THE BRIDGE

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Japan’s Shikumi Design unveils magical motion-based musical instrument

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See the original story in Japanese. Fukuoka-based startup Shikumi Design unveiled a next-gen musical instrument called Kagura on 14 January. The app allows users to play instrumental music by intuitive operations leveraging distance and gesture recognition technologies. The Kagura app won the grand prize at the Intel Perceptual Computing Challenge competition in 2013. The new version introduced at this time has been upgraded to support Intel RealSense 3D, a new technology available on PCs from Lenovo, Acer, and others, enabling an app to understand and respond to natural movement in 3D with a built-in camera. However, vision analysis for playing instruments is conducted in 2D, so if you are satisfied with playing instruments only, the app can work with any Windows PC with a built-in camera regardless of whether it supports the RealSense technology. Below is a Kagura promotional video, produced in cooperation with another Fukuoka-based startup Koo-ki. Shikumi Design CEO Shunsuke Nakamura demonstrated Kagura at a press briefing on Wednesday. Upon this release, they have brushed up several functions including new interface roll-out, five pre-installed sound-sets, as well as YouTube video uploads so that even non-savvy users can enjoy playing it as soon as they install the app. Shikumi Design specializes…

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Shikumi Design CEO Shunsuke Nakamura demonstrates Kagura.

See the original story in Japanese.

Fukuoka-based startup Shikumi Design unveiled a next-gen musical instrument called Kagura on 14 January. The app allows users to play instrumental music by intuitive operations leveraging distance and gesture recognition technologies.

The Kagura app won the grand prize at the Intel Perceptual Computing Challenge competition in 2013. The new version introduced at this time has been upgraded to support Intel RealSense 3D, a new technology available on PCs from Lenovo, Acer, and others, enabling an app to understand and respond to natural movement in 3D with a built-in camera. However, vision analysis for playing instruments is conducted in 2D, so if you are satisfied with playing instruments only, the app can work with any Windows PC with a built-in camera regardless of whether it supports the RealSense technology.

Below is a Kagura promotional video, produced in cooperation with another Fukuoka-based startup Koo-ki.

Shikumi Design CEO Shunsuke Nakamura demonstrated Kagura at a press briefing on Wednesday. Upon this release, they have brushed up several functions including new interface roll-out, five pre-installed sound-sets, as well as YouTube video uploads so that even non-savvy users can enjoy playing it as soon as they install the app.

Shikumi Design specializes in image displays and digital signage, and has been demonstrating the Kagura app at various live performance events, including collaborative performances with DJs, VJs, and vocal percussion artists.

Nakamura said,

Unlike non-music players like me, I’m often impressed at how DJs or VJs play music using various instruments in a professional manner. We’ve been receiving great support from human beatboxers as Kagura is giving them a new way of expression. In addition to professional music players, children can also enjoy creating music with Kagura simply by moving their bodies. Start with exploring the potential of our app with professional musicians, we want to expand the concept of music.

The Kagura app is available for free in order to make the experience open to more people. They aim to monetize the app by selling additional sound-sets and tool kits for professional musicians.

He continued:

Another possibility is a platform that allows users to share their post about playing music. There are many possibilities out there, but we want to develop the app with users while enjoying music.

Kagura has introduced a new way of music expression that will give birth to next-generation musicians and performers. Nakamura wants to kickoff a trend that encourages people to enjoy music and create new expressions similar to Hatsune Miku, the Japanese vocaloid platform from Crypton Future Media.

Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson and Masaru Ikeda
Proofread by Chris Ames Pomeroy

This Japanese startup changes how people relate to music

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Akinori Fumihara, Founder/CEO See the original article in Japanese On January 13th, Japanese social music platform, Nana, held a collaborative music festival called Nana fes vol.1 featuring Joysound at Minami Aoyama in Tokyo. On that day around 120 users, mostly in their teens or twenties, got together for the event. It was broadcasted online by Twitcasting, and in total 10,000 users tuned in live during 4.5 hour event. For those not familiar with the service, Nana lets its users share and mix their audio with other users on its platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. More than 5000 songs are posted on Nana everyday, with the average time for a user to stay on the site amount to 230 minutes per month. The monthly number of plays has surpassed 3.5 million, which shows how actively people are using the app. We had a chance to hear from Akinori Fumihara, Nana’s founder and CEO, about this event idea: Since Nana’s launch, we have regularly organized offline meetups for our users. But as a music service provider, I have been wanting to hold a live music event for a long time. I set the concept as a culture…

nana代表の文原明臣氏

Akinori Fumihara, Founder/CEO

See the original article in Japanese

On January 13th, Japanese social music platform, Nana, held a collaborative music festival called Nana fes vol.1 featuring Joysound at Minami Aoyama in Tokyo. On that day around 120 users, mostly in their teens or twenties, got together for the event. It was broadcasted online by Twitcasting, and in total 10,000 users tuned in live during 4.5 hour event.

For those not familiar with the service, Nana lets its users share and mix their audio with other users on its platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. More than 5000 songs are posted on Nana everyday, with the average time for a user to stay on the site amount to 230 minutes per month. The monthly number of plays has surpassed 3.5 million, which shows how actively people are using the app.

nana fes

We had a chance to hear from Akinori Fumihara, Nana’s founder and CEO, about this event idea:

Since Nana’s launch, we have regularly organized offline meetups for our users. But as a music service provider, I have been wanting to hold a live music event for a long time. I set the concept as a culture festival for Nana users by Nana users.

I always wanted to help create “Sunday artists”, those who work during the week and then work on the music projects on weekends. The user experience at a live concert is different from singing on the app. And I always wanted to offer that kind of different opportunity, so this festival was my first attempt to do this.

Build confidence, relationships

One user in particular was especially fascinated with Nana, gradually gaining confidence in his singing by joining offline meetups. That led him to even sing at his company’s event, and now he is even thinking about doing street performances.

Fumihara wants to continue to be this kind of catalyst for singers and musicians:

Many people have musical talent, but I think many of them don’t think highly of their own skill. But if there is a place to show their works, they can get feedback about it. And by allowing users to post their work easily on Nana, it creates opportunities for real talent to be recognized.

Nana users are quite loyal to the service, many of them calling themselves ‘Nana-min’ (min means people in Japanese), or describing the collaborative process as ‘Nanaru’. Some Twitter users even list their Nana account link on their profiles, many of them create Twitter accounts just because of their activity on Nana. The two services are very complementary, in fact.

Fumihara thinks there are two main reasons for the site’s popularity, the first being that many users are teenagers, and often they don’t have friends with whom they can discuss their favorite music.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t have anyone close to talk about my favorite music with. Finding people to have a music session with was even harder. Nana users are very happy about collaborating with others, and once they collaborate, they get to know more about each other. They make a very strong bond over Nana.

I want users to see music as an activity that’s very easy to start. It should be easier to get involved with music without taking it too seriously.

Nana is currently available only for iOS, and an Android app is now under construction. Nana plans to continue holding music festivals too.

Combining online and offline, Nana wants to create a future where people can “sing with the world”.

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Best of 2013: Beatrobo brings mobile music to you and your friends

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Yesterday I looked back at Japanese photobook printing service, Nohana, one of my favorite photo-related apps over this past year. But when it comes to managing my music, another made-in-Japan service has really stood out for me in 2013. That’s Beatrobo. Beatrobo is a very clever service that pulls music from YouTube and Soundcloud, and gives you the ability to create, save, and share playlists – or robots, as they are called. The Beatrobo mobile app launched back in May, and it has remained a mainstay on my mobile since then. In the meantime, the folks at Beatrobo have been working away on some new things, with a promising side project, PlugAir, in the works as well. That initiative uses a plug device that connects to your headphone jack to store and exchange digital information, including lists of songs that can be shared with friends like mixed tapes. The clever part here is, again, that no songs are stored, just lists of songs from YouTube or Soundcloud. The company says that this technology could be applied to many kinds of content, and is not limited to just music. It will be interesting to see how the startup progresses in 2014….

