Social Media – Kanjian https://en.kanjian.com Innovative infrastructure for the music industry Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:07:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.7 Social Media in China https://en.kanjian.com/articles/social-media-in-china/ https://en.kanjian.com/articles/social-media-in-china/#respond Sun, 26 Sep 2021 07:13:45 +0000 https://en.kanjian.com/?p=3147

Social Media

Getting music online in China is a relatively straightforward process today. Reaching out to the Chinese followers and getting artists to interact with them, however, may be more challenging.

With restricted access to virtually all Western social media, including Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and YouTube; and Google and major news outlets, artists who want to focus on China effectively lack the very thing they have worked hard to build – their online audience.

Well, that logically pose quite a few questions. “Is it worth investing in China?” is the key one. With streaming rates from Chinese digital stores significantly lower than the likes of Spotify many are asking themselves, ”Are the large numbers of potential listeners really making up the gap?”. As the market in China continues to mature and evolve the answer is increasingly – “yes”.

Norwegian electronic artist Alan Walker’s success story is a good example. Being one of the very few success stories, however, it is also a very good example of how difficult it is.

China has its own social media platforms that in almost all cases don’t have an alternative exact match elsewhere. Understanding how these digital services work, and what their value proposition is, will also help you understand who uses them and why they use them, which means you will understand your audience in China.

China is a mobile-first country, and never really developed an appetite for websites. People would jump on their preferred apps and search for the artist there. By way of example, celebrities such as Luhan or Jackson Wang, A-list artists in China – do not have websites; instead, they have their official Weibo accounts.

China is not a cheap place to break an act into – reaching a billion people (who do not speak English) costs time and resources; a long-term strategy is a must, as well as a detailed understanding of the socio-cultural context of the Chinese audience.

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]]> https://en.kanjian.com/articles/social-media-in-china/feed/ 0 The Chinese Music Industry https://en.kanjian.com/articles/chinas-music-industry/ https://en.kanjian.com/articles/chinas-music-industry/#respond Sun, 26 Sep 2021 06:48:57 +0000 https://en.kanjian.com/?p=3130

Social Media

With China’s online users having limited access to the global media (Google, Facebook, and YouTube to name a few or the multiple news and media outlets such as the BBC or The New York Times), many businesses, music artists and labels included discover that in China they need to invest heavily or in some cases even start from scratch regarding their brand and following.

As a result Chinese tech giants such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent flourished, with the most striking example arguably being ByteDance – the Beijing-based creator of the highly popular 15-second video app, TikTok (or Douyin, in China).

The effects of a rapidly developing tech combined with the government’s draconian approach to having rules followed have been far-reaching, though they have had a very positive effect overall streamlining at scale the process of music distribution, discovery and consumption.

The absence of global players in China, combined with the local socio-cultural factors has shaped the domestic digital space and music services in a way that is rather unique and in its own way innovative and advanced as compared with the established practices.

To have a prosperous brand in China, one must be fully considerate of the impact of the local legal and cultural intricacies and the influence of the state in day-to-day operations on one hand, and the opportunities and shortcuts that a well-established personal network offers on the other.

The Government Success

The government’s role has been also significant in educating people in China about copyrights and fighting illegal use of content through the National Intellectual Property Strategy Outline promulgated in 2008. And as intellectual property protection in China is often questioned, some of the recent developments and reforms demonstrate a strong resolve to enforce the copyright doctrine. The authorities’ effort and commitment became quite clear as it began shutting down major online services utilizing unlicensed content – books in 2008, videos in 2012 and music in 2015.

A legal reform instituted recently allowed for the formation of a specialized and centralized intellectual property court system with the first Intellectual Property Courts established in 2014 in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and more launching since 2017. In a further attempt to inform and guide the lower courts, the Supreme People’s Court publishes annually the 10 most significant IP cases and 50 guiding IP cases of the year.

The Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China was last updated in June 2021, adding some significant changes.

Platform Pitching

Many artists use platform placements to expand their fanbase and to promote key releases. It should be said this is typically only available for artists who have achieved moderate success within the market already or who are collaborating with artists of note.

Releases can be pitched for free or by paid means. Paid pitching will guarantee tracks to be placed in playlists and gain banners. This is a good way to ensure a new track from a smaller artist will be placed. Smaller artists can also use smaller platforms like Qian Qian or Mymusic as a cost-effective way to establish a fanbase as oppose to Netease or QQ.

The Artist as a Brand

Authenticity is one of the centrepieces of present-day marketing practices and with the rapid advance of social media and marketing tactics, brands now talk directly to their followers and music artists are embracing the opportunity to nurture and retain their own fan base.

Artists, managers and labels alike, embrace this approach around the world as they run with the established notion of authenticity where meaning is ‘manufactured’ through various organisational processes in the cultural industries who are ‘carving’ a market niche for the artist through the creation of ‘unique identities’.

This approach often is very impractical in China as the artist-fan and brand-consumer relationships rely on different touch-points and value propositions due to a wide range of socio-cultural and political factors affecting generations.

Like in many other areas, China’s music industry took the best of both worlds (east and west) and created a unique fusion of business models and legislation that are forward-facing, pushing the boundaries and showing year in year out that what works in China is the Chinese model, with major labels (Sony, Warner and Universal) effectively accounting for only 20% of the consumption in mainland China today (Statista, 2020).

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