pirate sites or using VPNs to access international services that are not compliant with the local content rules that the regulators are trying to enforce.
Payments won’t be easy
Apple reportedly has 800m credit cards on file. But across Asia, credit card penetration remains low, for example in Indonesia and Thailand, where credit card penetration rates are 6% and 5% respectively.
A number of countries in the region still operate a cash-dominated society – and without a digital payments infrastructure, it will be more difficult for subscription services in Asia. It is for this reason that streaming video services such as HOOQ, a joint venture between Singtel, Warner Bros and Sony, are looking at deals with local telcos (such as Globe in the Philippines) to bundle streaming video with mobile or broadband subscriptions. Streaming music services will also need to think creatively about how to operate a subscription business model in countries where credit cards are still not the norm.
Despite the challenges, this is the year of online streaming
2015 is the year of online streaming in Asia. Video streaming is already pushing ahead – Netflix will make its first move into the continent with a Japan launch, and regional services such as HOOQ and iFlix have already launched in a number of markets. Apple Music and the enormous Apple marketing machine behind it will go a long way to driving growth in the music streaming market and that will be good news not just for Apple but also for its international and national competitors. Nonetheless, streaming services of all kinds must overcome several challenges before subscription-based streaming becomes truly profitable in Asia.
Matt Pollins is a principle associate at Olswang Asia and author of the blog Connected Asia, where this article was originally posted
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