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Yesterday I looked back at Japanese photobook printing service, Nohana, one of my favorite photo-related apps over this past year. But when it comes to managing my music, another made-in-Japan service has really stood out for me in 2013. That’s Beatrobo.

Beatrobo is a very clever service that pulls music from YouTube and Soundcloud, and gives you the ability to create, save, and share playlists – or robots, as they are called. The Beatrobo mobile app launched back in May, and it has remained a mainstay on my mobile since then.

In the meantime, the folks at Beatrobo have been working away on some new things, with a promising side project, PlugAir, in the works as well. That initiative uses a plug device that connects to your headphone jack to store and exchange digital information, including lists of songs that can be shared with friends like mixed tapes. The clever part here is, again, that no songs are stored, just lists of songs from YouTube or Soundcloud.

The company says that this technology could be applied to many kinds of content, and is not limited to just music.

It will be interesting to see how the startup progresses in 2014. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this side project grow beyond the original music service. So stayed tuned!

beatrobo beatrobo-2

RecoChoku has dominated mobile music in Japan, but will foreign players change that?

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We’ve heard rumors that Swedish music streaming service Spotify is preparing to make its debut in the Japanese market. But so far, there has been no official announcement. Meanwhile here in Japan, the service that’s getting most of the mobile music attention is RecoChoku Best. RecoChoku has operated various music entertainment services since way back in 2001, mainly downloadable ringtones for feature phones. RecoChoku Best was launched in March of this year and provides over one million songs (mostly J-Pop) for mobile users for a monthly fee of 980 yen. With ‘Playing Your Memories’ as its theme concept, the app features songs by popular Japanese artists going as far back as the 1960s. Users can search for a particular song or choose from over 350 existing playlists. For many Japanese people who frequently commute to places by train, the app has a caching feature to save your favorites (up to 1600 songs) so music can be enjoyed even where there is no mobile reception. RecoChoku also has a feature to play a digest of playlist and artists, as well as suggesting related artists, thus allowing users to discover new music. You can also listen to some songs along with lyrics,…

RecoChoku-web

We’ve heard rumors that Swedish music streaming service Spotify is preparing to make its debut in the Japanese market. But so far, there has been no official announcement. Meanwhile here in Japan, the service that’s getting most of the mobile music attention is RecoChoku Best. RecoChoku has operated various music entertainment services since way back in 2001, mainly downloadable ringtones for feature phones.

RecoChoku Best was launched in March of this year and provides over one million songs (mostly J-Pop) for mobile users for a monthly fee of 980 yen. With ‘Playing Your Memories’ as its theme concept, the app features songs by popular Japanese artists going as far back as the 1960s. Users can search for a particular song or choose from over 350 existing playlists.

For many Japanese people who frequently commute to places by train, the app has a caching feature to save your favorites (up to 1600 songs) so music can be enjoyed even where there is no mobile reception. RecoChoku also has a feature to play a digest of playlist and artists, as well as suggesting related artists, thus allowing users to discover new music. You can also listen to some songs along with lyrics, and I’m sure many karaoke fans would find this useful.

In a recent interview with Japanese entertainment portal Urepia, the developers of RecoChoku Best explained a little more about the service:

The difference between foreign music streaming services and RecoChoku is that we provide a context for listening to music. We have years of experince and knowledge about what Japanese people prefer when listening to music. Users can feel familiarity with the playlists that we offer on RecoChoku.

RecoChoku is promoting itself through collaborations with brands such as Coca-Cola Japan. In May, the two companies began a campaign where an exclusive playlist is made availble to the users when by scanning QR codes on coke bottles. Users can win a free trial of RecoChoku for up to 29 days.

There is a 14-day trial period available for anyone who wants to try out RecoChoku on iOS or on Android. The company has plans to release a web version sometime this summer.

