Music industry dreaming of China streaming

JJ Lin is one of the pop stars who work with Internet companies to release albums in China.[Photo provided to China Daily]

China will become one of the world's biggest music markets by 2020, a forecast that prompted a recent consensus among three major international record companies－Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music－as well as QQ Music, a music-service platform under the Chinese Internet giant, Tencent.

The companies declared unanimity about the Chinese market's potential at a conference in Beijing, where the main discussion focused on music streaming and subscription, the fastest-growing areas in digital music in China, and new business models these generated.

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's 2015 World Ranking report, China ranked No 19 in global trade revenues.

"But we believe that China will rank in the top five or even top three in the world music market in the next five years or even sooner. It's one of the most important markets in our global strategy," says Ariel Fung, executive vice-president of marketing of Sony Music Entertainment Asia.

The year 2015 has been crucial for the development of China's digital-music market, especially with the notice from the National Copyright Administration that online music-delivery platforms had to remove all unauthorized songs by July 31, which has been seen as a major move to fight rampant piracy in the industry.

"The effort of the government is a great improvement. We're also happy to see that more people are aware of the legality of music. More consumers are willing to pay for high-quality music," says Andy Ma, senior vice-president of commercial and business development of Warner Music Asia Pacific.

In 2015, more than 7 million copies of digital albums have been sold on QQ Music, generating 40 million yuan ($6.35 million) in revenue, says Andy Ng, general manager of QQ Music.

Ng says that the company has more than 800 million users and more than 15 million songs with copyrights obtained from more than 200 record companies, among which about 25, including Warner Music and Sony Music, offer content exclusively to QQ Music.