KKBOX and Microsoft: How a Friendship Launched a Cloud and AI Enabled Future for a Pioneer in Music Streaming

Sometimes the stars align in a way that when two technologies come together, one plus one doesn’t equal two, but it equals three. This was the case one year ago when I met Chris Lin, CEO and Founder of Asia’s music streaming giant KKBOX.

While I often meet leaders in tech, Chris was different. He and I hit it off from the start. We both studied in the US and returned to Taiwan to build our careers – but that’s not what made us really click.

As it turns out, Chris read and internalized Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset”, a book that had a tremendous impact on me, my career and Microsoft. In “Mindset”, the author says that people who have a “growth mindset” see their intelligence as malleable, and they see their mind as something to develop. They have a desire to keep learning, and embrace challenges, persist against setbacks, and see hard work as a chance to get better at something. At Microsoft, we build a culture founded in a growth mindset. It starts with a belief that everyone can grow, develop and that experimentation and failure are on the road to mastery.

During one of our early conversations, I asked Chris: “What keeps you awake at night?” Chris paused, thought for a moment, and told me the story about how KKBOX was the world’s first audio streaming company, launching 15 years ago in Taiwan, and building it into the number one platform for streaming Mandarin pop music in the world, and in doing so creating a company that marries culture with technology. But looking into 2020 and beyond, he saw a transformation taking place in how audiences consume media and entertainment. With this shift happening, Chris saw a need to either transform with it, or be left behind.

Long before our friendship ever started, Chris had been quietly watching Microsoft’s reinvention under our CEO Satya Nadella and came to us with curiosity on how we’d defied expectations and emerged as a global leader in cloud and AI. Sure enough, it was in no small part through Microsoft’s adoption of the “growth mindset”.

The challenge KKBOX faced was that a huge part of the infrastructure that streams 20 million songs to audiences is stored on fixed capacity data centers in central Taiwan. As they looked to transform their services and expand into the global market, legacy infrastructure make it hard to scale their streaming capabilities efficiently and leverage AI effectively from the massive amounts of data available. Chris came to us to help refresh and enhance KKBOX’s technology infrastructure – a formidable challenge, but one we were confident we could handle.

By migrating KKBOX data on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, KKBOX is now in a position to expand internationally through more than just music streaming, but also video streaming through KKStream, and B2B services that let other companies leverage KKBOX’s solution to launch their own streaming services. Chris saw that placing KKBOX on the Azure cloud platform also means leveraging Microsoft’s global ecosystem through our co-sell program, instantly opening up the global market to KKBOX services.

Perhaps one of the most exciting parts of our partnership is the use of AI to transform user experiences and fundamentally change the way people consume or create entertainment. KKBOX will be launching “BlendVision” technology – a commercial video streaming solution that uses AI to build “Per-Title Encoding”, which enhances the visual performance of the original video and doubles the quality of low-resolution videos into high definition (HD) for optimal streaming image quality. KKBOX will be building AI-assisted music production system, or AI-assisted lyric generator – with the help of one of the most prolific and award-winning lyricists in Mandarin pop music – Albert Leung. Furthermore, AI will be used to in a predictive model to forecast the commercial success of a song, before it hits the market.

The media and entertainment industry is undergoing a digital transformation at an unprecedented rate. The widely acknowledged forces driving this change include new and emerging content channels and digital native providers and other over the top (OTT) players. But as is the case in all times of disruption, these and other forces mean significant opportunities for KKBOX, as they transform themselves through an intelligent, end-to-end platform that will:

Inspire creativity and collaboration
Empower creative teams to produce higher quality, more innovative content by augmenting human ingenuity. This will increase productivity and collaboration among content creators, editors, illustrators, and sales and service representatives via more efficient workflows, automated processes, and more complete information with deeper insights. Also, the use of intelligent production and post-production processes will simplify and improve media delivery.

Optimize the digital media supply chain
Manage content better and get it to the customers faster by moving content archiving and distribution to an intelligent cloud. Use a media workflow platform to expedite playout of video, audio, and rich media assets; automate the ingestion, processing, and global distribution of the content. This will help optimize the delivery of that content through multiple platforms, in multiple media formats, and to any device.

Engage and monetize audiences
Grow audience engagement and increase revenue by delivering unforgettable experiences through personalized content, services, and advertising. Better understand media interactions, consumption patterns, social sentiments, and audience preferences through data-driven insights across all your channels. Improve media engagement and reduce churn by applying AI to audience experiences to personalize content and deliver more relevant advertising.

Microsoft empowers media & entertainment organizations to achieve these transformational outcomes by providing a trusted, intelligent, and secure platform supported by a comprehensive partner ecosystem with industry-leading solutions for creativity, collaboration, content management, and personalized experiences.

As the world is becoming more connected, creating a data explosion. It’s important for businesses of all sizes, from all industries to go through such a transformation by modernizing their infrastructure, innovating business models, and managing data in a secure way. Microsoft is empowering companies like KKBOX to achieve these transformational outcomes by providing a trusted, neutral, and secure platform supported by a comprehensive partner ecosystem with industry-leading solutions for creativity, collaboration, content management, and personalized experiences.

While the stars did truly align for KKBOX and Microsoft, this partnership leads the way for Microsoft to enable more platforms to use cloud services and AI to bring users what they want, when they want it, and where they want it.