A Look at the #Emerging #Chinese #Music #Market for #Western #Artists

A Look at the Emerging Chinese Music Market
Marc Alan c. 2014 

The digital marketing world we live in is a lot like the physical world that we know and love. But it's easy to assume that the digital world you experience in your own community, city, and country is the same around the world. Its just not the case. 

As the band #Edisun (@Edisunnyc) experienced on their recent tour of #China, sponsored by #A-PeerSynergy and #MusictoChina (www.MusicToChina.com), doing business in a market where practically no one speaks your own language, and you happen not to speak theres, is a formidable obstacle online and off. And yet the report from Edisun is that this was a successful tour, where they not only increased their already well established international fan base, but were able to forge deeply beneficial relationships with affiliated partnerships in the Chinese business community that are hugely interested in bringing western music to China.

Through their partnership with A-Peer Synergy Edisun became the first American rock band to have a live performance streamed from China to over 40,000,000 mobile devices. I myself watched excitedly from my local #Starbucks in Norwalk, Ct.

Yet while there is development in this emerging market in the physical world this is where the disparity between the digital world and the physical world becomes a real issue.  In terms of social media, it's really easy to assume the entire world is on Twitter and Facebook, but this is really not the case. The Chinese government severely limits the average citizen access to You Tube, Facebook, and You Tube. There are a number of social media channels from private companies in China that people do follow, but to engage with your fan base there requires some translation if you do not happen to read and write Chinese.

It has been reported by the Nielsen Corporation that a new multiplex movie theater opens in China literally every day of the week, and the movie industry is expected to explode there in the next five years. So it will happen with music, and there will certainly be new channels, new platforms, new ways of engagement, all making it easier for music to be marketed there. Of course, there will be a huge influx of bands into the market at that point, so by all means, you will want to get in there sooner than later.