RecoChoku recently won an award at MM Soken 2013, an event which aims to accelerate innovation in the tech industry. But while it has excelled in Japan so far, it will be interesting to see if its place in the market changes as foreign competitors begin to sneak in.

Digital music score platform PiaScore now has an iPhone version

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Japanese startup Plusadd has released an iPhone version of its popular digital music score platform PiaScore. The iPad version was released back in December of 2010, and has been downloaded over 100,000 times, counting professional musicians and educators among its fans. The digital music score platform aspires to bring music scores to the hands of people all over the world. Both the iPhone and iPad version of PiaScore are provided for free, with features that allows users to view music scores and make notes on them during practice. PiaScore’s ‘Realistic Display Mode’ makes these digital music scores appear as though they are on paper. Plusadd has also developed what they claim is the world’s fastest page rendering features. Classical music scores can be downloaded for free within the app, however, features such as recording, keyboard, and tone tuner costs 250 yen. Another key feature of the app is its Cloud Play which supports Dropbox. With Cloud Play, users can download over 57,000 scores by 7,800 composers directly from International Music Score Library. The CEO of Plus-Add, Hiroyuki Koike, is an ex-Sony engineer. He explained how he came up with the service: I was not a professional musician, but I used…

PiaScore-iphone-app

Japanese startup Plusadd has released an iPhone version of its popular digital music score platform PiaScore. The iPad version was released back in December of 2010, and has been downloaded over 100,000 times, counting professional musicians and educators among its fans.

The digital music score platform aspires to bring music scores to the hands of people all over the world. Both the iPhone and iPad version of PiaScore are provided for free, with features that allows users to view music scores and make notes on them during practice. PiaScore’s ‘Realistic Display Mode’ makes these digital music scores appear as though they are on paper. Plusadd has also developed what they claim is the world’s fastest page rendering features.

Classical music scores can be downloaded for free within the app, however, features such as recording, keyboard, and tone tuner costs 250 yen. Another key feature of the app is its Cloud Play which supports Dropbox. With Cloud Play, users can download over 57,000 scores by 7,800 composers directly from International Music Score Library.

The CEO of Plus-Add, Hiroyuki Koike, is an ex-Sony engineer. He explained how he came up with the service:

I was not a professional musician, but I used to play the piano as a child growing up. During club activities and concerts, I discovered many problems that musicians encounter. One major problem was that it was a lot of work to carrying around and manage music scores. I built PiaScore as a solution to this very problem.

In the near future, PiaScore plans to develop auto page turning features, and logging and managing of music scores. The company is also looking for possible collborative partners such as music education institutions to help realize this new type of communication through music.

PiaScore previously won the Distinguished Honoree award at the International Business Awards in 2011, and was chosen as a finalist at Japan’s prestigious IVS in spring of 2012. If you want to read our reports about IVS 2013, you can find them here.

The PiaScore app is availabe on iOS for download.

Japan’s ‘Social Party Robot Band’ has a killer guitarist, will melt your face off!

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See our report on this story in Japanese There appears to be no end to the things that Japan can do with robots. While many robots are for practical purposes on assembly lines, there are also some really fun robots out there too. Take for example, Z-Machines, the first ‘social party robot band’, which is scheduled to make its debut on June 24th at the Liquid Room in Ebisu, Tokyo. As you can see in their demo video above, the robot guitarist looks especially bad-ass, capable of playing at a speed of up to 1184 bpm. There’s there are no shortage of picks or nimble fingers in this mechanized setup, although I’m curious to see what the entire band looks like up close. The band’s profile shows a trio, including a keyboard robot and a drum robot too. I’m not sure if they will look much like the promotional graphics (see below), but I really hope so! So what kind of music will the band play? That’s where the ‘social’ aspect comes into play. Leading up to its June 24th debut, Z-Machines will be accepting song submissions from aspiring musicians (in wav or midi formats) on PC or by using…

See our report on this story in Japanese

There appears to be no end to the things that Japan can do with robots. While many robots are for practical purposes on assembly lines, there are also some really fun robots out there too. Take for example, Z-Machines, the first ‘social party robot band’, which is scheduled to make its debut on June 24th at the Liquid Room in Ebisu, Tokyo.

