CANNES, France (Top 40 Charts/ Orchard) - The Orchard (NASDAQ: ORCD), a global leader in music and video entertainment, today announced a strategic alliance with Avex, Japan's foremost independent music company and key shareholder in Japan's dominant mobile content joint-venture, Label Mobile. Japan is the second-largest music market in the world.
The partnership offers Orchard clients support from Avex's local retail service teams to market selected Orchard clients across Japan's leading digital stores and mobile services, including LABEL MOBILE INC.'s "Reco-choku" mobile portals, Label Gate Co.,Ltd's "mora" download store as well as Avex's own "Mu-Mo" mobile and PC download services.
For Avex, the deal transforms the breadth, depth and strength of Avex's international repertoire. In particular, across Japan's three leading mobile carriers, the collaboration ensures optimum marketing leverage for The Orchard in a market where mobile services represent some 90% of digital music sales, according to IFPI reports.
'In Japan, perhaps more so than any global territory, patience, perseverance, and a strong conviction as to who is the right local partner can pay enormous dividends,' said Greg Scholl, President and CEO of The Orchard. "In Avex, we have confidence that The Orchard is working with the strongest and best independent - in effect, a 'major label' within the Japanese market. Our five years of operating history in Japan have led to this important moment, and we are optimistic about what this partnership will mean for our clients.'
Orchard and Avex marketing experts will collaborate to develop innovative programs that draw from The Orchard's substantial and diverse catalogue. Through this, they find music, and methods of promoting it, that resonate best with Japanese music consumers and due to Avex's strong local presence, ensure these titles get the retail merchandising they deserve. The first collaborative release will be Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum sensation Ashanti's 'The Vault', a new album of 12 previously un-released recordings from the R&B songstress. The album includes the hit single "Let's Do Something Crazy", which features the Grammy-Nominated, platinum selling rapper and producer Flo-Rida. 'The Vault' streets digitally for PC downloads, ringtones, and mobile full track downloads on January 21st, 2009, followed by the album's physical release across Japan's leading retailers in early February.
About Avex Marketing, Inc.
Avex Marketing Inc. is the strategic subsidiary of Avex Group, a fully integrated entertainment business group based in Tokyo. The Group is unique in terms of both the breadth and caliber of its business activities. Its major business segments include artist management, musical/visual content production, physical/digital distribution, concert production as well as IP rights development. Its unmatched, seamless in-house platform allows Avex to maximize value for artist and the corporate brand as a whole, thereby enabling the Avex label to achieve the No.1 market share in the Japanese music market. Avex Group Holdings Inc. the holding company of the Group is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
About The Orchard
The Orchard (NASDAQ: ORCD) controls and globally distributes more than 1.3 million songs and over 5,000 video titles through hundreds of digital stores (e.g. iTunes, eMusic, Google, Netflix, V CAST) and mobile carriers (e.g. Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, Bell Canada, 3). With operations in 29 regions around the world, The Orchard drives sales for its label, retailer, brand, and agency clients through innovative marketing and promotional campaigns; brand entertainment programs; and film, advertising, gaming and television licensing. A pioneer in digital music and media services, The Orchard fosters creativity and independence.
