Grooving to a new music trend

Any business stems from a need — be it food, clothing, shelter, and yes, even entertainment. One such company that was founded in late 2007 to satisfy the Filipinos’ growing appetite for music is MyMusic.ph. The only digital music store open to both Globe and Smart subscribers (and soon, Sun Cellular), it was anchored on the idea that music is for everyone and should therefore be easily accessible.

It was an exciting concept for a group of friends who are all certified music aficionados.

 “For a real music lover, the ideal store is one where you can go to and find virtually any song you want — old or new. However, because of tough market conditions, many stores carry only current `hits’ and don’t stock older or niche albums with a small local following,” said   John Alonte, MyMusic.ph’s managing director.

As a teener, John recalled how he and his friends excitedly rushed to the nearest neighborhood record bar or even saved their shopping money while traveling with family in the US and Japan just to buy the latest vinyl LP of their favorite artists.

Their passion for music inspired John and his friends to put up MyMusic.ph taking advantage of an established trend in the global music business in the midst of a challenging period in the music industry across the globe.

From virtually zero five years ago, digital music now makes up 15 percent of the total music industry, and is estimated to be worth almost US$3 billion worldwide.

Another major factor working in the team’s favor is their combined experience in the entertainment and mobile value-added services industries, that enables them to sway with the trends and discern consumers’ preferences.

John, who has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Connecticut and who took up executive management courses at the Yale School of Management, has extensive work experience in multi-market and category marketing, operations, multi-channel sales and personnel and entertainment in diverse industries in the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific region, working for large multi-national corporations.

“Downloading music in general is a worldwide trend. (But) while mobile downloads represent a relatively small percentage of this total, it is the fastest growing segment of the industry, almost doubling between 2006 and 2007,” he explained.

“Our primary markets are those aged 13 to 25 who represent the core music buying market. But basically, we cater to anybody who loves music,” he added.

With MyMusic.ph, you can find and download the songs you like. While the idea may not be entirely new, similar services come with a caveat. Most require users to pay using a credit card or enroll in an electronic payment facility (such as PayPal) to purchase downloads. On the contrary, MyMusic.ph is the only mobile download service that allows consumers to pay using their existing cellphone “load” or prepaid credits. Open to cellphone subscribers regardless of network, MyMusic.ph has an extensive library of over 10,000 international and OPM songs that can be downloaded individually.

 The company has been able to track consumer’s music preferences, listing Don’t Stop the Music by Rihanna, Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, The Time of My Life by David Cook, Alone by Celine Dion and Noypi by Bamboo, as some of the most downloaded songs.

Subscribers can download songs to their cellular phone in all popular digital music formats. Using your phone’s browser, just visit smart.mymusic.ph (for Smart subscribers) or globe.mymusic.ph (for Globe subscribers). For texters, just key in ”mymusic” and send it to 3456. There is a P30 fee per download of an MP3 tone which is a 30-second portion of a song that can be used as a ringtone, and a P50 fee per download of for a “Full Track” of the entire song.

To ensure that all downloadable songs are licensed, MyMusic,ph invested on expensive content licenses of music companies, hired a team of content producers and has an extensive IT and technical R&D to develop MyMusic WAP application and marketing experts.

By downloading songs from MyMusic.ph, consumers consequently help the local music industry in that all music downloads are legitimate, a win-win situation for all stakeholders involved including consumers, musicians, artists, telcos and recording companies.