In the process of legalizing Chinese music, in addition to national-level policy guidance, digital music platforms prefer to exclusively purchase copyrighted content to form a copyright library, and then sublicense the content to third-party platforms through distribution, that is, " China's sub-licensing model of exclusive copyright sub-licensing.
On October 26, "People's Daily" published an interview with Duan Yuping, deputy director of the Copyright Management Department of the National Copyright Administration, saying "music copyright should not be exclusively authorized", which caused heated discussion.
The National Copyright Administration’s proposal that online music works should be fully authorized and avoid purchasing exclusive copyrights is for the healthy development of China’s online music industry. With this in mind, we must view “exclusive” correctly.
What do you think of the Chinese copyright model of “exclusive copyright sub-licensing”?
Unlike the mature industry environment in the European and American music markets, the Chinese music industry has long been in an imperfect and unsound copyright environment. , such as the lack of supervision and users’ low awareness of copyright, means that it is difficult for China to adopt a full-platform licensing approach like Europe and the United States. In fact, the Chinese music market was in this way to some extent a few years ago. However, the embarrassing thing is that , “You can listen to all songs on every platform, but many of them are pirated music without authorization.”
Therefore, in the process of legalizing Chinese music, in addition to national-level policy guidance, digital music platforms prefer to exclusively purchase copyrighted content to form a copyright library, and then sublicense the content to third-party platforms through distribution. That is, the Chinese sub-licensing model of “exclusive copyright sub-licensing”.
On the one hand, the exclusive copyright model solves the problem of fragmented channels for music rights holders to authorize and collect copyright fees. It authorizes a platform with good reputation and great market influence to use it exclusively, and then through this platform Expanding the market through distribution channels not only reduces transaction costs, but also helps to increase the possibility of rights holders obtaining copyright fees. The only authorized entity makes their rights protection easier and more targeted and purposeful.
On the other hand, healthy competition can promote the orderly development of the music market. The exclusive copyright sub-licensing model enables each music platform to continuously improve its own competitiveness, high-quality resources are reasonably allocated, and users receive high-quality music. Enjoy and gradually develop the habit of paying, and musicians have now reflected their value.
In China’s digital music industry, sub-licensing has now become the industry norm. Platforms that have obtained exclusive licenses for high-quality music works will often consider opening the license to other platforms at reasonable prices, rather than just clinging to it. In my own hands, no copyright company wants the music content that I have worked hard to create to be closed on a single platform. Sharing and dissemination are the best results. Since QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music reached a copyright sub-licensing agreement in 2015, there have been many industry sub-licensing cases. For example, the copyright of Rolling Stone Records was sub-licensed to Baidu Music earlier this year, and the mutual transfer between Tencent Music and Alibaba Music in September Authorization. In addition, although there is no news, the exclusive music content of NetEase Cloud Music and Taihe Music has also been sublicensed.
In a survey of the Alibaba application distribution platform, 96.7% of users are willing to pay to download copyrighted music because they respect music copyright. The domestic music market is gradually forming a positive development trend, and the era of music payment has arrived. Driven by the "exclusive copyright sub-licensing" model, a new era of open and shared music copyright in China has been opened.