China's singer-songwriters make their names on the Internet

Indie singersongwriter Song Dongye (center) has risen to fame in the country since he released his songs online.[Photo provided To China Daily]

Singer-songwriters are making their names on the Internet, hoping that the big numbers they attract can be turned into a new profit model, Chen Nan reports.

Wang Lei's childhood dream was to become a singer-songwriter, but he gave up the idea when he was 17 and met Shen Lihui, who was then the leading vocalist of the rock band Sober.

The two Beijing natives became friends, and Shen invested all his money into building up his own music company, Modernsky, now one of the biggest indie record firms in the country.

Wang got to know many indie songwriters through Shen, but he has never showed Shen his songwriting works.

"It was hard for indie singer-songwriters to survive then because the market was very small," recalls Wang. "Meanwhile, after listening to their music, I realized that not everyone can be a singer-songwriter. I didn't have that talent."

Wang told the story at the Music Industry Forum 2015 at the Communication University of China in Beijing on Friday.

Wang is now the senior director of the music department of NetEase, a leading Chinese Internet company whose music-streaming service, NetEase cloud music, has more than 55 million users. Wang points out that more Chinese singer-songwriters have revealed their work to music lovers worldwide and there are no barriers.

"Despite the fact that the adjustment to this new reality has been painful, and not everyone has embraced it, the Internet boom has helped original Chinese music," Wang says.

Statistics prove that the influence of the Internet is undeniable, determining the way people listen to music, and how they pay for it, according to the latest report released from the forum, which was jointly organized by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the Communication University of China and the Music Industry Promotion Committee.

The report says that the total value of China's digital-music industry in 2014 was more than 49.1 billion yuan ($7.79 billion), increasing 11.5 percent compared with 2013. There were more than 470 million digital-music users in China in 2014.

The total value of the physical record industry was 600 million yuan, declining 5.4 percent comparing with 2013.