西方艺术家期待改变中国音乐“节拍”
一度充斥盗版的中国音乐市场如今受到热捧，音乐版权交易的目标已远不止是一首歌。
But following a flurry of so-called exclusive partnerships between the country’s biggest internet groups and major international record labels, the government has called time on the practice.
但在中国几大互联网集团和主要国际唱片公司之间接连达成所谓的独家合作关系之后，政府已叫停这一行为。
The regulator’s ire — spurred by rivals griping at Tencent’s stranglehold on the sector — has thrown a spotlight on one of the world’s fastest-growing music markets as an increasingly important opportunity for western artists.
监管机构的怒火——导火索是竞争对手们抱怨腾讯(Tencent)对该领域的垄断——让人们注意到中国这个全球增长最为迅速的音乐市场正成为西方艺术家越来越重要的机遇。
Paid online music is expected to rise 59 per cent this year to Rmb3bn ($455m), according to iResearch, the market research company. Moreover, industry body IFPI says almost all of this is down to streaming putting the country well ahead of every other big market.
据市场研究公司艾瑞咨询(iResearch)数据显示，今年在线音乐用户付费市场规模预计将增长59%，达到30亿元人民币(合4.55亿美元)。此外，行业机构国际唱片业协会(IFPI)表示这一切几乎都归结于流媒体让中国遥遥领先于其他所有大市场。
“I think we’ll start to see international artists wanting to ‘break China’ just as much as they’ve always wanted to ‘break America’,” says Stu Bergen, chief executive for international and global commercial services at Warner Music.
华纳音乐(Warner Music)负责国际及全球商业服务的首席执行官斯图•伯根(Stu Bergen)表示：“我想我们将开始看到国际艺术家想要‘打入中国’，就像他们一直想要‘打入美国’那样。”
Tencent had a 78 per cent share of the market revenues last year, according to Soochow Security, a Chinese brokerage. That clout and a fat wallet has enabled the group to outbid rivals for distribution agreements with western labels eager to distribute their music in China.
据中国券商东吴证券(Soochow Security)的数据，去年腾讯占该市场收入的78%。这样的影响力加上充沛的资金，让该集团能够打败竞争对手，与那些渴望将自己的音乐发行到中国的西方唱片公司达成分销协议。
“They bid very high prices, way beyond what they thought they would be able to monetise, just to grab all the content for themselves,” says one investor.China’s National Copyright Administration called for an end to exclusive deals in September, with a view to encouraging greater competition among groups. Duan Yupin, an NCAC official, reiterated that view in the state-backed People’s Daily newspaper, last month: “It’s not normal to give a whole copyright pool exclusively to a single platform.”
一位投资者说：“他们出价非常高，远超他们预估能获得的收入，只为了将所有内容攥到自己手中。”中国国家版权局在9月份叫停音乐独家版权交易，以期鼓励各集团间的竞争。国家版权局官员段玉萍上个月在官方报纸《人民日报》(People’s Daily)上重申了这一观点：“像中国这样整个曲库的独家授权是不正常的。”
Music labels, however, point out that the “exclusive” tag is a misnomer. The deals, they say, are more akin to the master licensing arrangement common in some emerging markets, whereby copyright is handed to one company which then cross-licences it to other platforms.
但唱片公司指出“独家”这个词用得并不恰当。他们表示这些交易更类似于部分新兴市场常见的版权总代理安排，即版权是交给一家公司全权代理，然后由它交叉授权给其他平台。
Warner Music’s Mr Bergen says Tencent is “expected to do sub-licence deals with all potential internet digital music platforms on behalf of our catalogue of artists”, adding that it is a unique arrangement that would “not necessarily be a model that would work in any other market”.
华纳音乐的伯根表示，腾讯“应该会代表我们旗下艺术家，与所有潜在互联网数字音乐平台达成转授权协议”。他补充说这是一种独特的交易，这种模式“在其他任何市场上不一定能成功”。
For the Chinese group, which hopes to spin off its music arm next year, having content rights is crucial. “As Tencent Music prepares for an initial public offering, the copyright they hold is the one thing they can tell investors to back up an [expected] high valuation,” notes one industry executive.
腾讯希望明年将音乐部门拆分出去;拥有内容版权对腾讯至关重要。一位业内高管表示：“腾讯音乐(Tencent Music)正在准备首次公开发行(IPO)，他们手上的版权就是他们可以向投资者宣传的一个卖点，这些版权将支撑起腾讯音乐(预期的)的高估值。”
Rivals are cautiously optimistic on the impact of the regulator’s intervention. The price of distribution rights will continue to rise, says the head of one production house, but “the premium will not be as high as it is now; there will be less of a bubble”.
腾讯的竞争对手们对监管机构干预的影响持审慎乐观态度。一家唱片公司的负责人表示，分销权的价格将继续上涨，不过“加价不会像现在这么高，到时候泡沫会减少”。
Wang Jiang, a music producer and former director at Universal Music in China, says it will lead to a different model. “When label companies sign new copyright contracts in the future they will add more specific clauses, like how to distribute that copyright even if it is an ‘exclusive’ deal.”
前环球唱片(Universal Music)市场总监、音乐制作人王江表示，这将带来一种不同的模式。“唱片公司未来签订新的版权合同时，它们会添加更具体的条款，比如如何分销版权——即便是‘独家’授权。”
China’s distorted market is explained in large part by its history. Piracy was rampant across media, from stores selling bootleg DVDs to illegal downloads and streaming. Government intervention through enforcement and fines changed the picture.
