Omusic partners with Far EasTone Telcom for online music store

The Omusic Chinese-language online store will initially host 200,000 tracks and will offer a quality, diversified, up-to-date legal music download experience for music fans in Taiwan.

Omusic, a 50/50 joint venture between FET and a conglomerate of seven record companies and Otiga Technologies, a provider of telecom operational solutions, was established in September 2010 aimed at offering comprehensive digital music services in a bid to revitalise the country's music industry.

The new JV hopes to become a new distribution channel for a wide range of legitimate and quality digital music services via the internet and mobile phones, at affordable prices for consumers while ensuring reasonable returns for music creators and record companies.

Omusic said its uniqueness is its ability to develop more choices of music services for users by capitalising on the technologies, resources and contents owned by its allied shareholders.

Special features of this new platform include one-stop service for a wide range of digital music options, including song listening, track downloads, ringtone and ring-back tone settings; digital single-consumption options from online listening of the entire library to DRM-free downloads.

To kick off the launch, 25 of Taiwan's top artists, including Universal Music's Fish Leong and Da Mouth attended the press conference yesterday. 

Sunny Chang, Omusic chairman and managing director of Universal Music Greater China said, "Omusic sets the precedent for the cooperation of music labels in Taiwan, as we work together to hopefully revamp the country's digital music ecosystem and to further influence the market in Mainland China."

Citing statistics from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, Chang previously noted that, despite Taiwan's top-notch domestic talents and thriving music scene, total music revenue dropped sharply from US$442.3 million (NT$13 bilion) in 1997 to US$51 million (NT$1.5 billion) in 2008, with piracy and illegal downloads mostly to blame.

"With full support from the artists, record labels, music copyright industry, music industry groups and telecom operators, Omusic's comprehensive digital-music platform hopes to help take Taiwanese pop to the forefront of the licensed online music market across Greater China."

The company plans to attract 100,000 online subscribers by mid-2012 and increase its annual service sales by at least 10 per cent each year.