Music companies pin hopes on streaming

Additionally, they hope that by having YouTube in the Kingdom they will be able to share additional advertising revenue with YouTube from the number of page views.
However, Ann Lavin, head of public policy and government relations at Google Southeast Asia, told The Nation that YouTube has not yet launched in Thailand. When YouTube launches in a country, the company creates a country-specific domain, with a local language interface that features content popular in the country and highlights videos uploaded from creators and content companies in that country.
Within Southeast Asia, we have launched domains in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia.
“In the case of Thailand, we would love to make this experience and the economic opportunities that come with it available to local artists and entrepreneurs and are reviewing the legal framework,” said Lavin. RS chief operating officer Pornpan Techarung-chaikul said that at the moment, the company was using YouTube as a channel to promote its music and music videos only. RS also believed that posting such content on this website would not hurt the company’s digital music downloading services.
Last month, GMM Grammy ran into a controversy after it removed full music videos from the YouTube site as it wanted to protect its owned-produced music content copyright. But after a two-week trial period, amid a large number of complaints from local music lovers, the company put back those it had removed.
Krij Thomas, chief operating officer for the music unit at GMM Grammy, explained that there was no difference in the number of digital music downloads between the previous period and during the trial period when the videos were removed.
Pornpan said that RS’ digital music downloading business had been stagnant for the past couple of years. The company plans to partner with digital music streaming services, namely Deezer, which will be launched by a telecom company in October.
France-base Deezer is a leading global music-streaming service provider. Last year, it integrated its Web-based service with the Facebook platform to allow users to discover its music though their Facebook friends.
Pornpan said that the new service is very interesting for local music lovers, particularly the young generation who love to be digitally connected with friends via smart mobile devices. Additionally, once 3G cellular connections improve following the auctioning of 3G licences by the regulator, smart-device users can enjoy mobile Internet services, including digital music downloading, streaming and broadcasting.
Surachai Sensri, managing director of GMM Grammy’s international business, said his company planned to partner two leading global digital music streaming services – Sweden’s Spotify and France’s Deezer.