MCA Music Entertainment International (MMEI) is continuing its expansion by opening a Thailand office - the eighth the American record company has opened in the region in the past 18 months.
Tom van Dell, MMEI's vice-president of marketing, said there were plans to expand into Indonesia and the Philippines later.
'Thailand made sense as piracy problems of the past had reduced significantly and it is a large music market with forecast growth in the neighbourhood of 30 to 40 per cent a year,' he said.
'The country is also going through a big conversion from cassettes to CDs, so it had all the implications of a market we could concentrate on.' Mr van Dell said MMEI had a 4 per cent share of the international record market in Asia.
He said the company made profits last year in the region, although it expected losses.
The company predicts annual growth of 30 per cent for the next five years.
