Kakao launches Spotify-esque KakaoMusic

I’m sure all of us music lovers are well aware by now, Spotify is expanding in Asia and iTunes is also entering the music streaming space, but now Kakao is jumping in the game with Kakao Music. The chat platform wars are criss crossing into music territory.

This isn’t Kakao’s first attempt at providing content, as its been in the games space for a long time. In fact, its KakaoGames branch made the company the bulk of its $311 million in revenue (though that figure includes takes from developers). On top of this, Kakao also hosts KakaoPlace, KakaoPage, and a digital publishing platform, so music would seem like a natural progression.

TIA snagged an email interview with Kakao’s Sonia Im yesterday who gave us a lowdown on Kakao’s music ambitions.

Does Kakao intend to compete with Spotify and other music streaming services? How are you different from them?

Unlike other music streaming services, KakaoMusic is a new type of mobile music service that combines social with music. Leveraging the social graph created through users KakaoTalk and KakaoStory friends list and relationships, KakaoMusic enables users to create and share a personally curated music room with their friends. Users can also leave comments on each others music rooms and share memories and sentiments about songs in the music room.

Is there any specific type of music that Kakao will feature?

We offer all types and genres of music, including almost all of the songs that are available on pre-existing local music streaming services.

What countries are you currently launching this service in?

The service is currently only available in Korea, in Korean.

What’s the ‘music room’ feature within Kakao Music? Is this at all like the deadpool service turntable.fm?

The music room is a personal space within the KakaoMusic application that displays all of the songs that a user has purchased, in addition to the comments left to the user. Leveraging the friend list from KakaoTalk, users can easily visit their friends’ music rooms to check out their music list and share opinion. This is different from other services in that 1) it leverages a social graph from KakaoTalk, and 2) people can socialize within the app.

How is KakaoMusic connected to the chat app?

Users can invite friends to join them in enjoying a song that they purchased through the ‘listen together’ feature. The friends receive an invitation message through KakaoTalk.
It is also highly integrated with KakaoStory, Korea’s number one SNS service. Once a user purchases a song from KakaoMusic, they can choose to post the song on their KakaoStory. KakaoStory friends can not only leave comments about their friends’ song selection, but can also click on the music post to directly listen to the song (users need to also be KakaoMusic users to enjoy this awesome feature.