Music fans are now willing to pay for quality music online. Photo: Courtesy of xiami.com

"I hope there will be a good [online music-sharing] system in the future, so that the musicians can make the profits that they deserve," said Wang Hao, founder and CEO of xiami.com, an independent music service provider founded in 2006, during an interview with Shenzhen TV.

Wang is determined to develop a sharing platform where anyone, regardless of their skill or ability, can upload their own musical compositions while listening to others' works. And upholding this concept of Wang's, xiami.com has become an online music platform that is honorably searching for a livelihood in this turbid market.

In China, there are about 400 million Internet users downloading and listening to music online, mostly for free, according to a Xinhua News Agency report. Due to a broad negligence of copyright issues in China, paying to download music online would be the most unlikely option for most Chinese Internet users, regardless of how fond they are of the singer.

However, Wang believes that the disorganization of China's online music market has deprived fans of quality. Although free of charge, many online sharing platforms fall short in providing high-quality music. Online users often find the music they have downloaded does not match what they want, or is of bad tone quality. Even worse, some people may unfortunately find the downloaded music is in fact a computer virus.

This disorderliness in the overall market has spurred Wang on, who believes that the chaos will lead customers to demand a benchmark of quality in the industry, even at the expense of paying money.

With strict standards to filter the uploading of music, as well as the simplifying of the music search engine, xiami.com has quickly gained popularity and established a brand awareness for providing an excellent standard of music.

However, despite the platform's early success, xiami.com is still confronted with financing problems. The platform requires strong financial backing to buy music copyrights from both domestic singers and foreign music companies.

To overcome these financial hurdles, xiami.com has begun to cooperate with Alibaba, who has the largest e-commerce website taobao.com.

This cooperation has inspired xiami.com to run its business on the online retail platform, just like other retail stores on taobao.com, whereby music producers can find an opportunity to sell their works directly to the customers. Musicians can price their works by themselves, and the earnings can go into their own pockets. The platform's new business model through Alibaba has become more transparent and sustainable.

Wang's vision for online music of good quality has also been advanced through the recent reforms carried out by the Chinese government, which are enforcing copyright on all music and video content. Customers paying for online music and films will be an irreversible trend in the near future, and xiami.com is among the first music service providers to be leading this trend. 

Paying for music downloading has already been a general practice consistently followed in Western countries for decades. With more music writers and singers beginning to appeal for more attention on the copyright issues, the Chinese music industry is predestined to be regulated in the upcoming years and xiamai.com is set to capitalize on this transition.