Master pop-dance collaborators Far East Movement have struck a marketing and distribution deal in China with streaming platform NetEase Cloud Music to work with and promote local recording artists.

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Far East Movement's 2010 hit "Like A G6" featuring Cataracts and Dev reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100, making them the first Asian-American group to reach the top spot. Now as the first American artists to reach a multi-million dollar deal with NetEase in China, they are looking to break new ground and stand out by keeping it fresh.

"We wanted to go month-by-month instead of releasing an album all at once, because we didn't want to be stuck to a timeline, trying to take an artist or sound from a year ago and market it a year later," bandmember Kev Nish told Billboard. "We want it to feel real-time and current." Their first global release under the new deal appeared on Oct. 26, "Bamboo" featuring Kina Grannis and Jason Zhang.

For indies with their own web of relationships from years of successful collaborations, Far East Movement's non-exclusive arrangement with NetEase Cloud Music gives them access to the firm's vast set of relationships in China as well. The band will retain all copyrights to their material and hope the new music will find fans in America, but presenting experimental collaborations China-wide could be the beginning of great things ahead. "Hopefully this deal will inspire new types of relationships and experiments between artists and platforms, and help reshape what a label could look like in this context," Nish said.

NetEase reported more than 400 million active monthly users in 2017 and announced last summer that almost a third of their platform activity is international. They have deals in place with Chinese competitors Ali Music (Alibaba) and Tencent Music, and international licensing with Kobalt and Merlin. Their promotion and marketing agreement with Far East Movement is the first time the platform has invested in collaborations with U.S. artists. Nish said, "We hope to expose these Chinese artists to new audiences as well as bring China a new sound and voice."

Far East Movement became a beloved local act in Los Angeles' Koreatown and after "Like A G6" they struggled to preserve their musical identity on their own terms. Although they left Interscope label Cherrytree Records to form their indie Transparent Agency and handle their own marketing, Cherrytree's Martin Kierszenbaum was on board helping to create their latest song, "Bamboo."

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