Line will roll out music service, e-commerce, and video calls later this year

Line is revealing a lot of stuff at the messaging app’s annual event in Tokyo today. The three major new features coming to Line app have been outlined by Jun Masuda, NHN’s chief strategy and marketing officer: Line Music, Line Mall, and video calls.

Line Music will be rolled out soon and will appear within the messaging app, not as one of Line’s huge suite of complementary services. It’s not yet clear which – or how many – music labels are on board with this, or whether it’ll be for downloadable or streaming music. Or both.

Line Mall will be the company’s big push into e-commerce on smartphones, but no further details are available yet.

The more elementary of the three new features is video calling. Line is behind some major rivals in this respect, with WeChat having added video calls last summer, and Viber did the same in May this year.

All of these features, Jun promises, will come to many countries, not just Japan.

Earlier today, the company also unveiled prepaid cards for buying virtual goods, as well as a bunch of country-specific user numbers. Line now has a grand total of 230 million registered users.

(Source: Startup-Dating)

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)