Online Westlife concert attracts 27m Chinese fans

GUANGZHOU－More than 27 million Chinese people watched the first online concert of Irish pop band Westlife on Friday night, with fans exchanging excited comments on social media platforms long after the event.

The concert, which was held in London, was livestreamed on WeChat Channels, with the band wowing Chinese fans with hit songs such as Seasons in the Sun and My Love, as well as by covering a popular Chinese song.

In addition to their good Mandarin pronunciation in the Chinese song, the band members thrilled the audience through their interactions and by sharing their experiences of visiting China.

For many Chinese, the first English song they learned was by Westlife, who visited the Chinese mainland for the first time in 2006.

"The event brought back a flood of memories for many born in the 1970s, 1980s and even the 1990s," said Li Yijie, a Chinese fan who watched the whole show.

Li said the band left a deep impression on many Chinese fans during their youth, and the concert allowed them to share their musical memories with people across the globe. The WeChat team had allowed them to connect with Westlife members, who expressed their desire to resume tours to China and to communicate with their Chinese fans online.

The WeChat Channels video platform is expected to become a connector of cultures thanks to the influence of WeChat, which has 1.2 billion users worldwide, said Zhu Liqun, who leads WeChat's marketing department. The Westlife concert was WeChat's first move in a project to invite more global celebrities to WeChat Channels, Zhu said.

While the concert was free to everyone, many netizens sent digital gifts to the band through the platform.

Zhong Xin, a professor at Renmin University of China, said music is an important medium for international cultural exchanges, and online concerts can connect people around the world at the same moment, embodying the concept of a shared future for humanity.

The format also creates commercial value, as the enthusiasm of the fans provides a material basis for the sustainable development of online concerts, Zhong added.

Yeshi Lhamo, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the profit model of online concerts is still at a preliminary stage.

"Online co-creation is an irresistible trend, and this concert is a good example," Yeshi Lhamo said.

Xinhua