NEWS

The company sees great growth potential in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Interview of Con Raso, MD of Tuned Global, initialy published in Musica Asia.

After his recent interview with us on the state of the music streaming segment, we had the chance again to chat with Con Raso, the Managing Director of Tuned Global. This time, the interview was on something closer to him: the company’s plan for the Southeast Asian market.

1. What are your plans for the region?
Con Raso (CR): Establishing ourselves in the highly brand conscious Southeast Asian market in 2015 with Jakarta, Indonesia as our Asian hub has enabled us to start building relationships with major brands and partners in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. We are already working with the Indonesian label Musica Studios and a mobile device manufacturer as well as building partnerships with Universal Music and major telcos in the region. We will be launching an exciting initiative in Indonesia in the next few months which is why we are looking to hire a great Country Manager.  Someone who has local experience in the music and digital marketing sectors.

2. Why Indonesia as the Headquarters for Tuned Global?
CR: As a mobile-first company, Indonesia was the obvious choice for Tuned Global as an Asian base, because its people have so fully embraced mobile primarily to access social media and to listen to music, which has been enabled by the rapid adoption of smartphones and more affordable data. Most young users access the internet and use social media for the first time on a mobile device and their social media engagement rates are growing astronomically, with around a third of Indonesians (80 million) using it currently and around 110 million users expected to by 2019, according to eMarketer. In fact, Jakarta is said to be the number one “Twitter City” globally and the fourth biggest country for Facebook with 78 million users.

3. What customer segments are brands in this region most eager to reach out to?
In this region, brands are ready to invest in innovative ways to engage with this huge group of hard-to-reach young consumers and mobile user experience is the main consideration of those brands’ marketers. We believe that the music is the best way for brands to engage Millennials on their smartphone, because they LOVE music and specifically local artists.

We are currently bringing our technology, business intelligence and expertise in terms of mobile engagement and the music industry via strategic partnerships across Southeast Asia.  We want to encourage brands, labels, artists and platforms to work together across the entire region to engage and delight users with relevant communications. In Indonesia you can already get free music from KFC and in China you can access free concerts through major brands and people love it!