On January 5, Xiami Music announced that it would gradually close down its music streaming platform. Although there are multiple reasons behind, the "copyright issue" is indeed a long-term pain point of Xiami Music. From downloading pirated songs on the web to the full legalization of digital music, this is almost the core issue of the music platforms represented by Tencent Entertainment and NetEase Cloud Music.
It used to be a very low-cost thing to listen to and download music from the Internet. In 2015, National Copyright Administration, PRC issued the "Notice on Ordering Online Music Service Providers to Stop Unauthorized Dissemination of Musical Works", which was called the "strongest copyright order" in the industry. Since then, the music industry has experienced significant changes, and major music platforms have conducted self-check, and a large number of pirated songs have been removed.
According to public statistics, at that time, including music platforms such as Baidu Music, Duomi Music, and Changba, a total of more than 2.2 million unauthorized songs were removed. As a result, Xiami Music removed many songs including Jay Chou’s and songs from other popular singers, and a lot of regular users were lost. It was also worth-noting that since then, major digital music platforms started to build their own copyright libraries, and the copyright dispute that had lasted for many years started.
In order to avoid vicious competition, in 2018, the National Copyright Administration talked to a number of music platforms. Through coordination, Tencent Music Entertainment, NetEase Cloud Music, and Alibaba Music reached a mutual authorization agreement, that is, they would not preserve the exclusive music copyrights and license to other music platforms for common use.
Although the competition has eased, the copyright competition for the Top 1% of songs still fierce. The fierce competition caused by copyright competition was inevitably lead to the profit of copyright owners. In order to avoid the loss of the user group, the music platform would buy the music copyright at an obvious premium price, rather than leave the copyright to the competitors. According to industry’s statistics, the cost of many music copyrights has increased 50 times from 2013 to present.
The competition regarding music copyright is still fierce, but the era that copyright owners could easily earned copyright fees would have been passed.
