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The InterSpace Group

Asia-Pacific

Distribute your catalog
across Asia.

Six markets, six writing systems, and a different dominant platform in every one. ToneGrid delivers a single upload into Melon, JioSaavn, KKBOX, AWA, JOOX, Tencent Music and NetEase alongside the global stores, with the metadata localised per market and the rights set per territory.

日本 · 대한민국 · 中国 · 台灣 · भारत · ASEAN

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+10.9%

Asia recorded-music growth in 2025, against a 6.4% global average

No.2

Japan's rank among world recorded-music markets, up 8.9%

45.1%

Share of global physical revenue that comes from Asia

837M

Paid music subscription users worldwide

Figures from the IFPI Global Music Report 2026, covering calendar year 2025. Last reviewed .

What does it take to distribute music across Asia?

Asia is not one market and no single connection covers it. Each sub-region has a dominant domestic platform that outsells the global services locally, its own writing system that listeners actually search in, and its own expectations about how rights are documented. A pipeline built for Western stores will technically deliver into Asia and then quietly underperform, because the releases are filed under unsearchable names and held out of the platforms that matter.

ToneGrid treats the region as infrastructure rather than a set of one-off integrations. One upload carries parallel local-script metadata, a territory grant resolved per market, and direct DDEX feeds into the domestic platforms alongside the global ones. Every store reports its own status, and the revenue reconciles against the same rights record that produced the delivery.

Key facts

Markets covered
Japan, South Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.
Domestic platforms reached
Melon, FLO, AWA, JioSaavn, Gaana, Hungama, KKBOX, JOOX, Tencent Music (QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo) and NetEase Cloud Music.
Delivery specification
DDEX ERN 4.2 over SFTP to the domestic platforms, ERN 4.3 to the global ones. Dispatch is two to five business days from your approval.
Scripts supported
Kanji, kana and romaji; Hangul; Simplified and Traditional Chinese with pinyin; Devanagari and the major Indian regional scripts; Thai, Vietnamese and Bahasa.
Who approves a release
You do. Every release waits in your own QC queue and only your team can approve it. The platform supplies the evidence and never approves on your behalf.
Royalties
Reported monthly by store, territory, track and payee, splits applied automatically. Payouts 10 to 15 days after the earning month closes, in USD.
The Sub-Markets

Six markets. Six playbooks.

Treating Asia as a single territory is the most expensive mistake a catalog can make. Each of these behaves differently enough to need its own metadata, its own store list and its own release timing.

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Japan

日本 · World's No.2 recorded music market

Japan returned to growth in 2025, up 8.9%, and remains the largest physical market on earth. Metadata expectations are the strictest in the region: full-width Japanese fields, a separate romaji reading, and artist-name kana for correct sorting. Get those wrong and a release is filed under the wrong artist rather than rejected outright.

Stores
AWA, LINE Music, Recochoku, mora, Spotify, Apple Music
Script
Kanji, hiragana, katakana + romaji
graphic_eq

South Korea

대한민국 · Melon-led, chart-driven

Korea runs on real-time charts and domestic platforms, with Melon the anchor. Hangul title and artist fields are non-negotiable for discovery, and release timing matters more here than almost anywhere: the chart cycle rewards coordinated same-day delivery across every domestic store.

Stores
Melon, FLO, Genie, Bugs, Spotify, Apple Music
Script
Hangul + Latin
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India

भारत · Highest-volume streaming market in the region

India is a volume market with an ad-supported centre of gravity and a dozen language industries inside it. A Hindi release and a Tamil release are different products with different stores, different playlist ecosystems and different metadata. Language of performance is the field that decides where a track surfaces.

Stores
JioSaavn, Gaana, Hungama, Spotify, YouTube Music
Script
Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali + Latin
travel_explore

Southeast Asia

ASEAN · Fastest-moving mobile-first region

Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines are mobile-first, telco-bundled and heavily social-driven. JOOX holds real share in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. Discovery starts on short-video and ends on streaming, so social delivery is part of the release plan rather than an afterthought.

