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 Ian Yang
Advisor - China I Japan I South Korea
i.yang [at] dutchculture.nl

Mapping China: Music - New Media: Video Streaming

Mapping China: Music - New Media: Video Streaming

 

As in the rest of the world, Youtube is dominant in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is banned in the PRC, and tAs in the rest of the world, Youtube is dominant in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is banned in the PRC, and these are the main video streaming platforms for music.

  • Tencent Video
  • Baidu’s iQiyi
  • Youku / Tudou, merged in 2012 and partly owned by Alibaba
  • Yinyue Tai
  • Sohu Video
  • Ku6
  • LeTV

The market for video streaming is better regulated than music streaming. Companies have signed licensing contracts with foreign TV series producers (HBO in the US, but also Taiwanese and Korean producers), and successfully sued competitors over infringements of these exclusive contracts. However, at the same time these players show much less willingness to pay fair revenues for music videos.

Live Streaming

Live streaming is a trend for video websites since 2014. All above-mentioned video platforms have set-up live streaming services, similar to sports game broadcasts, they sell (exclusive) access to concerts and festivals in China and the West to Chinese audiences. It is unclear which service will dominate, but these are the most vocal entrants, boasting successful collaborations with mainstream artists:

  • LeTV. The current record is over 300.000 paying viewers for an online concert by the Hong Kong singer G.E.M. in July 2015. LeTV also opened the venue D.Live in Beijing.
  • Tudou’s U-Music
  • Tencent’s LiveMusic
  • NetEase Cloud (Wangyi Yun) 

Webcasting

A related industry is that of webcasting. This seems especially big in China’s smaller cities, where economic development has boomed but the entertainment options are relatively limited. As a result large groups of people go online and give money (in the form of virtual roses, diamonds and other gifts) to their favorite performers. Music is a major part of the performances. Typically the platform takes 60%, the channel 30% and the artist 10% of gifts (so called 6:3:1).

  • YY. Market leader YY became listed on Nasdaq in 2005, net worth around 33 billion US dollars
  • Tian Ge, which own 9158, had its IPO in Hong Kong in 2014, raising 7.3 billion HK dollar.
  • A smaller competitor, 6.cn was bought for 2.6 billion RMB in the summer of 2015.

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