Digital music firm looks for children's songwriters

A8 Digital Music Holdings, China's biggest digital music provider, plans to set up a fund to collect and promote children's songs and is actively looking for devoted children's songwriters, the company's CEO said.

Alvin Liu, founder and CEO of A8 Digital Music.

A8 will set aside 10 million yuan ($1.47 million) to establish a foundation called Angel's Voice to pay for and promote children's songs, said Alvin Liu, founder and CEO of A8 Digital Music. The first phase of investment is 3 million yuan.

The company will also set up a children's song channel on its online digital music user-generated content platform www.a8.com, Liu said.

The company now is looking nationwide for people who are really devoted to the career of writing songs for children. So far only one person, a teacher in Wuhan, Hubei province, has been found, according to Liu.

Liu said he hopes this endeavor will give China's children "songs of their own," as many Chinese children love songs, but only have a limited amount of Chinese children's songs available to them.

The children's song project has received support from the Ministry of Culture. Minister Cai Wu was the first person to raise the issue, and the ministry offered 7,300 children's songs for A8 to use.

A8 Digital Music was founded in 2000 and went public in Hong Kong in 2008. The company now has over 500 employees and its business turnover reached 700 million yuan in 2009.

A major part of the company's revenue comes from selling ringtones of songs of independent artists and famous singers to mobile phone and internet users.