Interview Last.fm on its Chinese Version

Written by Tangos on February 1, 2007
Tags:,

Last.fm, the social music discovery service, launched its multi-language version several weeks ago, including Chinese version. We email interviewed Martin Stiksel, co-founder of Last.fm, to ask him about Last.fm’s vision on Chinese market and its strategy in China.

As Martin said in the interview, releasing Chinese version is a logical step, but I have to say to win in China market would require more insights and localized view into this huge but somewhat different market, for example, several weeks after its Chinese version release, Last.fm sent out a message to its Chinese users to ask whether users from Hong kong don’t like Simplified Chinese version, because the usage of Hong Kong users decreased after the release.

CWR: Why you will be interesed in Chinese market when you start to globalize your service?

Last.fm: Music is an international language, but the website still presented a language barrier. We wanted to bring the community driven music experience that is Last.fm to all the music fans, so releasing extra language versions is the next logical step. We heard that there are many music fans in China and obviously great music gets produced in your country, too.

CWR: How do you think of Chinese online music market?

Last.fm: China online music market has a huge potential simply because you can reach so many people there. However, as far as I concerned, the web 2.0 idea hasn’t been very well developed. So, it’s the time for Last.fm to introduce the real concept and the easiest way for local people to get into it.

CWR: We have profiled several online music services in China, what do you think are your advantages over them? Is there any main competitors to your service in China?

Last.fm: The current online music communities in China rarely offer radio streaming and other features that Last.fm offers. The best thing of Last.fm is that it’s so easy to use. You don’t need to choose tracks to play, Last.fm will choose songs for you, and it fits with your taste because we invented “scrobbling”. Last.fm will try to make our things easy for the music fans. The simpler, the better.

CWR: How many Chinese users are using your service now, if you are willing to disclose it? Do you see a leap of users from China after you launched Chinese version.

Last.fm: We saw a big increase in usage from China, but we don’t reveal exact numbers, sorry.

CWR: As far as I understand, you just translate all the interface into Chinese, but do you have any other localized features for Chinese users? any interesting product development plan for Last.FM Chinese version?

Last.fm: Anything in the English site will work on the Chinese site as well. And we’ll work with ticketing companies, legal digital downloading companies, providing links for users to buy CDs etc.

CWR: What’s your strategy in China market, how will you promote your service among Chinese users?

Last.fm: Our promotion so far has worked by word-of-mouth. We give people parts of their profile, which they can put on their website/blog and this viral marketing is usually working better for us than any advertising campaign.

CWR: I start to use and still use Last.fm through your terrific Audioscrobber plugin, but it does not support some very popular mp3 players in China, such as TTPlayer, do you have any plans to cooperate with them?

Last.fm: That will certainly be one of our concerns in localizing the sites. If there’re a vast number of users using other players we don’t supported, we’ll be in trouble!

CWR: Will you partner with some Chinese local labels, any specific plan now?

Last.fm: Definitely! We’re now starting to contact local labels. We helped labels to promote their music using our Last.fm system and recommendation system. Labels can also go to http://www.last.fm/labels, simply register on there and upload their tracks. Last.fm will then broadcast them to the whole world.

One Response to “Interview Last.fm on its Chinese Version”

  1. xorms on February 1st, 2007 11:20 pm

    But it looks they don’t have severs in China. The songs play discontinuously. That gives bad UE.

Post a comment





Fatal error: Call to undefined function: akst_share_form() in /home/.omar/cwr/cwrblog.net/wp-content/themes/cwr4/footer.php on line 12