China’s Music Industry Unplugged

“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


 


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.


 


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.