Believe-owned DIY distribution platform TuneCore has expanded its operations into Southeast Asia (SEA).
The news follows TuneCore‘s expansion into Latin America and Africa in March and in February respectively, bringing its total presence to 14 countries on 4 continents.
TuneCore’s operations in Southeast Asia will be spearheaded by Cyrus Chen, who joined the company in late 2020.
Prior to joining TuneCore, Cyrus worked with organizations such as Changi Travel Services and eatigo International.
TuneCore has already struck a number of partnerships across the region.
In Indonesia TuneCore has partnered up with HOOKSpace, an Indonesian music media company which focuses on up-and-coming local talent, and in Thailand, TuneCore has collaborated with music community FungJa to develop educational content curated for DIY artists across FungJai’s platforms.
In the Philippines, TuneCore has partnered with PhilPop Musicfest Foundation, Inc., a non-profit foundation that organizes music and songwriting programs to grow Filipino Pop Music. TuneCore will be a sponsor of the 2021 Songwriting DigiCamp, an activation targeted towards aspiring songwriters across the Philippines.
Elsewhere, in Singapore TuneCore celebrated its 15th anniversary earlier this year, by donating to SGMUSO’s Musician Support Fund (MSF), which supports the Fund-A-Gig program. This is the 3rd edition of Fund-A-Gig in the last 12 months, and was created to support Singapore’s musicians and artists who have lost performance opportunities and revenue due to the prolonged effects of COVID-19 on the nightlife and live music industry.
TuneCore distributes music to more than 150 digital stores and streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, JOOX, KKBox, Amazon Music, TikTok, QQ Music and Netease.
The company runs 14 localized and fully translated websites, including Southeast Asian languages Thai and Bahasa (Indonesia).
The Vietnamese and Mandarin (simplified and traditional) versions of the website are expected to be added later this year, bringing the total to 16 languages for 2021, by far the most of its competitors.
“In the Southeast Asia market, the music industry is growing at a steady pace, with the number of potential music listeners in Asia exceeding 3.5 billion.”
Faryal Khan-Thompson, TuneCore
Faryal Khan-Thompson, Vice President, International, TuneCore, said: “In the Southeast Asia market, the music industry is growing at a steady pace, with the number of potential music listeners in Asia exceeding 3.5 billion.
“With Cyrus at the helm, TuneCore is uniquely positioned to help independent artists in Southeast Asia grow their fan base through the company’s game changing education, best in class tools and wide ranging global reach, all while allowing artists to keep all rights to their music and earn 100% of 100% of their revenues.”
“I am honored to join TuneCore and work with Faryal and the larger team to introduce the company’s services to Southeast Asia.”
Cyrus Chen
Cyrus said: “I am honored to join TuneCore and work with Faryal and the larger team to introduce the company’s services to Southeast Asia.
“We are an emerging music market with vast potential and a diverse population of varying cultures and languages. TuneCore’s parent company Believe entered the market in 2013 and has since developed a deep understanding of each country’s local music scene.
“TuneCore is leveraging that deep local industry knowledge to build our offerings, catered to the specific needs of independent DIY artists in the region, with scalable services at a competitve price, while supplying high value.”
“TuneCore’s deep commitment to champion independent artists from all four corners of the world is in line with our vision [at Believe] to propel artists’ growth.”
Sylvain Delange, Believe
Sylvain Delange, Managing Director Asia Pacific, Believe, said: “TuneCore’s deep commitment to champion independent artists from all four corners of the world is in line with our vision [at Believe] to propel artists’ growth.
“There is an opportunity for TuneCore & Believe to further contribute to the growth of the thriving Southeast Asia independent artists community and help them take advantage of the exponential growth to come in the digital space while still allowing musicians to continue to maintain control and ownership of their work.
“Together, we are excited and are confident we’ll provide the most comprehensive set of services and products to artists in the Southeast Asian market.”Music Business Worldwide
