On November 19th at The Garage KL, Celcom Axiata Berhad launches Yonder Music streaming service for the Malaysian market. This exclusive partnership means only Celcom customers will be able to get to use Yonder’s service. Yonder Music, a New York-based company, was said to be formed in 2013, with its US beta launch happened in 2014. Celcom said Yonder will be launching in “other Axiata markets” in 2016. This app is available for both Android and iOS, but due to the exclusive nature, Celcom users have to download a specific app developed for the Malaysian market. As of now, the Malaysian version is only available on Android, so iOS users will have to wait a little longer.
It came as no surprise why this is a Celcom exclusive, as we later found out that Celcom Axiata in the previous quarter has invested US$10 million (~RM42.8 million) in Yonder Music. Yonder stressed that Celcom doesn’t have the largest stake in Yonder, but rather, it is the “largest investment” they’ve yet to receive.
Features and offers (and deal-breakers)
Yonder Music is available free for 6 months and 12 months for the brand new Celcom FiRST Blue and FiRST Gold subscribers, respectively. There is actually a free trial from November 19th until December 18th for existing Celcom customers, but for existing Celcom FIRST (postpaid) and Celcom Xpax (prepaid) customers, they should be presented with subscription plans soon, once the trial ends. The plans have not been revealed yet. There was also a confusion as to whether they’ve changed their minds and will offer Yonder Music free of any subscription for all Celcom customers, but this is not confirmed yet.
Right after the official launch, we were directed to the experiential room where we get to play around with Yonder Music and ask questions. Here, I was able to find out a bit more about the service itself. Unfortunately, there are only around 20 million songs on Yonder, compared to “over 30 million” on Spotify (just like Apple Music), Deezer’s 35 million, and TIDAL’s 25 million. Yonder’s 20 million tracks is not much compared to the rest, but it said it is constantly expanding the catalog.
In the app, you’ll find your usual music streaming features (like offline caching), but Yonder has this Magic Library and intelligently mixes up your own picks with songs it thinks you’ll love. Vinot tested this and found out that even if you have, say, 10 songs in your playlist, once it ends, it’ll continue playing other songs that is relevant to the playlist. One of the menu selection is a minigame, where it’ll play a song and you’ll have guess which album (art) the song is in, with leaderboards to compare your score with your friends’.
Partly due to the Celcom exclusive, your Yonder Music streaming won’t eat up any data quota allocated, however we think this only applies to Celcom FiRST Blue and FiRST Gold. Vinot, who has an older Celcom FIRST plan still gets his data allocation deducted while testing out Yonder. There is another deal-breaker; Yonder Music only streams in 64kbps unlike competing services that offer 128, 256, or higher. To make up for that, Yonder Music offers exclusive songs in the app, every first Friday of the month. The app is also integrated with Celcom where you can subscribe to data plans and buy its “Call Me Tones” caller ringtones.
Why Yonder?
Adam Kidron, founder and CEO of Yonder Music said that there are only 1% of people who pay to stream music, so its service is for the 99%. His company also promises to pay artistes in direct proportion to how many times their tracks have been played.
To celebrate the launch, Yonder got local artistes to make a cover to a Malaysian classic — Man Bai’s “Kau Ilham Ku” — where it was produced by J-Key and Russel Curtis, and features star-studded artistes like Dato’ Siti Nurhaliza, Yuna, Ariel Noah, Afgan Syahreza, Elizabeth Tan, Cita Citata, Joe Flizzow, SonaOne, Jaclyn Victor, and others. Proceeds of the song playbacks go to Yonder Music Trust, that supports development of musical talents in Malaysia by offering scholarships. Supporting the cause is International College of Music Malaysia where teachers and students of the college were at the launch event.
Finally, Yonder is also giving users a chance to win VIP tickets and passes to Bruno Mars’ concert that’ll be happening on New Year’s Eve 2015 in Las Vegas. One has to enter the “25 Heavy Hitters” contest and be the top streamer by December 18th to win.
For more, visit http://yondermusic.com/.
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