JUST CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC

The popularity of musical reality shows is once again on the rise, and producers are looking to tap into niche markets to ensure the genre's longevity, Wang Kaihao reports.

When Jiang Bin, a producer with iQiyi - one of China's three biggest video-streaming platforms - decided to make Idol Hits, he had little to refer to from the country's existing online variety shows.

As a new show, broadcast in September and conceived to enable musicians to hit the record charts, Idol Hits cooperated with Billboard China - a music-publication brand associated with the US music-business trade magazine, Billboard - to both show the singers' sparkling moments onstage and record their painstaking behind-the-scenes stories.