It has barely been a month since we launched WOWLOUD and the number of positive comments about the service has been overwhelming. Nothing gives me more joy than knowing that real users out there are truly appreciative of what we do. Not resting on our laurels we do expect to introduce more groundbreaking features and content to take the whole experience to another new level.

One of the key reasons for creation of WOWLOUD as mentioned before was due to the imminent shift in how consumers would access content in an increasingly mobile and wired world, and music was one of those things that will be at the forefront when the really large shifts occur. Think social media just 3 years back and if you were one of the skeptics back then, I really do hope that by now you are fully converted and have learned to adopt it in your marketing and advertising work.

There were of course other reasons for WOWLOUD and the other key reasons are the creation of a media and social media currency platform. Media is pretty straight forward so I am just going to talk a bit about what I mean by social media currency.

For the uninitiated, “social media currency” refers to the value exchange that takes place within the social media environment. Just like in the real world where people create value through products and services, social media value is created on mass scale daily through the content and conversations that take place within those social media communities. Yes, people are the social media and advertisers and marketers just really want to “buy” their time and attention, which hopefully leads to real world sales. What advertisers and marketers use to “buy” people’s time and attention is the “social media currency”.

The days of one-way advertising is not going to last forever and will be replaced by something much more complex where advertising, marketing, sales, loyalty and customer service are going to be mashed up and mangled together. Companies will find a need to re-learn and re-train their staff to go head on with the exciting times ahead. Let’s face it, whether we like it or not, it’s difficult to get consumers to tweet good things about you or your product, but one thing certain is that they can surely “tweet you to hell” the minute something screws up. We can chose to ignore it and sweep it under the carpet, but it is always going to be there and if something really catches on, you might suddenly find yourself in a major public relations dilemma. I am not exaggerating as things like this has happened before and will happen again in the future.

The best way to for companies to move forward is to re-organize themselves into socially engaging entities with continuous investment into creating social media value. Most times it is the social media value creation part that falters for most companies as they struggle to create sustained and continuous valuable social media exchanges with their targets.

So what’s valuable to the social media audience? I would say conversations and content.

Create valuable conversations with your audience through regular engagements, good or bad. Be open about discussing and answering questions about your products and services. Be ready to handle criticisms and complaints in an open and fair manner. Be socially media active and create opportunities and content to engage with your target audience.

Never get confused between the difference of “announcing” your products and creating the platform for valuable exchange. Announcing your product within the social media platform by itself is a one way engagement which only creates value for the announcer. This does not work well in the new order of social media economy.

Content whether user generated or branded, is a key social media currency. It is the most tangible thing that you can use to “pay” your social media audience. You can create valuable information, create contests or even give your audience free WOWLOUD accounts for engaging with you. Whatever it is, without the right content, it is difficult to sustain long-term social media engagements.

Music is extremely versatile and can cater to virtually any target audience, and everyone loves free and guilt-free music. With this in mind, WOWLOUD was created and designed to be used as a social media currency through free unlimited music content based on a superior end user experience. In other words, the user experience of WOWLOUD has to be good to the point where there is a clear tangible value for users which translates in social media value.

At the same time WOWLOUD also has to be able to integrate seamlessly into brand campaigns to create the ultimate user experience from a brand advertiser’s perspective. It has to allow creative room for long term brand engagements over social media with added opportunities to bundle real world experiences and association with music, well known artistes and entertainment.

WOWLOUD will continue to be refined and updated rigorously and new ideas anchored around the concept of social media currency will continue to emerge and mature over time. We look forward to share our future successes with our readers. In the meantime do contact us if you wish to contribute new creative ideas on what we can do with WOWLOUD.

For those who have missed it, we had performances from our home grown musicians as well as from some of the favourite indie acts. Malaysia’s acoustic guitar maestro, Az Samad gave a thundering guitar solo for the opening act, while other performances for the night include Soo Wincci, Aliff Satar, Awi Rafael, Wana, Cindy Chen, Aura 21, IQA, Chomel Fana, Once Upon A Time There Was A Sausage Named Bob, Ahmad Ahmad and Gabba Gabba. Guests were also treated with the world debut of the clip of the popular pop group, Foster The People which was recorded during their tour in America.

Az Samad

Awi Rafael at the launch of WOWLOUD

Iqa

The launch party, emceed by Hitz Party Show radio, DJ Jin, was officially launched by our CEO, Mr Chung Jaan Hao together with the Chairman of MNC, Tan Sri Datuk Seri Panglima Abdul Kadir Bin Fadzir, Non Executive Director of MNC, Datuk Vincent Lee Fook Long and by the representatives from all four major music labels in Malaysia (Universal Music Malaysia, Sony Music Malaysia, Warner Music Malaysia & One Stop Music Sdn Bhd).

The official launch of WOWLOUD

Everyone who had attended that night received an immediate access to WOWLOUD via the instant access card. With this express pass, users do not have to wait for an invitation to the WOWLOUD Free account and were given the opportunity to be the first to experience the WOWLOUD player.

