How Would You Bring Digital Music Sales to Indonesia?

Indonesia’s music industry at the moment is beholden to ringback tones, the audio replacements that you hear when you make a phone call to a mobile number. While sales of physical albums have deteriorated over the last decade, ringback tones have become highly popular since its introduction in the mid 2000s. These can come in the form of song snippets, quotes, chants, or just about any sound.

Ringback tone is a premium service made possible through content providers who offer these audio snippets through the use of premium SMS service. Mobile subscribers can request to change their tones to one of many selections from their respective network operators.

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Spotify’s Asia Expansion: What Really Needs To Be Done

spotify - daniel_ek_and_martin_lorentzon-3 — Spotify founders Martin Lorentzon and Daniel Ek

This is a guest post by Ario Tamat. Ario worked in the digital music industry in Indonesia since 2003, and currently works in the movie and TV industry in Vietnam. Keep up with him on Twitter at @barijoe or his blog on http://barijoe.wordpress.com

Recently, Spotify announced that it will be expanding into Asia and appointing Dan Brody, an ex-Googler who has lived and worked in Asia for 10 years, as the General Manager for Asia-Pacific. Dan Brody himself, according to his LinkedIn profile, has held a number of high-level positions in China, the latest being CEO of the Koolanoo Group, which owns and operates several websites in China.

Spotify has enjoyed success in some EU countries, and has had a lot of success with its US launch, especially since the integration with Facebook. It enjoys partnerships with all four major labels, which are Universal Music Group International, EMI Music International, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment; and also partner with The Orchard and Merlin Networks, which are essentially aggregators for independent musicians and labels.

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Selling Music vs Selling Music as Experience

Several days ago, Indonesia’s Minister for Communication and Information announced that he was going to block 4shared along with the 20 other sites that have been shortlisted for access restriction across the country due to various copyright violations.

Additionally, the Minister also said that the cost of a downloaded song should not be too expensive, citing a range between Rp 500 and Rp 1000, adding that rights owners and publishers need to make a profit to sustain their businesses and creative ventures.

According to the Minister, people would not mind paying that amount to acquire music legally from the internet and that the payment method could be through credit cards or prepaid phone credits.

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Amazon Akuisisi AmieStreet

Layanan penjual musik digital AmieStreet mengumumkan bahwa mereka telah diakuisisi oleh Amazon pada tanggal 8 September kemarin, dan mulai 22 September 2010 seluruh layanannya akan di-forward ke Amazon.com.

Para pengguna diharapkan mengunduh semua file yang pernah mereka beli dan menghabiskan seluruh credit yang masih mereka miliki sebelum tanggal tersebut, karena nantinya tidak akan terbawa ke layanan milik Amazon.

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BandCamp Terapkan Model Bagi Hasil

BandCamp, penyedia layanan jualan musik digital yang memungkinkan band atau artis bisa langsung menjual sendiri musiknya, mengumumkan bahwa mereka akan menerapkan model bisnis bagi hasil setelah sejak awal berdirinya tidak menarik sepeser pun.

Model bagi hasil mereka adalah mengambil 15% dari total transaksi, dan bisa turun menjadi 10% bila total dalam setahunnya penjualan melebihi US$5000.

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Jualan Musik Digital Sendiri Lewat Bandcamp

Punya band yang udah rekaman sendiri, lalu pengen terjun jualan secara digital? Gue yakin di sini harusnya banyak ya yang punya keinginan serupa. Pilhannya selama ini tampaknya adalah dengan menyerahkan materi lo ke label-label yang udah punya koneksi ke online music store yang udah ada (dan rela dipotong sana-sini keuntungannya, dan ngikutin berbagai aturan yang diterapkan music store tersebut).

Nah yang ngga mau kayak gitu, ada yang udah coba Bandcamp? Lewat Bandcamp ini elo bisa upload lagu-lagu lo, kemudian jualan sendiri tanpa jadi bagian dari online music store manapun. Cocok untuk band-band kecil atau indie yang belum bergabung dengan label besar dan masih memegang sendiri hak edar lagu-lagu mereka. Atau bisa juga buat indie label yang mau coba-coba jual katalog mereka secara online

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