As you can see in their demo video above, the robot guitarist looks especially bad-ass, capable of playing at a speed of up to 1184 bpm. There’s there are no shortage of picks or nimble fingers in this mechanized setup, although I’m curious to see what the entire band looks like up close. The band’s profile shows a trio, including a keyboard robot and a drum robot too. I’m not sure if they will look much like the promotional graphics (see below), but I really hope so!

So what kind of music will the band play? That’s where the ‘social’ aspect comes into play. Leading up to its June 24th debut, Z-Machines will be accepting song submissions from aspiring musicians (in wav or midi formats) on PC or by using the Nana smartphone app [1]. The lucky winner will have their song played by Z-Machines during its debut.

The concept comes as part of a promotion for Zima, under the supervision of Tokyo University professor Yoichi Kawaguchi. Judging by his previous work, this looks like it will be quite a show!

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  1. Readers may recall that we featured Nana – an app that lets musicians collaborate on projects together using their smartphones – just a few days ago.  ↩

Nana app gets anime theme songs, available globally without location restriction

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese music collaboration app Nana has partnered with Joysound, one of the country’s biggest karaoke service providers, to provide anime theme songs for karaoke in its app. What’s most interesting here is that despite the fact that most music-related services have geographically limited availability due to copyright, Nana’s anime theme songs will be available to users the world over. The startup has an agreement with Joysound for the master license for these anime theme songs, with a blanket purchase agreement in place JASRAC, Japan’s copyright control authority. For readers not yet familiar with Nana, the app allows users to share and mix their audio with other users on the platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. The startup aims to bring new users the experience of singing along with someone else. Singers can even team up with a band or a choir in this way, even if your collaborators live on the other side of the world. Nana launched its beta version last August, and its global version followed last November. According to the startup’s co-founder and CEO Akinori Fumihara, the app currently has about 25,000 users, and 70% of them…

See the original story in Japanese.

nana-musicJapanese music collaboration app Nana has partnered with Joysound, one of the country’s biggest karaoke service providers, to provide anime theme songs for karaoke in its app.

What’s most interesting here is that despite the fact that most music-related services have geographically limited availability due to copyright, Nana’s anime theme songs will be available to users the world over. The startup has an agreement with Joysound for the master license for these anime theme songs, with a blanket purchase agreement in place JASRAC, Japan’s copyright control authority.

For readers not yet familiar with Nana, the app allows users to share and mix their audio with other users on the platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. The startup aims to bring new users the experience of singing along with someone else. Singers can even team up with a band or a choir in this way, even if your collaborators live on the other side of the world. Nana launched its beta version last August, and its global version followed last November.

According to the startup’s co-founder and CEO Akinori Fumihara, the app currently has about 25,000 users, and 70% of them are teenage girls. More than 120,000 songs have been exchanged using the platform, and about 1,200 songs are being posted every day.

Japan’s karaoke giant Joysound provides anime theme songs to karaoke bars and nightclubs all across the country. They are also known for providing many user-created or Vocaloid songs, typically posted by amateur singers on Japan’s video sharing site Nico Nico Douga.

Nico Nico Douga has many videos tagged as ‘I’ve sung this song,’ a good indication that there’s actually a culture growing around users who record themselves singing popular songs on the platform. As the Nana app makes it easier for you to record yourself and post to the internet, this new Joysound partnership may encourage Nana users to sing and share even more. Fumihara notes:

The anime theme song genre is a suitable one that people will enjoy singing together. I hope the partnership will generate even more song-based communication among people.

If you’d like to try the Nana app for yourself, you can get it for iOS over on the App Store.

