Are Asian consumers willing to pay for music content?

Jasper Donat, co-founder at Branded Ltd, noted that the extensive research it carried out with market research firm Synovate through the years have suggested that people “will pay for music if they are given a service that is easy to acesss, simple to use and at the right price point”.

Illegal downloads have long been an issue in Asia, with some countries are looking into strengthening the copyright laws. The Japanese government, for example, recently passed a new amendment to its copyright laws, making illegal downloading punishable with jail terms for the first time.

Michael Chadwick, head of planning at JWT Singapore, said while the main reason of illegal downloads was the unwillingness of the people to pay for content, another big reason in Singapore [and markets like Hong Kong] may be the struggle to get hold of the content they want.

“I think the latter is probably a big driver in Singapore,” he told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “The iTunes store opening up here will have a big impact with this group because up to now, their options for downloading music and movies online have been quite limited. A lot of people who may have been downloading for the sake of convenience or availability now have a legitimate channel and I expect that many will choose to use it.”

He added that while the global music industry knows there will always be a group of people who are downloading illegally, research globally suggested that around one-third of these people are also paying for legal downloads.

“So, you are likely to get a group of people who continue to download from unauthorised sites, but who also make use of iTunes,” he said.

Apple announced yesterday the launch of the iTunes Store in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and nine additional countries in Asia, featuring 20 million songs from local and international artists as well as classical musicians.

Customers can also rent or purchase movies from the iTunes Store. The store is available to music fans in Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, as well as Japan, where it has existed for some years already.

Accessibility to entertainment content is an important element in stopping illegal downloads. With the launch of iTunes store, both Donat and Chadwick said other music streaming services, such as Spotify, Deezer, Rdio and Microsoft, will follow suit.

“Hopefully this will expand out to other types of entertainment content – more downloadable movie rental services, video game downloads and so on. Bottomline, it is a great news for the entertainment consumers in Singapore,” Chadwick said.

With Apple already owning a large portion of the devices on which people are consuming media, he added that this makes it a simple step for people to make purchases from iTunes.

Donat told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the complex music licensing system has made it very hard for digital platforms to launch in more than one Asian territory.

“With more services to follow suit, it can only benefit the music industry," he said.