中国扭曲的市场在很大程度上是由其历史造成的。各种介质的盗版曾经都非常猖獗，商店售卖盗版DVD、网络上有盗版音乐可下载和在线播放。政府通过执法和罚款进行干预，改变了上述局面。
Speaking at a conference in Shenzhen earlier this year, Chia-Chi Li, Tencent’s director of technology transactions, described the clampdown as “probably one of the biggest changes in the market that’s allowed us to be here today”.
腾讯的技术交易负责人黎家齐(Chia-Chi Li)今年早些时候在深圳一次会议上的发言中称，这次整顿“可能是该市场最大的变化之一，它让我们今天来到了这里”。
Listeners have largely segued from unpaid pirated content to unpaid-for, ad-funded streaming. Tencent Music claims 700m monthly active users and says 20m will be paying subscribers by the end of 2017.
听众基本上是从未付费的盗版内容转到靠广告赞助的免费流媒体。腾讯音乐宣称其月活跃用户达7亿，并表示至2017年底付费用户将达2000万。
“It’s a huge user base of free services,” shrugs one music analyst.
一位音乐行业分析师耸耸肩说：“这是一个庞大的免费服务用户群。”
Despite Tencent’s dominance, it prompted a renaissance for China’s music industry more broadly. Alibaba, the ecommerce group, and Netease Cloud Music, the number two platform, ramped up. Tencent began acquiring and rolling music platforms and bolting them together with its own QQ music platform.
尽管腾讯占据着统治地位，但它促进了中国音乐产业的全面复兴。电商集团阿里巴巴(Alibaba)和第二大平台网易云音乐(Netease Cloud Music)也发力了。腾讯已开始收购和推出众多音乐平台，并将它们与自己的QQ音乐(QQ Music)平台捆绑在一起。
Mathew Daniel, international vice-president at Netease Cloud Music, pinpoints social media’s role in the way the music industry has evolved. “Where China is different — social media is very much a local business and international ones are not available in China so things have to come from the ground up.”
网易云音乐国际副总裁马修•丹尼尔(Mathew Daniel)认为是社交媒体造就了音乐产业的发展轨迹。 “中国的不同之处在于，社交媒体基本上是本土的，国际化社交媒体在中国不能用，所以一切都得从头开始。”
It is little surprise that the international record labels have every intention of expanding in the country. If China’s market develops and growth proves sustainable, says one player, “I think we are going to see a creative explosion like we saw in the 60s and 70s in the west.”
国际唱片公司强烈想要在中国扩张，这一点不足为奇。一位参与者表示，如果中国市场向前发展且增长被证明是可持续的，“我认为我们将看到一场创作大爆发，就像上世纪六七十年代我们在西方看到的情况那样”。
Listening by numbers
透过数据看音乐市场
Just how big is China’s music market? If you believe the streaming platforms, the numbers are huge. Tencent claims 700m users and Netease 400m.
中国音乐市场到底有多大?如果你相信流媒体平台的说法，那么这个数字是巨大的。腾讯宣称有7亿用户，网易宣称有4亿。
Those numbers far outstrip the official figure of 503m at the end of 2016 and demonstrate what analyst Mark Mulligan dubs “an absolutely huge amount of overlap”.
这些数字远远超过了2016年底5.03亿的官方数字，也展示了分析师马克•马利根(Mark Mulligan)所称的“绝对庞大的重叠”。
Mr Mulligan, of UK-based music research consultancy Midea Research, says using the numbers given out by platforms implies that at least three-quarters of the Chinese population are active users, even though certain regions lack the mobile data services needed to stream.
英国音乐研究咨询机构Midea Research的马利根表示，如果采用各平台发布的数字，就意味着至少有四分之三的中国人是活跃用户——尽管某些地区缺乏流媒体播放所需要的移动数据服务。
But if Tencent follows through on plans to list its music unit, it will be forced to shed some light on numbers — and specifically numbers of paying subscribers, which will be key when it comes to valuing the company.
但如果腾讯将音乐部门上市的计划推进下去，它就不得不公布一些数据，尤其是付费用户的数据，这在上市公司估值时将是个关键指标。
The 15m paying subscribers claimed by Tencent puts in behind only Spotify and Apple Music but, says Mr Mulligan, that is by adding those on its various platforms: QQ Music, KuGou and KuWo. Unifying the numbers ahead of listing will significantly whittle that back, he says.
腾讯声称拥有1500万付费用户，仅落后Spotify和苹果音乐(Apple Music)，但马利根表示这计入了QQ音乐、酷狗(KuGou)和酷我(KuWo)等多个平台的用户。他表示上市前对数据进行合并后，总数将大大缩水。
“A lot of people will just disappear because you get a lot of inertia, people who just keep paying their bills. Those are the numbers that will disappear when Tencent starts pulling [them] into a unified platform,” he says.
他说：“很多人会消失，因为很多用户并不活跃，他们只是一直支付账单。当腾讯开始将(他们)归入一个统一平台时，这些用户量将蒸发。”
There are also questions over what constitutes a subscriber: just those actively streaming music on a monthly basis, or also people who are occasional users of other services, such as tipping karaoke livestreamers.
付费用户的构成也存在疑问：是只限定于那些在线听歌的月活用户，还是也包括偶尔使用其他服务——如打赏直播唱歌播主——的用户。
Netease, which goes for an edgier clientele with electronic dance music and hip-hop, claims the crown of fastest-growing service, with monthly active users rising 44 per cent in the year to June.
网易以电子舞曲和嘻哈音乐吸引较为前卫的用户，该公司摘得增长最快服务的桂冠，在截至6月份的一年里其月活用户增长了44%。
