Mapping China: Music - New Media: Music Streaming

Most music consumption in urban China is through streaming websites and apps. International companies dominate Hong Kong and Taiwan, but play no significant role in the PRC. Apple Music might become the exception, as their entrance of the Chinese market is highly anticipated (and already delayed).

PRC Sites and Apps

Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, jointly known as BAT, are China’s internet giants. They have their own music services.

• Tencent’s QQ Music is the largest. Connected to its instant messaging software QQ (and Wechat), it’s well integrated in the daily routines of its users.  
• Baidu is China’s major search engine. Its music service offers links to download locations and later also direct streaming.
• Online retailer Alibaba is a relative latecomer in the music industry, but like its international competitor Amazon it has the power to make an impact, including a widely used online payment system. In 2013 Alibaba purchased Xiami and later also TTPod (Tian Tian Dong Ting). The former is popular among ‘cultural youths’ and hipsters, and has a large collection of foreign indie bands, the latter is stronger in mobile.

On the negative side these companies have built their businesses on rampant copyright infringements, and treat music as a nothing but a cheap way of attracting users to their platforms. On the plus side these companies have in recent years started competing over copyrights, as a way of keeping new players out and consolidating market shares. As a relative latecomer Alibaba seems to make most noise about stricter copyright protection, developing a trend in Xiami, which presents itself as helping indie musicians. However, overall this trend is more obvious for consumer products, online gaming and video streaming and has of yet failed to make the same impact on the music industry.

Other major players include

• Kuwo and Kugou, owned by China Music Corporation
• Duomi
• NetEase (Wangyi), originally a news website. Announced collaborations with QQ Music in 2015, in which both companies exchanged copyright licenses.  
• Douban FM. Douban is a review website and event agenda that offers bands their own station where they can upload their music and promote their concerts. As a result Douban is relatively free of illegal content. In 2015 Douban launched its own record company, named Dforce.

PRC Telco’s

Ringtones and call back tones used to be China’s most lucrative music market, as mobile phones spread must faster through China’s vast population than internet access, and there is an easy and clear payment method (through mobile subscriptions and SMS agreements). However the copyright holder (called CP or content provider) usually gets only around 1% of the revenue, 4% goes to the SP or service provider and 95% is earned by the telco. Additionally, with the rise of smart phones this industry is declining. China’s telco’s include:

• China Mobile
• China Unicom
• China Telecom.

Taiwan

Taiwan has a number of unique subscription-based music streaming websites, including

• KKBox for mainstream music. Established in 2005, the company is active in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and has plans to move outside of Asia. In 2010 the company was sold to the KDDI, Japan’s second largest telcom, and the next year Taiwanese cell phone manufacturer HTC bought a 11% share for 10 million US$. In 2014 KKBox boasts 5 million subscribers, paying a flat monthly fee. However in 2015 it added the option to listen 60 minutes of music in exchange for 1 minute of advertising. This free option is seen as an attempt to grow market share now that Spotify, Apple Music and Google Music have announced entering the Japanese market, and that Line, Japan’s leading social networking service, has launched Line Music.
• iNDIEVOX for indie music. Its founder was recorded as saying in 2015: “StreetVoice is for talent incubation, Packer is for distribution, Blow.media is a news centre for cultivating the market, and iNDIEVOX is the e-commerce solution provider. This product family is our vision of the music business in the digital era.”

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