China’s Conundrum

To many of the world’s economies, China is a chief exporter. However, when it comes to music, the country is anything but. 

Guy Henderson, an executive vice president with Sony/ATV Music Publishing, tells the China Daily that he might be able to change that.

As a publishing veteran responsible for Sony/ATV’s business in Europe, Asia, Australasia and his own home country of South Africa, Henderson understands that “songs written in the local language tend to take 90 percent of the market share in their country, and the same applies to China.”

“It will not be easy for Chinese-originated songs to position themselves on the global stage,” he told the paper. “Chinese language music suffers the same way as African or Indian language music does because musicians mainly focus on domestic audiences.”

The ratio of imported music to exported music in China is 50-1, according to the Nanjing Morning Post, with most of the mainland “dependent on songwriters from Taiwan and Hong Kong.”

But Henderson is sure that if he finds the right songwriting talent on the mainland, he can promote their songs not only in the rest of the Chinese-speaking world but globally as well.

In any case, he plans to sign more Chinese talent in the near future.