Japanese music startup Beatrobo finally releases its iPhone app

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I’ve been a fan of Japanese online music service Beatrobo for about a year now. With an English website that targets global users from the very start, Beatorobo lets you build music playlists primarily from YouTube. So far I’ve been using Beatrobo on my Mac via its web interface. I prefer creating an app for it using Fluid rather than running it in my browser, allowing for quick and easy tab switching when needed. And that’s all well and good when I’m on my Mac, but I’ve been craving a Beatrobo mobile app for a while now. So I was pretty pleased on Friday to hear from Beatorobo CEO Hiroshi Asaeda, who pointed out that the music service has finally hit Apple’s App Store. I’ve been casually using it over the past few days, and so far it has practically all the features that attracted me to the web version. In fact, the interface may even be better suited to mobile as its far easier to scroll through playlists and pick a song you like. The one drawback that I found was that you can’t search for new songs as you can in the web app. But I’m told that…

beatrobo-iphone-app

I’ve been a fan of Japanese online music service Beatrobo for about a year now. With an English website that targets global users from the very start, Beatorobo lets you build music playlists primarily from YouTube. So far I’ve been using Beatrobo on my Mac via its web interface. I prefer creating an app for it using Fluid rather than running it in my browser, allowing for quick and easy tab switching when needed. And that’s all well and good when I’m on my Mac, but I’ve been craving a Beatrobo mobile app for a while now.

So I was pretty pleased on Friday to hear from Beatorobo CEO Hiroshi Asaeda, who pointed out that the music service has finally hit Apple’s App Store. I’ve been casually using it over the past few days, and so far it has practically all the features that attracted me to the web version. In fact, the interface may even be better suited to mobile as its far easier to scroll through playlists and pick a song you like.

The one drawback that I found was that you can’t search for new songs as you can in the web app. But I’m told that this will be coming in the next version of the app. For now the focus is more on social interaction, as the people search feature lets you find friends who may have songs or playlists you like. In this way, the emphasis is on social music discovery, rather than just searching through YouTube’s music offerings. For example, I’m enjoying exploring the music that my brother is listening to on Beatrobo, as we used to frequently recommend tunes to each other in person.

Overall, I think this is a great step for the company. I don’t know if they will run into issues with music providers or with YouTube for offering this kind of service, and I’m sure they are treading very carefully. But it’s a quality service, and with other online music providers like Spotify or Rdio not yet serving the Japanese market, I think there’s an opportunity here. At least for now.

Beatrobo previously raised $600,000 in funding in April of 2012 from CyberAgent Ventures, Movida Japan, and KLab Ventures.

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  1. It’s a little like making mixed tapes, for any of you who may have grown up in the 80s like me.  ↩

KDDI to migrate its music service to Kkbox, joining Asia’s largest music network

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Japan’s second largest telco KDDI (TYO:9433) announced today that it would rebrand Lismo, its subscription mobile music service, to the ‘Kkbox’ effective in June. KDDI subsidized Taiwan-based Kkbox in December of 2010, and has been using the platform for its existing flat-rate music subscription services, Lismo unlmited and Utapass. For those not familiar with it, Kkbox is an on-demand music subscription service, founded in 2004 in Taiwan. KDDI acquired a majority share of its outstanding stock in 2010, and Taiwanese handset maker HTC took a 11.1% stake in 2011. The service is now operating in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, and has acquired more than 10 million users in those countries. More than 10 million songs are available for play, either using desktops, laptops, smartphones, or tablets. One of its more remarkable features is ‘Listen With,’ which allows you to share what you’re listening to with other users. With the rebranding, KDDI joins Asia’s largest music distribution network, providing more music titles not just to KDDI customers but also to mobile users on rival carriers NTT Docomo and Softbank Mobile. Competition is starting to heat up in the online music distribution space in Japan. DeNA launched Groovy a couple…

kddi_kkbox_logos

Japan’s second largest telco KDDI (TYO:9433) announced today that it would rebrand Lismo, its subscription mobile music service, to the ‘Kkbox’ effective in June.

KDDI subsidized Taiwan-based Kkbox in December of 2010, and has been using the platform for its existing flat-rate music subscription services, Lismo unlmited and Utapass. For those not familiar with it, Kkbox is an on-demand music subscription service, founded in 2004 in Taiwan. KDDI acquired a majority share of its outstanding stock in 2010, and Taiwanese handset maker HTC took a 11.1% stake in 2011.