Stores
JOOX, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Trebel
Script
Thai, Vietnamese, Bahasa + Latin
hub

Greater China

大中华 · Largest paying audience by subscriber count

Tencent Music alone closed 2025 with 127.4 million paying subscribers. China has the deepest requirements of any Asian market: Simplified Chinese metadata, a documented territory rights position, and a certified delivery channel.

Stores
QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo, WeSing, NetEase Cloud Music
Script
Simplified Chinese + pinyin
Read the China guide arrow_forward
language

Taiwan & Hong Kong

繁體中文 · Traditional-Chinese repertoire hubs

KKBOX is the regional anchor and Traditional Chinese is a genuinely separate metadata set, not a font swap on Simplified. Mandopop and Cantopop catalogs that ship only Simplified fields lose search visibility across both territories.

Stores
KKBOX, JOOX, Spotify, Apple Music
Script
Traditional Chinese + Latin
Where Catalogs Fail

Delivered is not the same as discoverable

Most catalogs are technically present in Asia. Very few are actually findable there. The gap is almost never the delivery itself: it is what the release carries when it arrives, and whether anyone can prove it should be there at all.

These are the four failures that show up again and again in regional catalog audits, and what the infrastructure does about each.

translate

One script for a region with six

Latin-only metadata is unsearchable for the majority of the audience, and Simplified Chinese is not a substitute for Traditional in Taiwan or Hong Kong. Japanese needs three fields, not one: the written form, the reading, and the romanisation.

What we do: parallel local-script fields per market, with the reading and transliteration stored as their own values rather than crammed into the title.

gavel

Territory treated as a checkbox

Asia is where sub-publishing, local licensing deals and carve-outs collide. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are routinely lumped in with mainland China even when the rights say otherwise.

What we do: territory set per release and per store with those markets separable, cross-checked against the recorded rights position before packaging. See rights management.

schedule

Release timing that ignores the chart cycle

Korea's real-time charts and Japan's release conventions reward coordinated same-day availability. A release that trickles onto domestic stores over a week loses its window entirely.

What we do: scheduled release dates honoured per store with lead times accounted for, so the whole regional store list goes live together rather than whenever each feed happens to land.

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Regional revenue you cannot attribute

Domestic platforms report on their own schedules and in their own formats. Folded into a single line, the result is a regional total nobody can defend to an artist or a payee.

What we do: per-store, per-territory, per-track reporting into one royalty engine, reconciled against the rights record that generated the delivery.

Channel Spec

The Asian channels, on the record

Published rather than hidden behind a sales call. Lead times are measured from your own approval and exclude each store's ingestion review.

ToneGrid delivery specification for Asian digital service providers
Platform Market Format Protocol Channel Dispatch
Tencent Music QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP verified Certified 2 days
NetEase Cloud Music Mainland China DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP verified Certified 2 days
Melon South Korea DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP verified Certified 2 days
JioSaavn India DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP verified Certified 2 days
Gaana India DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP Standard 2 days
JOOX HK, TH, ID, MY DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP Standard 2 days
KKBOX Taiwan, HK, Japan DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP Standard 2 days
FLO South Korea DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP Standard 2 days
AWA Japan DDEX ERN 4.2 SFTP Partner-routed 2 days
Spotify Region-wide DDEX ERN 4.3 SFTP Direct 5 days
Apple Music Region-wide DDEX ERN 4.3 SFTP verified Certified 5 days
TikTok Region-wide DDEX ERN 4.3 REST verified Certified 3 days

Store-side review and publication timing sit with each platform and are not guaranteed by the delivery channel. Partner-routed means delivery reaches the store through a licensed delivery partner rather than a direct feed. Channel parameters current as of August 2026.

The Rest of the Stack

Everything the platform does, not just this market.

Melon, JioSaavn and Tencent Music are store selections. What you are actually buying is the platform underneath them, and every capability below is part of it.

hub

Global DSP delivery pipeline

Automated delivery to 220+ digital service providers with real-time status tracking, for audio, audiovisual and metadata-only deliveries.

