Asia’s digital divide poses challenge for music industry

HONG KONG (AFP) ― Technology is the new rock ‘n’ roll as smartphones and digital services transform the music industry. But for those companies helping change the way music is consumed, Asia presents big hurdles.

Apple’s iTunes music store ― which has stamped its presence in the U.S. and Europe as sales in traditional formats such as compact discs continue to fall ― is still a limited service in many parts of the region.

Other global players and streaming services popular in the West such as startup Spotify, a privately held firm launched in Sweden in 2008, are in the process of launching digital platforms in Asia, say analysts.

But together with region’s sprawl of very different cultural sensibilities, complicated licensing issues between record companies, publishers and groups holding performing rights, and piracy hotspots, digital growth has been mixed.

“Doing business in the so-called western world is a little simpler,” said Ruuben van den Heuvel, executive director of music, media and technology consultancy GateWay Entertainment told AFP from Brisbane, Australia.

“For western companies coming to Asia, it’s like stepping onto a brand new planet and wondering how it works,” he said. “The landscape for digital music is a bit of a piracy wasteland.”

Globally the music industry remains in a period of dramatic change as it tries to reconcile the Internet’s ability to grow audiences with the fact that this means people can easily get their music for free using peer-to-peer (P2P) software.

Recent data suggests the industry is starting to turn things around.

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, digital music revenues grew 8.0 percent last year to $5.2 billion.

“The music industry has grasped the opportunities of the digital world in a way few, if any, other businesses can claim to have done,” IFPI chief executive Frances Moore said in a report released earlier this year.

“Our digital revenues, at one third of industry income (and now more than 50 percent in the U.S.), substantially surpass those of other creative industries, such as films, books and newspapers.”

The Asia Pacific region is set to play a bigger role in that progress.

A 2011 forecast from technology consultancy firm Ovum said the region will account for 35 percent of global digital music revenues to the tune of $7 billion by 2015, out of a global figure of $20 billion.

But it noted that growth in the region will be compromised by the amount of free music already available online.

One black spot is China, which has nearly twice as many Internet users as the U.S. But its digital music revenues per user are currently about 1 percent of that of the U.S., according to the IFPI.