MUMBAI: Japanese music, Western music, K-pop, anime music, Vocaloid and more, will all be among the first wave of music to be aired on the newly launched music subscription service ‘Line Music’ in Japan. It currently has over 1.5 million songs from 28 major labels and production studios. The company is working on a plan to sign more Japanese labels, artists, and indie bands which will help expand its library from to 5 million songs by the end of 2015.
For the next year, the target will be to add songs from all over the world and increase it by over 30 million songs. Currently, service includes tracks of artists such as Kana Nishino, Sandaime J Soul Brothers, Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi, Ayumi Hamasaki, UVERworld, Che'Nelle, BIGBANG, Sam Smith, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson, to name a few.
The web version of the service will be released in July and users will be able to enjoy content from both, their mobile devices and computers.
The on-demand music subscription service has been made available for Android and iPhone devices with subscription plans starting from student plans at JPY 300, JPY 500 for 20 hours of music and JPY 1,000 (Android/LINE STORE) or JPY 1,080 (iOS) for unlimited music. The subscription tickets can be purchased from the app or Line store which will be implemented by mid-July. It is also offering an all-access premium plan free trial for a period of 30 days.
The music app will be integrated smoothly with the Line messenger app where users can send music or playlists directly to friends or groups on the Line app’s chat screen. 102 artistes will have official Line accounts upon the launch of service.
Line Music CEO Jun Masuda said, “With the launch of Line Music, we have realised our goal of creating a service through which this generation’s users can discover and enjoy music in a novel way. In particular, the service’s JPY 500 basic plan and student discount will offer younger users who have not yet used this type of music service a way to discover new artists and even entire genres of music, sparking a chorus of conversations along the way.”
Music can be heard in high (320 kbs), medium (192 kbs), and low (64 kbs) audio quality options.