The cultural contents industry such as cinema, broadcasting, music album, game and publication is being considered as the major industry of the 21st century next to the heavy chemical industry in the 1970s and the semiconductor industry in the 1990s, and the cultural contents industry is growing rapidly to the point of recording 24.2% in the market increase rate of cultural contents industry whereas the economic growth rate of Korea is 5.7% in the past 9 years from 1999 to 2008.
 As Indonesia and Malaysia implemented effective economic development policies, Indonesia became a developing country through its increase in the national income per capita to $2,300 as of the end of 2009 and Malaysia is preparing to become a advanced country upon surpassing $6,700 in its national income per capita. The economic growth and the national income increase inevitably increase the demand and need for culture and related contents, thereby displaying the phenomenon of virtuous circulation of economy in which the growth and sales of related products rapidly increase.
The common characteristic of the industrial policy through economic development plan by Indonesia and Malaysia is that the percentage of manufacturing and service industries is continuously maintaining the level of over 40% out of the entire industry while concentrating on the cultivation on non-petroleum manufacturing industry after the 1980s from the petroleum & natural gas centered industrial policy of the past. Such economic growth, income level improvement and industrial structure change will go through the virtuous circulation structure of continuing on to supply increase together with the demand increase for cultural contents industry (broadcasting, music, cinema, game, etc.) and the cultural contents industry will continue to grow.
Meanwhile, the cultural contents industry of Indonesia is contributing 7.3% of the GDP as of 2008 according to Ministry of Trade and the cultural contents industry is being ranked at the top 8th in the industry of importance in the Indonesian economy while showing the average annual growth rate of 15%.
According to the data from Economic Planning Agency of Malaysia, the cultural contents industry of Malaysia is taking up 12.3% of the GDP as of end of 2008, and the cultural contents industry has been growing to the point of having become the top 5th industry of importance in the economy of Malaysia while showing the average annual growth rate of 18%.
The world broadcasting market is expected to show the average annual growth rate of 5.5% from 2009 to 2014 and the broadcasting & communication industry of Malaysia is also expected to show the annual growth rate of over 10%. One of the characteristics of broadcasting market in addition to the viewing rating is that the size of print media advertisement market is surpassing that of the TV market in double the size. This gap can be seen as the result from the limitations in the number of broadcasting stations for frequency circumstance for the broadcasting media whereas the advertisement media is diverse for the print media being issued according to race and language.
In the case of the Indonesian broadcasting industry, there are currently 11 national TV broadcastings and 60 regional TV broadcastings at the allowance of private sector participation in the broadcasting industry in 1989 and the majority of the broadcasting stations are mostly broadcasting the movies and dramas imported from the US, Chinese speaking countries, India, Japan and Korea instead of the self-produced programs. In addition, melodrama is forming the majority in the genre of preference and the dramas with clear good-evil confrontation structure is being preferred overall and the dramas added with a comic element are highly popular.
In the midst of the world music industry situation in which only the digital music industry is growing, the music album industry among the entire music industry of Indonesia is decreasing from the flooding of illegal replica whereas the digital music distribution market has a very significant growth potential despite its small market size as music albums started to be distributed through the Internet. In the case of the music industry of Malaysia, the overall music industry including the music album market is one of the most quickly deteriorating markets as it has reduced in size to about 1/3 compared to that in the mid 1990s when it was a period of market revival. Especially, it is being revealed that the market is receiving a serious impact from the drastic decrease in the sales of CD and cassette tape from 2005 to 2008 at the flooding of illegal replica.
In the midst of the predication that the world cinema market will record the annual average growth rate of 4.4%, the cinema industry of Indonesia started to actively grow since 1992 and 365 movies were produced from 1997 to 2008. In addition to the artistic value and originality of the Indonesian movies, it is showing continuous growth and advancement in the number of movie production, number of screens, commercial success revenue, number of audiences, etc. In the case of Malaysia, the cultural expenditure is also increasing from the economic growth and income level increase and it is showing continuous increase in the number of movie production, commercial success revenue and number of audiences except for in 2008 when the global financial crisis broke out.
In the midst of the prediction that the world game market will record the annual average growth rate of 5.5%, the percentage of mobile game and online game is expected to reach in the total of 28.3% by 2014 from increase compared to that in 2009 and the console game, arcade game and PC game that had been traditionally showing strong trend are expected to decrease in their percentage.
In the case of Malaysia, the size of online game market recorded $33.9 million in 2009 and it will reach $39.5 million in 2010, which is a growth by 16.5% compared to that of the previous year. In the case of the Indonesian game industry, the mobile game that takes up 20% of the game market and the online game that takes up 15% appeared since 2000 and continue to show rapid growth in Indonesia. Furthermore, the forecast for growth appears to be very bright as they are relatively less affected by the damages from illegal replica while the profitability is continuing to improve thanks to the structure of continuously receiving the usage fee according to the characteristic of game.