Evolving Music Industry in China

Abstract

With the introduction of ITunes by Apple in 2003, the music industry has brought the service provider major changes. With the development of the mobile Internet and the arrival of the streaming media era, the vertical integration of the record industry chain, which has the largest share among the three sub-chains of the music industry, has disintegrated. The offline sales channels that used CD as the medium gradually declined, while the online channels that used iTunes and streaming media as the medium gradually became the mainstream. Traditional offline music distribution channels have been subverted, and IT companies and Internet companies represented by Apple, Spotify, and Pandora are emerging as service provider upstarts. Similar to the global music industry ecology, China's music industry is divided into three sub-industrial chains in the service provider link. The first sub-chain, the record music chain, suffers from piracy problems. The second sub-chain, the music copyright chain, once unsustainable due to weak genuine protection, has improved with the strengthening of domestic copyright protection. The third sub-chain, the music performance chain, is currently the most popular chain, and is also the main source of profit supporting the entire Chinese music industry.