Merging two platforms
When business started to take off, everything clicked. iNDIEVOX finally received corporate support in late 2010. Neutron Innovation, owner of the StreetVoice online platform and organizer of the Simple Life festival, decided to invest in iNDIEVOX. Neutron asked Wu to serve as a vice president, helping with corporate restructuring. Their combined power helped make the indie music market bigger and louder.
Wu’s first job was to restructure overlapping parts of iNDIEVOX and StreetVoice. iNDIEVOX’s blog functionality was removed, instead focusing on commerce, while StreetVoice became fully non-profit, a simple promotion and exchange platform. The paid download functionality was connected to iNDIEVOX, focusing its firepower.
In 2012, iNDIEVOX’s yearly turnover reached almost NT$30 million, helping elevate many new bands. For instance, within six months of the release of the band 831’s first post-hiatus single on iNDIEVOX, they became popular enough to hold a concert at the National Taiwan University Sports Center, drawing an audience of more than 3,000. Because of the large jump in the scale of the business, profits grew by 50% in the first quarter of 2013 over the same period in 2012. Profits for 2013 are projected to be double those of last year.
At present, iNDIEVOX’s revenues come chiefly from three sources: music downloads, concert ticket sales, and major musical events.
There are great business prospects in music downloads. iNDIEVOX is cooperating with Academia Sinica to develop a “music discovery” application that helps consumers find songs they like. The way it works is that after a consumer buys music, the software runs an algorithm to seek songs with similar rhythms and audio frequency profiles, and then recommends them for trial listening or purchase. In this way, the consumer can explore new territory.
Regarding ticketing, iNDIEVOX is not only a ticketing agent for major “live house” venues and music festivals throughout Taiwan, but also cooperates with Taiwan’s biggest indie music performance venue, Legacy Taipei. They have launched a smartphone app that lets people order tickets online, then pay for and collect their tickets at a convenience store.
As for major musical events, iNDIEVOX has worked with StreetVoice since 2012 to produce live concerts for TV, recording over 40 popular indie band performances. Starting in April, concerts are scheduled to be aired on the cable TV show The Next Big Thing; this should drive the wave to greater heights.
(left) iNDIEVOX is also Taiwan’s most important ticket sales platform for indie music concerts. (right) Young artist Misi Ke often gets fans to attend her concerts through this ticketing system.