The service is now operating in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, and has acquired more than 10 million users in those countries. More than 10 million songs are available for play, either using desktops, laptops, smartphones, or tablets. One of its more remarkable features is ‘Listen With,’ which allows you to share what you’re listening to with other users.

With the rebranding, KDDI joins Asia’s largest music distribution network, providing more music titles not just to KDDI customers but also to mobile users on rival carriers NTT Docomo and Softbank Mobile.

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Kkbox app

Competition is starting to heat up in the online music distribution space in Japan. DeNA launched Groovy a couple of weeks ago, and Music Unlimited, Sony’s online music subscription service available in 18 countries worldwide, also recently reduced its subscription rate to 980 yen a month, the same price as Kkbox.

Global player Spotify is expected to launch in the Japanese market soon, as they have begun hiring in Tokyo. There are also other newcomers like Mironi as well.

Kyodo reports today that Japan has just surpassed the US as the biggest recorded music market in the world, with $4.3 billion in sales of CDs and music downloads. Interestingly, 80% of that figure was non-downloadable items like CDs and records, so there’s a lot of money just waiting to shift to the online space.

It will be interesting to see which of companies above can best position itself to capitalize on Japan’s love of music.

DeNA launches ‘Groovy’ music distribution platform, adding social to the listening experience

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DeNA (TYO:2432), the Japanese internet giant behind the Mobage social gaming platform and the Comm messaging app, has unveiled its Groovy music player app for the Android platform. An iOS version will follow soon. It was developed using an app framework from Discodear, the music player app developed by Tokyo-based web conglomerate United. It allows users to play their favorites from a selection of more than 1 million songs, in partnership with 39 music labels including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music, and Victor Entertainment. When you signs up for an account, you receive complimentary tickets worth 30 credits, with one credit allowing you to listen to a song up to three times a month. Tickets worth 17 credits are available for 99 yen (or about a dollar), and complimentary tickets will be given when you invite your friends to the service as well. Prior to the purchase of a song, users are allowed a 45-second preview. The app has also a social media function, which lets you be a ‘fan’ of a song when you listen to it more than three times. The interest graph lets you see what other users with similar tastes are listening to. This feature is…

groovy_logoDeNA (TYO:2432), the Japanese internet giant behind the Mobage social gaming platform and the Comm messaging app, has unveiled its Groovy music player app for the Android platform. An iOS version will follow soon.

It was developed using an app framework from Discodear, the music player app developed by Tokyo-based web conglomerate United. It allows users to play their favorites from a selection of more than 1 million songs, in partnership with 39 music labels including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music, and Victor Entertainment.

When you signs up for an account, you receive complimentary tickets worth 30 credits, with one credit allowing you to listen to a song up to three times a month. Tickets worth 17 credits are available for 99 yen (or about a dollar), and complimentary tickets will be given when you invite your friends to the service as well. Prior to the purchase of a song, users are allowed a 45-second preview.

groovy_screenshot

The app has also a social media function, which lets you be a ‘fan’ of a song when you listen to it more than three times. The interest graph lets you see what other users with similar tastes are listening to. This feature is also intended to promote live performances to users [1].

For more than 900,000 out of the million songs in the archive, the app can shows you lyrics while you listen. This obviously would be great preparation for Karaoke sessions, for anyone who is into that sort of thing!

Spotify-like flat-rate subscription models are attracting a lot of customers in the overseas market [2]. But DeNA figures that such models would be harder in terms of user acquisition, this according to the company’s CEO Isao Moriyasu. They have no intention to integrate the service with their gaming platform or other services, but they expect to create a social network platform specifically designed for sharing music experiences.


  1. Korean music startup, Mironi, who we’ve recently featured in Japanese, has a very similar concept. The DeNA music app will be a formidable competitor for them in the Japanese market.  ↩

  2. Spotify is still unavailable here in Japan.  ↩