Smart Communications Inc. said it renewed its partnership with the world’s number one music company, MCA Music Inc., in a bid to boost data revenues.
Smart and MCA Music, which launched the partnership two years ago, changed the music landscape in the country by being the first to offer convenient and affordable access to music anytime, anywhere via music service SPINNR.
“We’re glad that MCA is continuing to partner with us to bring the best mobile music experience to millions of users nationwide through SPINNR,” Ariel Fermin, executive vice president and head of consumer business at Smart said.
Smart’s combined mobile Internet and broadband revenues rose 14.4 percent to P15.6 billion in the first nine months of 2015, on renewed digital strategy that focuses on new mobile data offers and digital partnerships.
This was supported by an upsurge in mobile data usage, which posted a 139-percent growth in the amount of data traffic being exchanged within Smart’s mobile network.
Smartphone penetration within the Smart and Sun networks stands at 35 precent.
Ricky Ilacad, chief executive at MCA Music, said the Smart partnership was a big boost to the music industry, particularly in making music downloads more affordable and accessible to everyone through SPINNR.
“SPINNR is a big instrument in promoting legitimate music downloads as basically anyone can download their favourite music without the use of credit cards or any complicated payment schemes,” Ilacad said.
SPINNR enables users to listen to their favorite songs on their smartphones wherever they want, at just the tap of a finger on the screen.
The service tore down the steep barrier preventing access to the latest digital services by allowing users to pay for their song purchases or streaming subscriptions using their prepaid loads or charge it on top their postpaid accounts.
This means they need not be credit card holders in order to gain access to the music service, thereby opening an entire ecosystem of services to more Filipinos nationwide.
The innovative payment system helped in boosting the digital sales of local and international artists through music downloads and streaming subscriptions.
Downloads and streaming contributed to the 6.9-percent growth in digital music revenues worldwide, which stood at $6.9 billion in 2014, or almost half of all global music sales, according to a recent report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.