[GlobalTimes] Chinese music industry sees dramatic change, emergence of an oligopoly

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By Xu Yaping

Source

 

 

The music industry on the Chinese mainland underwent a dramatic change over the past year. Piracy was significantly reduced after the National Copyright Administration issued a notice giving all online music service providers a July 2015 deadline to stop providing unauthorized music. The notice has pushed the Chinese digital music industry into an era of authorized musical content.

 

With that as the background, a couple of Internet magnates have started to enter the music industry. After several changes and integration, there are now four main providers now: Tencent faction which includes QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo; Ali faction which includes Ali Planet and Xiami Music, and other players including  Netease Cloud Music and Baidu Music.

 

After integrating Kugou and Kuwo with QQ Music, Tencent faction  now has a higher market share in copyright operation, content distribution and customer numbers. Meanwhile, Ali faction is developing into pan entertainment platform by launching music app Ali planet. Netease Music, another close competitor, is aiming to make money on differentiating digital music through financing.

 

Baidu Music recently went live again after being purchased by the Taihe Music Group. Despite its being the second launch, the attempt still failed because it didn't accumulate enough authorized music prior to the event. Both music lovers and musicians complained about Baidu Music's apparent failure to acknowledge music copyright. Piracy continues to be a big problem that keeps Baidu Music from developing. A lot of problems are expected to appear during the reappearance of Baidu Music. Music lovers will have to wait to see what will happen.

 

Although the dust has yet to settle on the general situation of the online digital music market on the Chinese mainland, there is clear evidence of an oligopoly emerging in the sector. The emergence of oligopolies, situations in which a group of service providers dominate a particular industry, is seen as a trend of Internet development. The digital music market is no different. In fact, the sector may well see a new oligopoly taking advantage of beneficial policies and overall economic development in the coming months.

 

The writer is an editor with Thirdsight, a WeChat publication about music

[yulee]

Unsurprising. This is going to be the era of the corporate giants Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba either directly or indirectly fighting it out in any technology related industry be it media or finance.