Motorola shuts Motomusic and Soundbuzz

According to a statement, Motorola will exit the Soundbuzz White Label business in Australia, India, Indonesia and Singapore, and will close Motomusic in India, Singapore and Vietnam on 15 July.

Furthermore, it is looking into sell off the Soundbuzz business and would be redeploying the music service’s 60 staff.

According to Motorola’s communications and public affairs manager, Lynn Chan, her company’s vision “is to return to prominence as a highly profitable, major global player, delivering compelling products and experiences and to be a leader in the wireless industry. In order to achieve success, Motorola is committed to doing what is necessary to address the evolving economic conditions we face and to taking the required steps to enable our recovery.”

“We are streamlining our portfolio and will be introducing Android-based smartphones that will allow us to give consumers and customers access to a broad ecosystem of experiences,” she added. “This means Motomusic and Soundbuzz are no longer core to our market strategy.”

The pioneering music website, which introduced the concept of buying music online in the Lion City long before Apple’s iTunes, was started in 1999 by former MTV Asia MD, Sudhanshu Sarronwal.

Although Soundbuzz survived the threat of piracy and file-sharing applications such as Napster as well as the dotcom crash early this decade, it has struggled to keep up in recent times with other major mobile players’ music services including Nokia’ Comes With Music and Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow.