Line, the Japanese messaging app with 205 million active users, is continuing its push into entertainment services after it began testing a standalone $2 per month music streaming app, Tech Crunch reported on Friday.
Line Music is being trialed in Thailand, where Line has carried out a series of other pilots related to its shift into value added services. The app is available for iOS and Android and is integrated into the chat app to allow users to share songs with Line friends, or post to their timeline inside the app.
Line declined to say how many tracks that the new service has. The company has signed licensing deals with a number of music labels in Thailand, including RS Music, so the Line Music catalog is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands at this point. Rather than challenging Spotify and co, this is an initiative to see whether Line’s most devoted users will pay up for entertainment — Thailand, with over 30 million registered Line users, is the company’s second largest market behind its native Japan.
The timing of Line Music’s launch is interesting since the service surfaced one day after MixRadio, the music service Line acquired from Microsoft, finally launched for iOS and Android devices. Line confirmed to us that the two services are being run independently of each other.
Line was last year tipped to pursue a joint US-Japan listing, although that plan appeared to be scrapped.
The company confirmed in April that it had renewed its IPO license, though it didn’t commit to anything beyond that. This week, however, Bloomberg reported that a dual listing is again on the cards for September.
