Chinese music market marches to new beat

Chinese singer Dou Jingtong in performance organized by QQ Music. [Photo provided to China Daily]

According to Jonathan Serbin, head of Asia for Billboard and head of Billboard China, Billboard has just announced a partnership with Chinese media company Vision Music to bring a range of Billboard products and services to China, including websites in Chinese and music charts.

"I believe the Chinese music market has evolved quite a bit over the past few years. And there has been a significant expansion in the number of legitimate platforms for fans to discover and listen to great music from China and around the world," Serbin says.

"Also, the music market in China is becoming increasingly diverse. I think there is room for all genres－from jazz and rock to pop and beyond."

Separately, Ng says that with the Chinese music market heading in a healthy direction there was room for international artists to develop, especially new artists.

"At QQ Music, we have about 15 million authorized and legitimate tracks. But the Chinese catalogue represents only 4 percent. Eighty percent of our users listen only to the Chinese catalogue, which means there is a lot of room for foreign catalogues, like English and Korean."

Ng adds that when the South Korean boy group Big Bang had a new release, the company sold over 5 million copies of the digital album.

"And, with a lot of popular Chinese singers who have new releases, their sales of digital albums can easily cross 1 million copies," he says, giving an example of Singaporean singer JJ Lin, who released a single on QQ Music.

Within a week, more than 600,000 people had paid 2 yuan each to download the song, he says.

As for the future of the industry in China, Simon Robinson, the president of Warner Music Asia, said:"When it comes to music, it (China) was outside the top 20 a few years ago, but it is just out of the top 10 now. I think it has the potential to be in the top 3."