Digital music has a development history of nearly ten years in our country. It has basically maintained a development speed that is in sync with the international pace. It has also experienced several important stages in the development history of world digital music. Around 2004, digital music entered the industrialization stage of development in China. At present, my country's digital music market is still in the early stages of development. Although the market conditions for the development of the digital music industry are still imperfect and sales cannot yet be compared with developed countries such as the United States, mainland China's huge potential market and the growth of broadband High-speed popularization and mobile communication infrastructure construction that synchronizes with the world have laid a solid foundation for the development of this industry.

In 2009, the size of China's online music market increased by 8.2% year-on-year, reaching 140 million yuan. In 2010, the revenue of the online music market increased steadily, with a revenue scale of 280 million yuan. In 2012, the number of online music users was 436 million, an annual increase of 13.0%, and the online music market reached 1.82 billion yuan, an increase of 379% over 2011. Revenue from online music performances has greatly increased the size of the online music market this year. There is a huge potential market demand for online music in China, and the development space has yet to be fully explored by all market parties. At present, the global music industry is accelerating its transformation to digital music, and the position of the traditional recording industry has been greatly reduced; similarly, China's online music market is also in the ascendant, with user scale and proportion continuing to grow. However, the commercial market is far from mature. At present, domestic mobile value-added services are diversified, and the most popular one is undoubtedly wireless music. The rapid rise of wireless music has brought users a new entertainment experience and has become a new force in promoting the overall rise of digital music. Looking around the world, with the continuous acceleration of 3G commercialization, the mobile entertainment business represented by wireless music has rapidly emerged and has become a promising business growth point for mobile operators. The rapid development of digital music has attracted countless companies to favor it. The future development direction of the music industry lies in digital music. China has the largest number of Internet digital music users in the world. As long as the copyright problem is solved, the revenue of digital music may increase dozens or even hundreds of times in the next few years. The prospects are very optimistic. Due to differences in specific national conditions, there are certain differences between the development of digital music in China and its development abroad. This is mainly reflected in two aspects:

First, digital music brings far more opportunities than blows to China's music producers;

Second, the development trend of China's digital music industry It is wireless music that drives online music. The record industry has been developing for hundreds of years in Western countries represented by the United States. The mature and complete market environment and strong copyright protection policies have enabled consumers in these countries to develop good habits of genuine consumption for a long time. After the emergence of digital music, free downloads from the Internet caused a huge blow to the sales of record companies in a short period of time. Record companies, which have never experienced such a major impact of piracy, have been unable to find effective means to block online piracy and protect their own interests for a long time. It wasn't until Apple launched the iPod+iTunes model in 2003 and made a lot of real money from it that the recording industry saw a feasible solution to its current predicament. Although after several years of development, the digital music market in Europe and the United States has now entered a rapid growth track, the decline of the traditional recording industry has become a fact. Gone are the days when record giants enjoyed high profits exclusively. Now record companies can only share the digital music pie with network operators, digital music service providers, terminal equipment manufacturers and other parties. For the recording industry in Europe and the United States, the arrival of the digital music era is a usurpation of interests by new technology industries from traditional industries. The cooperation between the traditional recording industry and new technologies is more out of compulsion than out of necessity. Inner pursuit.

In China, the mentality of record companies is very different. China's record market has never matured. The traditional music industry has long been troubled by the erosion of its interests by piracy. Piracy accounts for more than 95% of the market, and it is an open fact that publishing records is unprofitable. Under such circumstances, domestic record companies have developed a skill to survive without releasing records. Most of them have become economic companies, barely surviving by relying on artists, concerts and advertising endorsements. The arrival of digital music has further squeezed the already meager profit margins of China's recording industry.

But for record companies that already can't make money from record sales, they feel this blow far less strongly than their foreign counterparts. On the contrary, digital music is more like a new opportunity to expand their living space and a life-saving straw for those in the Chinese recording industry who have been struggling to survive. Successful attempts in the field of wireless music inspired their confidence. Almost in the blink of an eye, China's recording industry made great strides into the digital music era.

In this process, their mentality is proactive rather than helpless. In Europe and the United States, the development of the digital music industry has gone through a process of "traditional offline channels-Internet-wireless". In other words, the digital music sales model on the Internet appeared before wireless music and became successful earlier. But in China, wireless music and Internet music basically started at the same time. The success of Chinese record companies in the field of digital music first came from the wireless field. So far, the profits gained from wireless platforms still constitute the main profit of China's digital music industry. Although the online digital music field has attracted many companies and capital from inside and outside the industry to enter, it is still in the process of struggling to find a survival model. . Why does this happen? This is still closely linked to the piracy problem in China.

