The Orchard has entered into a marketing and licensing partnership with Chinese mobile infrastructure and services provider, ZTEMT. Utilizing The Orchard’s top one hundred thousand songs, ZTEMT will program an English language genre section of China Telecom’s newly updated iMusic. According to The Orchard, this deal makes them the first international digital music distributor to introduce such a large selection of western music to China’s 388 million net and mobile users.
When the new iMusic service launches in September, the English language section of storefront will be programmed with a strong focus on independent music discovery via digital compilations and editorial content. The Orchard will also provide marketing and creative services to China Telecom’s national campus campaign targeting millions of college students throughout China.
From the press release:
“Bringing The Orchard’s most popular western music and equally importantly, their world class retail programming expertise to China Telecom through our multi-faceted relationship with ZTEMT will ensure that all Chinese music fans with Wi-Fi enabled devices will have access to sounds from western superstars to cutting edge, emerging independent music,” commented Dr. Yingbo Zhu, Deputy General Manager of China Telecom’s iMusic.
“We are proud to have been selected to program the western music section for one of China’s leading mobile operators,” commented Greg Scholl, President and Chief Executive for The Orchard. “Again, The Orchard shatters barriers that prevent great independent music from being heard wherever globally there are music fans, and in a way that fairly compensates artists and label. In China, hundreds of millions of music fans don’t discriminate between ‘independent’ and ‘major label’ music.”
