Dancing to digital's tune
Although a fan of jazz and pop music, 24-year-old Zhang Wei, who works in a UK consulting company in Beijing, confessed that she rarely buys CD except for her favorite musicians: Norah Jones and Leehom Wang, a pop singer from Taiwan.
Instead, she simply goes online and downloads music. For her favorite musicians, she also downloads demo versions before loosening her purse strings for a CD.
"Although I am their loyal fan, not every single song of theirs interests me," Zhang says. "Sometimes, only one particular track sounds interesting in a whole album."
A passenger wearing earphone stands near an iPod advertisement in a Shanghai subway station. Jing Wei |
Zhang used to listen to cheap pirated CDs or music radios as a poor student. Downloading music from the Internet is "free and convenient" to Zhang, who likes to kill time listening to MP3s while commuting.
Yue Zuhong, 25, who works at MTV-Asia, often downloads music from websites like Baidu.com, because it saves time to find a song. "Just input the names, and bang, they are all there."
The popularity of digital music among young Chinese was recently confirmed in a survey by market research company, Synovate. In March, Synovate polled 3,857 urban respondents aged 15 to 34 about their music habits, activities and attitudes in ten Asian markets including Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore.
The survey shows that in February, 84 percent of Chinese consumers have played music on a computer, 72 percent on an MP3 and 39 percent have downloaded and saved a song to their mobile phone.
The survey also shows that 63 percent of Chinese respondents downloaded a song without paying for it and 38 percent used a file-sharing program to share music with others.
Facing the popular digital music trend, the Chinese music industry has changed its attitude from denial to eager participation.
In 2005, seven major record companies who have branches in China such as Sony, EMI, Universe and Warner, sued Baidu.com, a Chinese search engine company, for illegally providing free online music and download service.
The record companies were unsuccessful in this case. The Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court ruled in November 2006 that Baidu is a search engine service provider that links all available websites including illegal ones who post pirate music on their websites, therefore Baidu shouldn't take full responsibility for it.
On January 16, 2007, EMI authorized Baidu to provide all of its Chinese songs to the public for free, in return for sharing Baidu's advertising income.
"Rather than getting involved in endless dispute, it would be a wise change for record companies to cooperate with digital media like Baidu," said Huang Weixiang, chairman of EMI China.
Music copyright has always been an important issue in the industry with the biggest concern being who will pay for music in the future.
The global music industry looks at China as an ideal experimental field to launch a revolution, says Song Ke, CEO of Taihe Rye Music Co Ltd, which was founded in 2004 as a joint venture of Rye Music Producing Company and Taihe Media. Prior to this role, Song was a chief music executive at Warner Music.
"China is a newcomer to the modern music industry and we are all freshmen," Song explains. "The positive side is that we accept new things fast and easily." But Song says the downside is that people will not pay as long as they can still obtain free music. "The key point is to explore potential market and operate properly," Song says.
The Synovate survey reveals that 14 percent of the Chinese respondents have paid to download music online - the same as the regional average.
Zhang Wei prefers free music, but she would accept paying small money for quality works and services. She has subscribed to a service for mobile phone ringtone downloads, which charges 10 yuan ($1.30) a month.
Ringtone is a new member of digital music industry, but it has already generated a market around 5 billion yuan ($649 million) this year, Song says.
Ringtone was born in South Korea and considered as a toy at first, Song says. However, it is estimated that the overall revenue of ringtone could reach 7 billion yuan ($909 million) in China in 2007.
The Synovate survey reveals that 65 percent of Chinese respondents are ready to replace their mobile digital music player with a music-playing mobile phone.
"Ringtone has been the most profitable business of my company and there is still a large potential market," Song says.
Besides consumers, new technology has also provided great opportunities for musicians. Yue Zuhong used to play bass in a local band in Xi'an of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province. He says that widespread adoption of digital technology enables musicians to distribute their work widely to the public through the Internet.
"We'll find more popular songs by individual musicians from music websites and private blogs," Yue says. "New technology helps gifted musician succeed."
In 2001, Xue Cun, a musician from Northeast China, put his track All Northeasterners are Living Lei Feng on the Internet. Many anonymous artists created hilarious flash pieces to match the song's humorous lyric and lively rhythm, which made this song popular all over China. Xue Cun has since signed up with a Beijing company to produce albums.
Nowadays, more and more music lovers put their works on the web and record companies have also spotted and signed contracts with them.
Song says it's possible that all wireless digital music devices would integrate into a mobile phone and a home entertainment system connected to broadband. But it's hard to predict how the digital music industry will develop.
"One thing is for sure: human beings will need music forever," Song says. "I am confident with the future of digital music in China."
(China Daily 06/12/2007 page20)
