MUMBAI: Malaysia has got its very own music and radio streaming service- RAKU, which will be available in free and premium versions. The service is powered by digital music platform 7digital.

RAKU was launched by Malaysian Broadcaster, Astro, and allows users to stream personalised radio and millions of songs by both, local and international artists. Astro Radio CEO Jake Abdullah commented, “We are extremely excited to announce this as the destination for on-demand and personalised radio streaming in Malaysia.” He further added, “Astro Radio currently includes Malaysia’s highest rated stations across key languages and is available on both terrestrial and digital channels, reaching approximately 12.6 million weekly listeners.”

Recently, the service went live for Android, iOS and web users based in Malaysia. The streaming site offers its services in four languages namely Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin and Tamil, which cater to the needs of the locals. The site is like most existing music services, as it provides curated content as well. The premium version of the service includes additional features like unlimited access to songs, tailored playlists and offline music access, amongst other features.

There are three price bands for available to users. For Astro customers, the service is priced at RM9.90 a month, for android users it is RM14.90 a month, and for iOS users it is RM 22 a month.

7digital’s API is utilised to power the streams and manage reporting back to rights holders. 7digital also has a hand in licensing a portion of the content on behalf of Astro. Commenting on the association, Abdullah said, “Working with 7digitial allowed us to launch the product without worrying about the huge amount of the background work needed to create a music service. It allowed us to focus on the user proposition and build a great experience with a quicker time to market.”

7digital CEO Simon Cole said, “We are proud partners of this service and feel that RAKU has huge potential to change the way music is consumed in Malaysia. With our radio industry heritage, we know that existing media brands have an advantage for capturing new users to legally streamed music services. It is something we have expected to see as the worlds of online radio listening and streamed music come together.” 

The service has partnered with Telco service provider Digi as its advertising partner.