  • checkPre-flight validation catches metadata errors before delivery
  • checkRelease dates, pre-order windows and instant releases
  • checkInstant takedowns and territory-specific removals
  • checkFull audit trail for every delivery across every DSP
  • checkDirect DDEX feeds rather than an aggregator middle layer
DSP network arrow_forward
account_balance

Transparent royalty engine

Complex split trees, calculations automated from DSP reports, and payouts in multiple currencies including mobile money.

  • checkUnlimited split depth: label to sublabel to artist to producer to writer
  • checkUSD, EUR, GBP and NGN with automated FX conversion
  • checkBank transfer, PayPal, Paystack, Flutterwave and mobile money
  • checkBranded PDF and CSV royalty statements per pay period
  • checkMonthly cycle, paid 10 to 15 days after the earning month closes
Rights and royalties arrow_forward
security

AI-powered fraud detection

Multi-layer content moderation that detects AI-generated music, duplicate content, streaming fraud and bot accounts before they reach a DSP.

  • checkMulti-phase detection flags synthetic and AI-generated content
  • checkAudio fingerprinting catches re-uploads and content theft
  • checkAnomaly detection identifies artificial streaming patterns
  • checkThree-tier escalation framework for policy violations
  • checkEverything surfaces in your queue; your team holds the decision
Fraud detection arrow_forward
api

RESTful API and webhooks

Full programmatic access to catalog, delivery, analytics and royalty endpoints, so you can build custom integrations and automate workflows.

  • checkVersioned, rate-limited, with a sandbox environment
  • checkPer-store delivery webhooks on every status transition
  • checkAn MCP server so AI agents can drive the platform directly
  • checkEverything the dashboard does, the API does
API docs arrow_forward

More capabilities, built in

Included on the platform, not sold as add-ons.

badge

White-label platform

Your domain, your logo, your terms, your pricing. Artists and sub-labels never see an underlying vendor name in the product or the emails it sends.

Learn more arrow_forward
person

Artist portals

A branded portal for every artist and sub-label on your roster, with their own catalog, analytics and statements.

Learn more arrow_forward
translate

19-language artist portal

Including Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi and Arabic.

Learn more arrow_forward
apartment

Multi-tenant architecture

Fully isolated tenants with separate branding, user pools and data. Built for aggregators managing multiple sub-labels.

Learn more arrow_forward
smart_display

UGC monetization and YouTube Content ID

Claim and monetize user-generated content across YouTube and TikTok, with integrated Content ID management on Enterprise plans.

Learn more arrow_forward
graphic_eq

AI mastering integration

Offer AI-powered mastering as an upsell to your artists, wired directly into the upload workflow.

Learn more arrow_forward
library_add

Batch release tools

Upload and deliver hundreds of releases at once with CSV templates and DDEX batching. Built for catalog-heavy operations.

Learn more arrow_forward
data_object

DDEX / XML ingestion

DDEX ERN 4.3.2 support for catalog imports and exports, so migrating a back catalog is a data transfer rather than a re-upload.

Learn more arrow_forward
payments

Payment rails

PayPal, Stripe, Wise, mobile money and local bank transfer across 50+ countries. Pay artists wherever they are.

Learn more arrow_forward
campaign

DSP pitching alerts

Automated notifications when a release becomes eligible for editorial playlist pitching on Spotify, Apple Music and others.

Learn more arrow_forward
gavel

Rights management

Recording and composition ownership recorded separately, with writers, publishers and splits held on the release itself.

Learn more arrow_forward
history

Changelog and audit logs

Full activity history for every action taken on the platform. Who did what, when, for compliance and accountability.

Learn more arrow_forward
smart_toy

MCP for AI agents

An MCP server exposes the platform to AI agents, so an agent can prepare a release, check delivery state or pull a royalty breakdown.

Learn more arrow_forward
savings

Flat-fee pricing

Infrastructure priced as SaaS from a fixed monthly fee. No revenue share, so growth accrues to you and your artists.

