Business News Education & Events

The Great Escape: UK music entrepreneurs on the potential of China

By | Published on Saturday 15 May 2010

The potential of the Chinese music market fell under the spotlight at The Great Escape last Thursday via a panel involving four of five people who recently spent some time in the country at the British Council’s expense, meeting music companies based there and working out where the opportunities lie.

The five people were participants in the Brit Council’s UK Young Music Entrepreneur Award, and were selected for their Chinese visit from a shortlist of twelve young(ish) entrepreneurial business types. All five then provided the British Council with a proposal for a project relevant to their own business that would build links between the UK and China, one of which would receive a five grand grant from the Council to help make the proposed business idea a reality. At TGE last week not only did four of the five report on their experiences of the country, but the winner of that five grand bursary was revealed.

Presenting were Nikil Shah from Mixcloud, the webcasting platform; Karen Piper from digital marketing firm Radar Maker; Storme Whitby-Grubb from live music company Little Touring Ltd; and Ian Hogarth from Songkick, a fan-generated live music website.

Much of the talk centred on the challenges of the Chinese market, of which there are many.

Shah, with market stats in hand, reminded TGE delegates that, while China has a population of around one billion, that doesn’t equate to a market of one billion, and that while the music scene in the country has grown a lot in the last five years, it remains primarily an underground movement. Both he and Piper then noted that in the digital domain the global power-brands of the internet were not so powerful in China, where domestic services like Youku, Douban and Baidu have enjoyed more success.

On the live front, Whitby-Grubb and Hogarth noted that the number of gigs in China had increased five-fold in the last five years, but still only stood at 5000 a year, with Western ex-pats still the biggest consumers of live music. And politics also still play their part in live events, of course. Whitby-Grubb and Hogarth discussed some of the last-minute government-forced cancellations, and the continued impact of Bjork’s infamous and previously reported “Free Tibet” remark at a 2007 gig in Shanghai.

Nevertheless, despite all the challenges, all four said that the emerging Chinese market offered great opportunities, especially for smaller entrepreneurial companies, because the traditional major players that can dominate the market in the West are simply not there in any real force. And whereas in the West the industry is having to do a balancing act, launching new digital services while maintaining old business models which, while ultimately doomed, still bring in most revenues, in China, with its lack of a traditional industry, there is less to lose by developing new ventures.

Talking of such ventures, TGE boss Martin Elbourne, who is also a judge of the UK Young Music Entrepreneur Award, then announced the winner, with the five grand going to Ian Hogarth of Songkick.

He told CMU: “Music, technology and China are three of my deepest passions, so when I heard that the British Council was organising a delegation of British entrepreneurs to travel to China and meet the music industry there I jumped at the opportunity. My love affair with China started eleven years ago when I made my first trip to Beijing to study Mandarin and has only grown since then. Beijing is the city that continues to inspire and excite me the most”.

He continued: “I’m honoured to have been chosen as the UK Young Music Entrepreneur 2010 and plan to develop Songkick in China with the prize money. Unconstrained by an incumbent structure, China’s nascent music industry has leapfrogged that of the West. In China recorded music is a promotional loss leader, deals are 360 degree by default, and live and online are the core growth areas of the industry. Songkick plays at the intersection of live music and the web, helping fans to track their favourite artists and never miss an amazing concert, so China is a place for us to learn, and a place to grow. I’d like to thank the British council teams in China and London for creating such a fantastic opportunity”.



READ MORE ABOUT: |