Smartphone use is central to music listeners in parts of East Asia, but only a minority of users are committed subscribers to streaming services. This apparent contradiction may explain the rise of micro-subscriptions in the region.
“About 81% of music listeners in Malaysia use smartphones as devices to listen to music in a typical month, yet only 31% of music streaming operators in Malaysia pay for a streaming subscription,” says a new report from consultancy Luminate. The company’s recent Music 360 study examines music consumption habits and preferences in select Asia-Pacific markets, including South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia, excluding China, India, Singapore and Australia.
Platforms like Spotify are addressing the new music appetite of Asia Pacific consumers by offering one-time mobile plans (“premium mini subscriptions”) on a daily or weekly basis that grant temporary access and targeted premium features (no ads and song downloads for offline listening calling, high-quality audio, etc.) from the entire catalog of audio content.
This reflects attempts by video broadcasters in less affluent parts of Southeast Asia to offer non-recurring “bag rates”, billing through telecom operators and deeply discounted recurring subscription plans.
While mini subscriptions can be seen as a precursor to the benefits of a paid subscription, many East Asian users are already adept at using streaming to discover music. The Luminate report says that one in two music listeners from the Asia Pacific region use social media sites or apps to discover new music and artists.
The video is especially important for discovering music in the less developed parts of the region. Music listeners in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines are twice as likely to use short video sites and apps like TikTok to discover their music.
However, the area also boasts important local music streaming platforms, such as South Korea’s Kakao Entertainment’s Melon. Resso, a hybrid music listening and sharing app in Indonesia, is used by 56% of those familiar with the platform and supports custom streaming of the user’s music habits to others.
Social sharing can lead to music discovery across borders. Analyzing the top 10,000 songs in the Asian countries covered in the report, Luminate says that the best songs in Indonesia closely match those in Malaysia.
[ad_2]
