Hong Kong : Music Matters, the forum for the music industry in Asia, kicks off this morning, playing host to over 750 delegates from all over the Asia Pacific region.
75 speakers, culled from various sectors of the entertainment industry, will address the assembled audience on topics as diverse as 360 degree business models, licensing issues and marketing strategies, as well as focus on emerging markets in Asia. The results of the third year of Asia's ongong MTV study on what the 15 to 34 year olds feel about music, content and the exploding digital landscape will be released here today.The results of the 12 key Asia Pacific markets study (with Vietnam and Australia added this year ) indicate that music passion continues to grow, with 93 per cent of those surveyed professing their passion for music. 86 per cent play music on a computer, 76 per cent play music on an MP3 player and 50 per cent have recently downloaded music to their phones. Half of those surveyed claimed that they went ahead and made illegal downloads if music was not easily accessible. They also clearly want their mobile phone to be their means of playing music, as 76 per cent would like it to be their main device.
While passion for international artists has shot up, there is growing interest in music from within Asia, and Korea in particular. Vietnam has emerged as having a very music centric group of youth, with high music passion and strong consumption. According to the study, one in four young Asians paid to download digital music recently, while twice as many added to their music library without paying. The phone is becoming much more multi media, with a much larger group of teens using the mobile to play games and watch music videos, movies and television this year.
The new findings also confirm the power of social networking, instant messaging adn virtual friends as a masive youth driver : Vietnam and China are leading the charge in terms of this 'Forwarding Culture'.
Data points of the survey -
93 per cent are passionate about music
86 per cent play music on a computer
76 per cent play music on an MP3 player
50 per cent downloaded a song to thier phone recently
14 per cent went to a concert recently
73 per cent like international music
74 per cent like local music
32 per cent like Korean music
76 per cent want to replace their MP3 player with their phone as a main device