Hong Kong music consumers are very value-driven - they want three-CD compilations for the price of a single CD. So when you charge HK$15 per song, you're not going to get a lot of usage. What we developed was unlimited streaming for a monthly subscription. It's a different usage behavior. On the PC side where we started, people use computers for several hours a day, at home or in the office, so offering a streaming music service complements that multi-tasking mentality. When we decided to offer it on mobile, we knew these were loyal users who also wanted it on the go, but the behavior is different. On the PC, it's about exploring - you can explore different categories, build your own playlist. You can do that on mobile too, but a lot of them may be casual listeners, so in addition to building your own playlist, we have pre-set channels that you can listen to based on different categories. We also put together some of our own lifestyle playlists for specialized categories like, "Songs to listen to while you're getting ready for work".
Charged: Are you looking to add tagging capabilities to that where, say, users put their own tags on songs that help other users search for music, like Pandora‾
Janice Lee: We're working on a project where users can tag DNAs onto the songs - so it's like the Pandora concept. You define what you think the song is - like this is the ultimate break-up song or something. So when you search, you're not just searching what we define for users, but what collectively the community has defined as well.
Charged: Based on your experience with Moov, how many rabid music fans are there as opposed to casual listeners who don't give a toss about tags‾
Janice Lee: Well, that's why we have the preset channels, because we recognize there's a large number of casual listeners out there. With personalization features, over half our users on the PC side already have their own playlists, so they are exploring, and we're seeing more of that. When they're in a hurry they'll just access the playlists or the presets, when they have more time, they'll explore. It depends on the age group as well. The executives are lazier [laughs], they tend to be casual listeners, but for the younger set it's very personal music choices - in fact, they only want to listen to what they define.
Charged: Streaming gets around so many headaches of music downloads - DRM, phone storage capacity, bandwidth. Can you make a case for mobile music downloads‾
Janice Lee: Download has its own market segment, so it's important, and we'll be looking at solutions in offering that.