Learn more arrow_forward

Every capability above is on every plan unless marked Enterprise.

feature_search Full feature list payments See pricing

Built for the people carrying catalog

album

Record labels

Take a roster into Japan, Korea and India without renegotiating your distribution stack or sharing the upside with a third party.

For labels arrow_forward lan

Distributors

Offer domestic Asian platforms as a headline feature of your own branded platform, with multi-tenant controls and an audit trail behind it.

For distributors arrow_forward account_tree

Aggregators

Migrate large back catalogs over DDEX ingestion, then localise and push the whole library into the region in one operation.

For aggregators arrow_forward
Questions

Asian distribution, answered

How do I distribute music across Asia?

expand_more

Asia is not one market and cannot be served by one connection. Japan, South Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Greater China each have their own dominant domestic platforms, their own writing systems and their own rights expectations. ToneGrid delivers a single upload into all of them: direct DDEX feeds to Melon, JioSaavn, Gaana, KKBOX, FLO, JOOX, Tencent Music and NetEase alongside Spotify, Apple Music and TikTok, with the metadata localised per market and territory set per release.

Which Asian streaming platforms can I deliver to?

expand_more

Tencent Music (QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo) and NetEase Cloud Music in mainland China; Melon, FLO, Genie and Bugs in South Korea; AWA, LINE Music and Recochoku in Japan; JioSaavn, Gaana and Hungama in India; KKBOX in Taiwan and Hong Kong; JOOX across Southeast Asia; plus Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and TikTok region-wide. That is part of a 220+ store network reached from one release workflow.

How large is the Asian recorded music market?

expand_more

Asia grew 10.9% in 2025 according to the IFPI Global Music Report 2026, ahead of the 6.4% global average, and accounted for 45.1% of global physical revenues. Japan is the world's second-largest recorded music market and returned to growth at 8.9%. Globally, recorded music reached USD 31.7 billion with 837 million paid subscription users.

Do I need Japanese, Korean or Chinese metadata to release in Asia?

expand_more

Yes, for anything you want discovered. Domestic platforms index local-script fields, and listeners search in their own script. ToneGrid carries parallel local-script title, artist and album fields alongside the Latin-script original: kanji with a separate romaji reading and kana for Japan, Hangul for Korea, Simplified Chinese with pinyin for the mainland, Traditional Chinese for Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Devanagari or the relevant regional script for India.

Who approves a release before it is delivered?

expand_more

You do. Every release stops in your own QC queue and only your team can approve it. The platform supplies the evidence, not the verdict: audio fingerprinting results, AI label-copy findings, artwork and lyric flags, DDEX validation errors and a territory-versus-rights cross-check, each severity-tiered with a full audit trail. Nothing is auto-approved and nothing is delivered on your behalf. ISRCs are issued at the moment your team approves rather than at submission.

Can I set different territories for different Asian markets?

expand_more

Yes. Territory is set per release and per store, and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are configurable separately from mainland China. You can hold a release out of one territory while shipping it everywhere else, or licence a market exclusively, and the rights layer records who controls the recording and the composition in each one so royalties reconcile against the same record.

How long do Asian DSPs take to go live?

expand_more

Dispatch from your approval is typically two business days for the domestic Asian platforms, three for TikTok and five for Spotify and Apple Music. Each store then runs its own ingestion and review before the release appears. Status is reported per store rather than as a single aggregate, so you see Submitted, Accepted and Live for Melon or JioSaavn specifically, with a webhook on every transition.

Can I run Asian distribution under my own brand?

expand_more

Yes. ToneGrid is white-label infrastructure. Your artists and sub-labels sign in to your platform, on your domain, with your logo and your terms, and never see an underlying vendor name. The artist portal runs in 19 languages including Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Hindi, so a regional roster works in its own language end to end.

Take your catalog
into Asia.

Every Asian channel is included on every plan, on the same flat monthly fee as the other 220+ stores. No revenue share, no per-territory surcharge, no separate regional contract.

payments See pricing feature_search See all features

Keep reading

Tencent Music & China Latin America & Spain Sweden & the Nordics 220+ DSP network Rights management White-label platform Pricing