Panelists discuss about the future of digital music industry. Photo: Courtesy of TME 

TC Pan, vice president of TME and head of the copyright management group (left), gives remarks. Photo: Courtesy of TME

The eye-catching music activity Music Matters took place in Singapore on September 16, during which Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) formally unveiled their strategy of "Content, technology, service." In the future, these three factors will be the core elements promoting TME's business growth and will drive the entire music ecological platform to continue to develop.

At the panel discussion of the event, TC Pan, vice president of TME and head of the copyright management group, spoke with the representatives of music and entertainment groups such as Believe Digital, Rock Records Co., Ltd, Chinese streaming platform iqiyi.com and investment firm KKFARM. Their topic of discussion was how the digital music platform can co-exist with content providers in an age where content is empowered by the internet.

The rapid rise of digital music makes traditional music brand companies, which are good at producing quality content, realize the importance of digital platform channels. Under the new trend of digital music, many traditional music brands have chosen to establish a solid and deep cooperative relationship with the digital music platform, and combine its advantages with their own content so as to achieve a better market result.

Pan said that the future development of the music industry could not be separated from the cooperation of music content providers and platform upstream, downstream and cross-industry partners. 

Denis Ladegaillerie, CEO of Believe Digital, one of the representatives of traditional music labels, talked about the challenges brought by the rise of digital music to traditional music labels. He believed that traditional music labels should learn to "leverage" and combine their strengths with the advantages of digital music to enhance their competitive advantages.

Duan Shuhou, from Rock Records Co., Ltd, added that traditional music brands should focus on the opportunities brought by digital music instead of challenges, and provide more high-quality music works for the market. 

Terence Leong, co-founder of KKFARM, believes that digital music platforms should also develop a number of music production tools to meet the needs of young groups, but also stimulate more content creators to create and cultivate more independent musicians. 

Iqiyi.com's Vice President Chen Xiao also believes that as a platform, they should explore and value the creators of high-quality content, reasonably control the proportion of imported and homemade content, and create high-quality homemade content based on users.

In 2018, China became the seventh largest music market in the world. In addition to continuous support from policies and capital, the development of the music industry in China showed a trend of prosperity and growth. Speaking about the future, Pan said that if the music industry in China wants to continue to develop at a high speed in the future, it cannot rely on only one or two big enterprises, but requires the concerted efforts of all music industry practitioners.