For those who do not know what WOWLOUD is, it is the next mega trend in the way you listen to music. Unlike anything you’ve experienced before, WOWLOUD gives you instant access to one of the biggest collection of music that you ever need. There is no need to download, transfer and store any music anymore. Best of all it’s available to you for FREE.

So, how can you get access to WOWLOUD? WOWLOUD is by invitation only. You need an invitation to access WOWLOUD. To be in the running to receive the exclusive invitation, you may sign up now at www.wowloud.com. Invites are limited, so act now.

For the WOWLOUD Premium version, we are offering an introductory promotional prize of just RM9.90 per month for the subscription to WOWLOUD Premium and unlimited streaming access without the 20 hour per month cap for WOWLOUD Free for a limited time only.  Please go to our website for more information.

WOWLOUD is truly the future of music.

In a matter of weeks we will be celebrating the birth of WOWLOUD, a cloud music service that will forever change how music is discovered and enjoyed in this country.

My fascination with cloud music began a little more than 12 months ago when I was moving heaps of CDs around the house due to a little flooding mishap in my house. I had no idea that I had accumulated so many CDs in my lifetime until that point of time. I still buy the occasional (audiophile) CDs even though I have started downloading MP3 like what most people do, I suddenly felt “outdated” and even “pre-historic” as I stared down on the boxes of CDs which I had to move in order to make way for my flooring renovation.

What is the ultimate music experience? For me it’s being able to discover and have access to all music in this world at an instant, while having the ability to carry all that music everywhere I go whether to my AV room or to my car. I am not a true audiophile but I do enjoy high fidelity music on a fairly good set of hifi system, so high quality recordings are a must.

Would I pay money for it? It would depend on what I am getting, but if something comes along that is able to meet my musical demands I wouldn’t mind paying. Of course if I could sample songs for free first that would be a real winner for me. But ultimately I would only pay for an experience which is unattainable from buying CDs or downloading MP3s.

Thinking caps were put on that the moment and a quick tour to the Stockholm, the birthplace of cloud music in Europe during a chilling -20 degree celcius winter unleashed my strong desires to make cloud music a possibility in this part of the world. I wanted to make something meaningful and something that would really have a positive impact on people’s lives. After all music is a very powerful medium.

Some people told me that we couldn’t do it. Some people said it will never work. But the 12 months of transformation of MNC Wireless under the banner of MNC:Playlab before that paid off. We were able to put together a crack team and while even our own people had their doubts, we pushed forward to the point where technologically there wasn’t really much that felt we couldn’t do. The feeling of being to walk among giants was overwhelming and intoxicating.

It was a long way getting here and we had our usual office dramas and issues with partners that we had to endure. Finding the right people for the right job was daunting but the core members of WOWLOUD pulled through and delivered. We are witnessing the birth of a music experience that is in tune with the progress of internet, our lifestyles and our devices. We are now finally knocking on the gates to rockstardom. And I realize that we are just scratching the surface of bigger things to come.

WOWLOUD, the first cloud music service in Asia will be made available to Malaysians for free in the coming weeks. Access to the service is by invitation only so please register your interest to receive an invitation to experience WOWLOUD at wowloud.com.

Meanwhile in a cold and dry ex-bomb shelter in an undisclosed location Stockholm, another team of MNC-ians are coding away as if it’s a “hack-a-thone” fest. Feeding on a steady diet of smelly herring their brains are working overtime as Lars which we shall call the “CTO” for now whips them and shouts “FASTER! FASTER!”. What sinister plot could be brewing and what is a bunch of MNC-ians coders doing in the Nordics. More to come.

What exactly is WOWLOUD? To sum it up, it’s like having a multi storey CD store in your PC. With access to millions of music tracks, you can play anything and everything you want on demand. There is no need to download, transfer and store any music anymore. Best of all it’s available to you for FREE.

So, how can you get access to WOWLOUD? WOWLOUD is by invitation only. Users need an invitation to access WOWLOUD. To be in the running to receive the exclusive invitation, users may sign up now at www.wowloud.com. Invites are limited, so act now.

This is truly the future of music.

We had our very first ‘MNC Playlab Big Idea Day’ last month on 23 Jun 2011. If you are wondering what is this Big Idea Day is all about, it’s an extension to our existing MNC Playlab Facebook group page where everyone can share and contribute their ideas over an informal discussion. Ideas and suggestions will be noted down and great ideas will be nurtured either into existing products or totally new services.

For those who have missed it, here are some of the insights that emerged from our first session:

1.    We will have our very own video feeds very soon. The premiere of our in-house corporate video by Leonardo at the MNC Big Idea Day proves that we are certainly not short of talent in producing our in-house corporate video. It’s not the best and there is definitely room for improvement but it’s a good start.

2.    Calling the Customer Service on the phone is not cool anymore. To continue to stay relevant, we have to start thinking about moving our customer service platform online. Customers now expect fast response. They don’t want to wait for someone to pick up the call or to be transferred from one personnel to the next. Customers prefer real-time response.

3.    MNC Wireless a media provider. From a pure mobile content provider to a digital services provider, soon we can call ourselves a media provider when our media department takes off.

