Music 2.0

Singer-songwriters are making their names on the Internet, hoping that the big numbers they attract can be turned into a new profit model, Chen Nan reports.

Wang Lei's childhood dream was to become a singer-songwriter, but he gave up the idea when he was 17 and met Shen Lihui, who was then the leading vocalist of the rock band Sober.

The two Beijing natives became friends, and Shen invested all his money into building up his own music company, Modernsky, now one of the biggest indie record firms in the country.