In the United States, the success of the iP0d+iTuneS online music sales model is based on Apple’s strong control over digital music copyright and the genuine consumption habits of the entire market. But in China, firstly, there is a lack of mature digital copyright protection technology and control measures, and secondly, people are used to free lunches on the Internet. Without solving these two stubborn problems, it will be difficult for online music to gain a chance of healthy development. The situation is different on wireless platforms. One of the great advantages of wireless downloading is that the authenticity rate is very high. Because wireless networks are relatively closed, charges for wireless music downloads are uniformly controlled by telecom operators, and unauthorized music products cannot be sold on their platforms according to regulations, which makes their development less troubled by piracy. According to statistics, the current genuine rate of digital music on wireless platforms has reached more than 80%, and over the years of development, telecom operators have successfully cultivated users' paying habits, which has formed a conflict with the online market where piracy is rampant. A stark contrast. In addition, wireless platforms also feature simple payments, which has been an important factor that has hindered the development of online music for a long time.

Because of the above reasons, the wireless music business has expanded rapidly in a short period of time since its launch in China in 2003, with various portals and telecom operators participating. China's huge number of mobile phone users have used countless small payments of 2 yuan to expand music consumers from the previous few million core consumers who bought records to hundreds of millions of mobile people who buy digital music clips. , greatly broadening the sales scope of music products. A 2005 survey report by Shanghai iResearch Market Research Company showed that among China's 363 million mobile phone users, the number of users who use mobile phones to download ringtones and ringback tones accounted for 72.6% and 34.8% respectively. The best-selling ring tones on the market are usually downloaded more than 1 million times a month. A song "Rat Loves Rice" once set a record of 6 million downloads in a single month, with a monthly income of 12 million yuan, equivalent to a traditional record. Sales revenue of 700,000 copies!

The successful operation of wireless music has enabled record companies, network operators, hardware manufacturers, etc. to see the huge business opportunities hidden in the field of digital music. In order to seize the commanding heights of the industry, a large number of ambitious companies have begun to enter the online music market. Therefore, in our country, the rapid development of wireless music has in turn promoted the growth of Internet music. In other words, it is wireless music that really opened the door to China's digital music industry. If my country's digital music industry market wants to operate healthily, it is imperative to strengthen copyright protection. So far, many domestic Internet companies have gradually become aware of copyright issues. Various companies have taken various approaches to transform themselves from service providers into content providers upstream of the industry chain, especially with record companies, signing contracts with singers, and negotiating with songwriters. The cooperation of record companies has led to the gradual standardization of digital music download services. Therefore, although free downloading is difficult to completely eradicate in a short period of time, paid downloading of genuine music will surely be the most important guarantee and foundation for the steady development of the digital music market in the future.

From the perspective of the legal environment, our government is paying more and more attention to the protection of music copyright and has stepped up its efforts to combat piracy. In 2005, my country’s first “Administrative Protection Measures for Internet Copyright” was promulgated. On July 1, 2006, the "Regulations on the Protection of Information Network Communication Rights" was promulgated. On the one hand, it clarifies and protects the basic rights of original creators in the form of law; on the other hand, it makes the content of copyright protection more specific and makes it illegal to plagiarize the labor results of others. Websites cannot get away with this. On June 5, 2008, the State Council issued the "National Intellectual Property Strategy Outline" to further improve the copyright legal system; on August 26, 2009, the Ministry of Culture issued the "Notice of the Ministry of Culture on Strengthening and Improving the Review of Online Music Content" ", mainly to solve the outstanding problems faced by the online music market such as uneven content, huge amounts of uncensored imported music, serious infringement and piracy, illegal links, and lack of supervision of market behavior and transaction order. In January 2010, the National Copyright Administration, together with the China Copyright Association, the Internet Society of China and the Beijing Municipal Copyright Bureau, organized more than 100 Internet companies to jointly release the "China Internet Enterprises Copyright Self-Discipline Declaration". In July 2010, the National Copyright Administration, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched the "Sword Network Operation" nationwide to combat online infringement and piracy. It lasted for three months and purified the online copyright protection environment by investigating and handling major and important cases. In March 2011, the Chinese Ministry of Culture struck again and launched a centralized investigation and cleanup of illegal online music products. Despite this, digital music copyright protection still has a long way to go, and the introduction of relevant laws and regulations needs to be further detailed and rigorous.