Recording companies redefine consumers

Sudhipong ‘Chompoo’ Vatanajang, RS executive vice president of music-content production.

GMM Grammy and RS Public, Thailand's leading recording companies, are being challenged by pirated CDs, free music downloads and friend-to-friend share programmes and are redefining their strategy to strengthen their product quality in tune with changing consumer behaviour.

Both have completed restructuring plans to recover from their recent losses. Grammy has its "X-ray strategy", in which albums are tailored to the different tastes of consumers. Albums consist of six groups: Teen Idol, Pop Idol, Rock, Vintage, Country, and Niche Market such as easy-listening, dance and indie.

RS is transforming its music business model from musical categorisations to "music-segment champion". The new strategy features eight segments with 10 labels such as Teen Community, Digital Pop Idol, Uni Club, Underground, Rock Society, Easy-Listening, Modern Local Country, and Hipster.

"The segment-champion strategy is teaching us what kind of music consumers are listening to, what their lifestyles are and where they spend their time. So we consider the lifestyle of each of segment in making our new music business model," said Sudhipong "Chompoo" Vatanajang, executive vice president of RS's music-content production.

"I look at the music trends of the world, consumer behaviour and musical categorisation," he added. "Kids prefer downloading and sharing music with their friends to paying for their favourite artist's CD, while grownups listen to the back catalogue and attend concerts."

Of the RS segments, Teen Community is the group aged from 10 to 17 years old, following new trends of Western and Asian music and spending their time mostly surfing the Internet. The music label of this segment is Kamikaze. Digital Pop Idol is the 15- to 25-year-old group, addicted to online technology. Their two labels are Melodiga and Aborigine.

"The first group is more up to date in its lifestyle, so we update our content, promotions, activities and sales all the time," said Chompoo.

Uni Club focuses on the student group in Bangkok, featuring Zomkiat Ariyachaipanish's Plenty Music. Underground (featuring Darkside) and Rock Society (featuring Pirate and 9Richter) are rock labels under the management of Jessada Hanchor. Easy Listening has Koh Mr Saxman's Mellow Tone label. Modern Local Country has R-Siam, and Hipster has Pleng.com as music online.

"This shows the strength of segments with brand ambassadors or idols. We are involved with each segment and build up their idols," said Chompoo. "We are like investment advisors using our strength to provide appropriate support for each of the segments."