4.    Involved everyone. It’s great to see staff setting aside some time to get together despite all the meetings, deadlines, emails, projects and the rest of the stuff that is happening in the office everyday. What is needed is to cultivate this positive energy among the staffs. Hope to see more faces at our next MNC Big Idea Day.

In the first installment, we featured what the Company is doing and what MNC Playlab is all about. The CEO gave a good introduction about MNC Wireless, followed by the ideas and opinions from other management from Music Department to Business Development and even Design Team.

If you asked me, for a first attempt at making our own in-house video, it was quite a production considering we are not using the services from any professional production house. It is important to keep it light and enjoy the whole experience. We certainly learned some valuable tips about the use of the proper lighting and voice over. We are still learning how to get a video successfully embedded into our blog. Nevertheless here are some behind-the-scenes photos when we were shooting the first installment in one of our meeting rooms.

Do tune in to catch the short video at the link here and let us know what you think of it. Our plan is to have a continuous video feed with new video added every month. Different feature topics are planned for the next few months just to keep the hype up. Our next instalment will be coming soon.

The Xtramile run organized by StART Society is an invitation for the community and corporations to go the extra mile for the less fortunate by pledging online to help the underprivileged children. Unlike a normal charity run, the xtramile run will have a hero runner, Aled Au-Yong who will be running 100km on that day.

For those who are not aware, StART Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to reach out and inspire children to realize their potential through music, drama, speech, writing, design, etc. Alex will attempt to run 100km across 10 suburbs in 16 hours in order to raise RM100,000 for the music and dance programme.

In support of this, MNC is sponsoring the xtramile website and online payment platform to help create awareness and facilitate the online pledging. The website is also equipped with social sharing function that is designed for viral ability. To enable more users to pledge online, we have added both credit card and MEPS payment ability on the website.

For more information on the xtramile run, please go to http://xtramile.info

In the first part of this series, I talked about how the iPhone made a tear in the great walled garden of mobile operators, where traditionally it was impossible for any content developer to bypass the mobile operators’ “app store” a.k.a. “content portals”. All content had to be purchased and paid through the mobile operator’s own billing systems where they had exclusive claim over the customers. Purchase of content outside this system then was cumbersome and there was little if no infrastructure that could support this.

I don’t think that many mobile operators foretold how far this would go and for those who did, the decision was based on gaining the ability to bundle this cool and highly desired device with their data plans while only risk losing a very small portion of their content revenue. They were mostly right as the iPhone did manage to help some mobile operators who launched first in their territories to gain new subscribers, sell new data plans and even retain customers.

While the iPhone made small tear, android phones are going to shred that walled garden into pieces. While what iPhone did helped turn Apple’s bottomline, it also helped open the pandora box for all mobile content executives within the mobile operators. They suddenly realize that they no longer are in full control and had to swim against a tide of change. Not only that, mobile content executives now have less and less control over their subscribers as more of their subscribers switch to smartphones. In addition they also now have to compete with content developers for app space within the subscribers’ phones. Of course they still have their traditional content services which contribute a tidy sum to their KPIs and I myself have always held the view that early adopters of smartphones are mostly new consumers of mobile content. So the immediate impact may not be as big as anyone can imagine, but the downward pressure is there and it happens faster in some markets compared to others. The high adoption of mobile data services has always been any mobile content executive’s wet dream and this dream is now shattered forever as customers who adopted it went shopping somewhere else.
There always will be greater forces at work that are beyond our imagination or control. Recent technological advancements have brought rapid changes upon us. We shop differently, we listen to music differently, we interact with our friends differently, we share and access information differently and so forth. All this has brought a decentralizing effect on society as everyone now has a voice and can be heard. The laws of the crowd determine what gets popular and what gets drowned out. I am not going to talk about political implications and the effect of social media in forcing change within governments. I will put focus on trying to take stock of the changes within us, the changes around us, how such changes are experienced by us and how such changes are challenging the current conventions within the media landscape. After all that’s what my company focuses on.

Most of the audience there already know that they should make use of social media for marketing. The issue is not whether they should go into it but rather how? Some companies are already making a presence successfully on Facebook or Twitter and are already using these channels to reach out to their target audience with great success.

For those who are novel to all these fiasco, they are most likely thinking about which channel should they use and how should they start. The answer to this is simply to go where your customers are, use what your customers are using. If your customers are on Facebook, then start off there and if they are on Twitter, start off there. If you don’t know where they are, just start with one and add on another when you get the hang of it.

Few years ago, MNC Wireless had a conventional corporate website just like how most of the corporate website is like out there. It has very corporate style, filled with lengthy write-up and standardise photos from the image bank. Today we have added our Twitter feeds and Facebook page links in there. We have also started a corporate blog called Digital and Mobile Playlab in WordPress which you are reading from here. Every month, we will also issue our monthly E-newsletter on the latest updates and where our CEO contributes his thoughts with the readers.

There are just some of the changes that we have taken. The followers and activities on these social channels may not be as fantastic as we have envisioned but it’s a good start. We all want the ultimate engagement where users not only buy your products but recommend it to their friends. For this, we have to first get them to visit us, “like” us and comment something about us. After all, social media involves an extended period of courtship and discovery leading to commitment and loyalty.