Australian Moves On Online Music In Asia

International Herald Tribune: In a region where rampant piracy keeps global rivals away, a five-year-old Australian online music retailer has stepped into the breach. Soundbuzz, partly owned by Creative Technology, the maker of digital music players, will open an online store in Hong Kong next month, adding to existing operations in Australia, Singapore and India.
Mots of Soundbuzz’s business until now has come from providing its catalog and technology to broadband Internet service providers and mobile operators. It claims Australia’s biggest ISP, Telstra Big Pond, and in Singapore, SingNet and the wireless firm M1 are among its customers.
But the new Hong Kong store is part of Soundbuzz’s strategy to sell songs under its own retail brand as well. And just as Apple’s iTunes Music Store sells songs in tandem with the iPod players, Soundbuzz expects a sales increase from a new bundling agreement with Creative’s music players.
Online music downloads last year were worth $330 million worldwide and growing fast, according to Jupiter Research. Yet in Asia, despite a thriving mobile music market and widespread use of broadband, the volume of legal Internet downloads is negligible.

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