Corporate Bits | Mandopop singers to bring ‘everlasting divas’ concert to macau

Five of Taiwan’s most popular female singers – Jolin Tsai, Angela Zhang, Valen Hsu, Tanya Chua and Matilda Tao – will bring their “Everlasting Divas” concert to The Venetian Macao’s Cotai Arena on April 7.

With sales of approximately 25 million albums, Jolin Tsai is one of Asia’s top-selling female recording artists of the 21st century and enjoys a massive fan base worldwide, as cited in a press release issued by Sands China.

Singer, actress and TV host Angela Chang has released nine albums. Her popularity soared after she appeared in high-profile Taiwanese television dramas for which she also sang the theme songs. 

Valen Hsu is a singer-songwriter with more than 14 albums to her name. She is also a successful actress and author. 

Singaporean-born singer-songwriter Tanya Chua released her first English-language album “Bored” in 1997. She later recorded four more English records and 11 in Mandarin. 

Matilda Tao has hosted numerous hit variety shows including “One Million Star”, “University” and “Guess”, as well as prestigious award ceremonies.

Apple adds more ‘texture’ to its services with magazine deal

Apple has bought digital magazine distributor Texture to extend its subscription services beyond music and online storage.

The deal announced Monday puts Apple in control of a service often described as a Netflix of magazines. Texture allows readers to pore over articles in more than 200 magazines for USD10 per month, much like Netflix sells unlimited access to its video programming.

But Texture hasn’t proven as popular as Netflix, which boasts 55 million subscribers in the U.S. alone. Texture hasn’t specified how many subscribers it has, but CEO John Loughlin said in a 2016 interview that the number ranged in the “hundreds of thousands.”

Apple didn’t disclose how much it paid for Texture, which had raised at least $90 million since it was founded nearly a decade ago as Next Issue.

Unlike most Apple products, Texture will be available on devices powered by Google’s Android software in addition to the iPhone and iPad.