China’s Music Industry Unplugged

This research book is the first of its kind to conduct an interdisciplinary research on the recent and dramatic developments in China’s music industries with a particular focus on business models, copyright protection, and artist compensation. The monograph explores and discusses proper business models through which revenue can be generated and maintained in a changing copyright climate and transforming business environment. It also discusses how musicians can be fairly compensated in the online platform economy informed by social entrepreneurship. This book is distinctive in the sense that it explores the intersection of cultural and creative industries, legal studies, business studies, and new media. It uses a qualitative and mixed-method approach to study business innovations and institutions in the making in the second largest economy which is also gaining cultural and political significance around the world.

“Contextualisation, contextualisation and contextualisation. A highly recommended book to understanding and doing businesses in Chinese cultural and creative industries with policy insights and theoretical contributions.”

--GU Jie, Professor, Communication University of China

This is probably the first book that addresses the new digital music economy and business as part of the creative industry in China. Troy Chen is imbued with the passion to offer strategy—namely a “spirit” of social entrepreneurship —to artists and creators in the music industry to tackle the constraints of copyright regime and new challenges and complexities accompanied with the platform economy.

— Anthony Fung, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Professor, School of Arts and Communication, Beijing Normal University

China’s Music Industry Unplugged combs through the evolution of the business models of China’s music industry in the context of strengthening copyright protection, shifting technological landscape and changing consumption culture. In this comprehensive and readable book, Troy Chen offers a critical analysis of what these changes mean for musicians and how their interests can be protected.  

---Elaine Jing Zhao, The University of New South Wales

“Chen’s excellent book propels the reader on a tour of one of the world’s fastest growing music markets, encompassing cogent analyses of the various business models that finance the industry as well as the musicians’ perspective. As the premier study of China’s online music ecosystem, this is a must-read for anyone interested in how the music industry works outside North America and Europe.”

-Andrew White, Independent Scholar and author of Digital Media & Society (Palgrave Macmillan 2014)

"A timely, important and interdisciplinary book, based on a critical review of as well as rigorous and systematic research design on the development of China’s music industry and its ensuing issues of business models, copyright protection and artists compensation in the online platform economy. It is a must read for researchers and students in media and communications and business schools who work in the area of cultural and creative industries in China". 

— Dr Xiaoling Zhang, Chair Professor of Creative Industry, University of Nottingham, Ningbo China

Zhen Troy Chen, PhD, FHEA, Senior Lecturer in Digital Advertising, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is also Adjunct Research Fellow of the Griffith Centre for Design and Innovation Research at Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus. His research interests are in digital media, cultural and creative industries, cultural and media policy (copyright), journalism, and experience design. His research papers have appeared in Journal of Consumer Culture, Ethics and Information Technology, Social Semiotics, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, and Global Media and China. He also contributed his book chapters published by Bloomsbury Academic and Routledge.