Apple Music's entry into China has triggered two major changes in the domestic music landscape

On September 30, Apple announced that it will launch Apple Music services including music, movies, and e-books in mainland China with immediate effect, officially entering the already competitive China streaming music market.

In China, nearly 700 million Internet users currently regard the Internet as an important channel to obtain resources for free, including music, movies, news, pictures and other content. The prosperity of the Internet has greatly enriched the work and life of netizens. Most netizens also hope that the "free lunch" will continue, which will cause difficulties for domestic Internet companies in terms of business models and monetization models. Free thinking has for a time become the thinking advocated by Internet entrepreneurs.

On September 30, Apple announced that it will launch Apple Music services including music, movies, and e-books in mainland China with immediate effect, officially entering the already competitive China streaming music market. Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Apple Internet Software and Services, said that China has become our largest market in the world in terms of APP downloads.

In response to the needs of users in the mainland market of China, Apple has adopted a professional team from China to select music, movies and book resources. Currently, there are millions of music content on Apple Music in the mainland market, and Apple and music manufacturers directly access the content; In order to quickly adapt to localization, Apple has adjusted the content to highlight exclusive customized content, and local artists such as Lin Junjie interact with fans through Apple Music's Connect. In addition, the "For You" function and localized radio stations will also be launched in the mainland China market.

Apple has set a "painless" price for China netizens who have always wanted a "free lunch": Apple's related subscription service information shows that it currently provides each account with a free trial period of three months. After the trial period, the price for the personal version is RMB 10 per month, and the family sharing plan (which can be shared by 6 people) is RMB 15 per month.

Apple's high-profile entry into China and Apple Music's new gameplay will be of great significance to the domestic streaming music market. This will cause Tencent, Baidu, which have always been "unable to play" music well, and Alibaba, which has just begun to build an "mutual entertainment system". It has caused considerable losses, or it has also inspired BAT to rethink and layout music.

So, what changes will Apple Music bring to the current streaming music market landscape, digital music creators, and domestic music and intellectual property rights?

Musicians and record companies benefit from the escalating music copyright war

. Currently, the content composition of the AppleMusic platform is the copyright content obtained by Apple globally and the music copyright purchased in China to adapt to the mainland of China. Apple is well aware of the importance of copyright and intellectual property rights. As an outsider, Apple Musi will be a law-abiding music platform. In terms of music copyright procurement, Apple will negotiate with local music manufacturers with the image of a technology giant with global influence and a US$639.6 billion. Obviously, Apple's negotiating advantage is significantly stronger than BAT. Apple's move, especially for Ali Music led by Gao Xiaosong, who is actively deploying the "mutual entertainment ecosystem", may become a victim of this music copyright war.

Music apps are the favorite of mobile phone users with high stickiness, but whether they can form a new traffic portal, BTA has never explored an advertising method to "monetize music". As a pioneer in streaming music platforms, QQ Music has created a well-known Green Diamond charging model in the industry. However, the scale of Green Diamond's advertising monetization has remained silent. Tencent pays huge copyright costs to large record companies every year, and can only serve 200 million users in the form of "free lunch."

Baidu and Tencent, whose music landscape has been blocked and lost, also announced plans to sell music platforms earlier. It is still unknown whether the rumors are true. During this period, Ocean Music and Netease Cloud Music emerged suddenly and showed relatively aggressive purchasing behaviors in the music copyright market. However, for the entry of Apple Music into China, the BTA and major streaming media platforms are bound to rethink and layout the music landscape, and perhaps the battle for music copyright will escalate.

The biggest beneficiaries of this battle for music rights are record companies and musicians. Relying on the country's emphasis on copyright and the huge demand for mobile music apps to ensure traffic, the record companies of copyright owners continue to increase copyright market prices. Record companies such as Warner, Sony, Universal and Rolling Stone earn copyright fees from Internet companies every year. As high as over 100 million yuan.

Apple Music enters China, music streaming accelerates integration

Apple's iTunes store maintains a leading position in the digital music market in the United States, with the number of music sold exceeding 30 billion pieces. For Apple, which already owns a large amount of music copyrights, the new Apple Music has natural copyright advantages. For users in mainland China, they only need to purchase the copyright of the music manufacturer's Chinese music library to complete the localization plan.

On the negotiating table for domestic music copyright, there are major music streaming media platforms such as Ali Music, Baidu Music, QQ Music, Ocean Music, Netease Cloud Platform, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, and FM fields. In order to ensure traffic on APP platforms, introduce new music content, enrich music libraries and content duration, purchasing copyright and purchasing exclusive copyright are common strategies for these platforms, which also leads to a sharp increase in operating costs. From the perspective of Internet competition, the resource consumption and waste of music streaming media is extremely large.

Due to the very different attitudes of Baidu Music, QQ Music, and Ali Music in terms of development strategies, lack tacit understanding in copyright procurement strategies, and do not monopolize the domestic music copyright market, record companies continue to raise the bidding price of copyright. Netease Cloud Music and Ocean Music continue to enrich music copyrights and content libraries, and users on the BAT music platform have begun to gradually divert. The current situation is that Baidu Music and QQ Music are complaining one after another; Ocean Music and Netease Cloud Music are emerging, and Alibaba is also clamoring to build a mutual entertainment system and develop Ali music.

It is against this background that Apple Music has entered China. Apple's advantages in copyright, capital, influence and ecological aspects are beyond the reach of domestic streaming media platforms. With Apple's absolute control over music manufacturers, at this time, the market needs to appear integrators to strengthen the bidding ability in copyright procurement and allow the music market to develop healthily.

Apple Music is all here. I think Baidu Music, QQ Music, and Ali Music are also thinking about how to "play music" next. After all, my date will be finished even with tears.

Editor: yvonne