CAV and NCT Executives (left-to-right) Nhan The Luan, Nguyen Manh Dung, and Nakayama (Photo: CyberAgent) at NCT 2011 Year End Party

CyberAgent Ventures makes their seventh investment in Vietnam’s largest music site, NhacCuaTui.com.

Continuing their investment activities and capitalizing on the high potential internet business in Vietnam, CyberAgent Ventures (CAV) have announced that they recently invested in NCT Corporation on February 3. The investment in one of the Vietnam’s biggest Internet music media company, NhacCuaTui.com, marked the seventh investment made by CyberAgent in Vietnam. NhacCuaTui, roughly translated to mean “my music” in English, is headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City and lead by Nhan The Luan as the President and CEO.

NCT’s post-funding plans

NCT is very popular website where members listen to streaming music online, with traction of around 10 million users every month. The first investment from CyberAgent Asia Internet Fund, a fund specialized in Southeast Asian market is intended to create some “new businesses” in collaboration with NCT by taking advantage of its existing huge traffic. The business is related to digital contents as well as entertainment services, as CAV admits. But they refuse to disclose the details as the services and products are still under development. Additionally, the sum and terms as well.

How the CyberAgent funding round took shape

On the investment, Nhan The Luan says to e27, “We are very happy to review the four year development period of NhacCuaTui.Com. In return to ceaseless efforts of those who contribute the website, we have had the love and trust from the music community.  Now is the time for us to continue with the next step, to double the content and quality for the site and lead the online music market trend in Vietnam. We have strong confidence in the ability of Cyber Agent Fund in helping us carry out our goals, not only by its financial capacity but also we are much more enthusiastic in its technical strength and experience in internet services.”

“Finally, Cyber Agent Ventures has closed the deal with NCT after a period of painstaking endeavor. We highly evaluate the value that Nhaccuatui.com is bringing to Vietnamese internet community. Through this strategic cooperation, we hope to support NCT with our know-how and experience in the internet businesses, to bring more contents and business network to NCT to accelerate NTC’s growth, and ultimately to provide more helpful services to users,” Chief Representative of CAV Vietnam, Nguyen Manh Dung said.

NCT’s  strengths lies in existing agreements

In September last year, NCT signed an agreement with two major recorded music companies, Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME), allowing NCT to use the copyrighted international songs (existing and future) owned by both labels with the aim to provide the best musical products for their members.

As reported by Saigon Times, all items format are both audio and video types and NCT agreed to share its profits generated from business activities with these two partners.

Vietnamese music was adapted to the prevailing China influenced by Chàm or Montagnard as ethnic minorities and India while majority of its instruments are of Chinese origin.

The local music industry there is “quite challenging”. Intellectual Property Right (IPR), as quite similar with other developing countries, is less respectful. There are plenty of music studios, musicians, producers but most of them have other jobs to pay their expenses and bills. Most entertainment venues there do not pay music rights while music CDs are give-away items at the concerts. Only a few stores sell CDs’ of Vietnamese musicians.

Nguyen Manh Dung explained that “they did think of improving their local music industry”. These improvement requires time to take shape. As a first step, NCT has bought the license for overseas music contents, which make them become the first site to offer such copyrighted content, in the nation.