With China’s recent rise as a global powerhouse, a generation of professionals and businesses have arrived to expand new markets. One of these markets is the online music industry, which is often plagued by illegal downloading and music pirating. Yobo, a music and social network platform that was started in 2006, sheds a new light on the messy online music arena.

“The key difference for Yobo is that we are a legal, free music service on a social network platform unlike pirated music sites in China, and we generate revenues from multiple channels including subscription, tickets and T-shirts,” Chief Executive Officer Chunlong Guo said. Currently China’s leader in music, Yobo is not only one of the biggest music website but also the most legal. Similar to music websites in the U.S. such as Pandora or Last.fm, Yobo offers free internet radio that allows users to create customized playlists and recommend songs that other users may enjoy based on past feedback. Unlike Pandora, however, users can choose what songs they want to listen to without having to wait for the song to come on the radio using Yobo’s search engine.

“I like how you can listen to songs and even entire CDs right on the website whenever you want,” senior Maria Orlova said. The process begins when a newly registered user logs in and takes a psychology test that is based on a test done at the University of Texas and Cambridge University in England. The 19-question psychology test coordinates a person’s music taste with his or her personality and categorizes the user into one of four groups: saxophone, electric guitar, piano or drum.

The radio becomes more personalized as the user continues to use Yobo. “[Yobo] matches the right ears to the right music,” Guo said. “We build a music tagging database to decide the properties and similarities between any pair of songs in our library to give users the music they may like, but never heard of before.”

Furthermore, Yobo’s functions go beyond basic radio and music sharing tools. “Yobo helps content owners, freelance artists, labels, composers, and lyric writers to promote and monetize their content,” Guo said. Yobo acts as a platform between artists and consumers by building tools for the content owners to upload their music by themselves and to manage their music, songs, number of plays and price. Content owners can make their songs free for the public to listen online in order to promote their music, or even free to download. Yobo has no say in the price or how the content owners wish to distribute their products, which can include T-shirts, CDs and other merchandise.

Not only does Yobo give artists full control over their content, thereby bypassing any middleman to maximize profit, Yobo also provides tools to help artists build their fan base and promote their content among targeted groups of costumers. “[Yobo] creates a free market, and this is our unique business model unlike all other,” Guo said. At Yobo, the employees are brought together by their common love of music.

“Everyone here plays an instrument or two,” Product Operation Manager Jason Chen said. “We have people in band and people that produce their own music and albums.” True to the company’s idea, each working day is filled with music and innovation.

According to Chief Operating Officer Rigina Ren, she joined the team to pursue innovation. “I enjoy challenges and working in newer career fields.” Currently Yobo has an English version search engine as well as an English version of the entire site in the works.

Another one of Yobo’s future projects is to implant a Yobo application into the iPhone 3G later this year, in hopes of reaching more users both domestically and overseas.

Also, Yobo will continue its efforts in helping independent artists reach more listeners. “I’m proud of our work to provide a promotional channel for independent artists to connect with their fans and increase their fame,” Chen said. “Everyday I’m eager to come to work with my team.”