A-Pop Channel Brings the Best Pop From Asia to You

Over the past seven years, YouTube has become a global stage where music lovers can follow their top bands and find new favorite artists. After all, it wasn't so long ago that K-Pop exploded with PSY's "Gangnam Style" becoming the first YouTube video to hit 1 billion views. Similar music movements have continued to cross borders with legendary Taiwanese rock band Mayday live streaming a concert from the YouTube headquarters and Japanese singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu starring in a new channel about Tokyo's ultra-cute Harajuku fashion neighborhood.

Keeping up with the latest in Asian pop on YouTube will be even easier after today's official launch of A-Pop. The channel will be a hub for live-streaming concerts from Asian artists, directly hosting shows in progress or otherwise displaying a calendar of upcoming events. You can also find the newest videos from Asian pop artists and a playlist of the week's Top 20. There are also individual tabs for K-Pop, C-Pop or J-Pop if you want to narrow down to one of the three.

The A-Pop Channel already has a few big events planned. A-Pop Star Week kicks off on March 8 and fans will be able to connect with top A-Pop stars using Google+ Hangouts. Here's the lineup so far:

March 8 SHINee (K-Pop)
March 9 Wang Leehom (C-Pop)
March 10 Super Junior (K-Pop)
March 11 Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (J-Pop)
March 12 flumpool (J-Pop)
March 13 2PM (K-Pop)
March 14 Mayday (C-Pop)

You can tune in to Hangouts from A-Pop and ask questions of the stars by submitting questions on Google+ via a special hashtag. Visit www.google.com/+jpop, www.google.com/+kpop, or www.google.com/+cpop for more information on how to participate. The stars will be hand-picking five lucky participants for each Hangout, so be sure to submit a creative question!



There are a lot of exciting things yet to come from the Asian pop explosion, so make sure you subscribe to the A-Pop channel to get the latest news and updates.

Sun Lee, YouTube Asia-Pacific Marketing Manager, recently watched "Super Junior-M - Break Down."

Selamat datang, YouTube Malaysia!

Today in Kuala Lumpur we announced the opening of a brand new localized domain for Malaysia at www.youtube.com.my. This is our 42nd country with an official local site.

While YouTube has already been available in Malaysia’s most widely spoken languages — Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese, and English — having a Malaysia-specific homepage can now deliver the most relevant videos for Malaysians as well as make it easier to highlight great content from our local partners such as KRU Studios. If you’re in Malaysia, the site will automatically detect your location and send you to the Malaysia page. Anyone else interested in Malaysian content but outside the country can just as easily get to the homepage by just selecting “Malaysia” in the Location section at the bottom of the page.

 At the YouTube launch event, we had amazing performances from some of Malaysia’s top musicians, such as silky voiced singer Yuna, pop princess and Flo Rida collaborator Mizz Nina, hip-hopper Joe Flizzow, and warm and fuzzy electro-poppers Tenderfist. You can see them here plus some top K-Pop stars like 2NE1, Miss A, Beast, Jang Keun Suk, Sistar and Infinite, sending some congrats to YouTube Malaysia.

 

In the last few years, Malaysians have shown a gift for creating video hits. You may have seen the guy who proposed to his girlfriend using Internet memes. Then there’s singer and ukelele player Zee Avi, who posted a few videos on YouTube in 2007 and ended up signing to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire label. Meanwhile school teacher Cikgu Shida has mimed her way across tons of popular songs to become a sudden Internet star in her homeland.

With YouTube now open in Malaysia, we are excited to see more and more Malaysians join the YouTube community. And hopefully this will also mean the world can more easily discover the amazing culture and talent that exists in Malaysia today.

Adam Smith, director of product management, YouTube Asia-Pacific, recently watched "Tenderfist - Everything's Gone"