I had the good fortune of meeting Matthew Daniel of R2G in China a couple of weeks ago. He presented his thoughts on the Chinese music market and reconciling the intrinsic value of music over there. It is very interesting that Intellectual Property has had very little monetary value in China and they are struggling with a situation that the rest of the world is just beginning to learn about.

Music in China has essentially always been free. They are now just trying to put structures in place to encourage people to pay for recorded music. Access and Convenience are the keys to his strategy. Lots of lessons to be learned for sure.

“While commercial music consumption has never been more widespread in the known history of man, and with the Internet offering the most capacious vehicle the world has ever seen to disseminate the near infinite body of musical works that exists universally to the greatest number of people, the existing music industry powers-that-be have yet to formulate a system to set this music free – even 10 years after Napster showed the way technologically.

And as elements in the music industry still continue to control the amount of legally accessible music to consumers, and only feed them the acts from which it can make the most money while keeping its vast catalogs in obviously porous vaults, other companies and intermediaries have capitalized on the clarion call to set the music free in all senses of the word. But some of these very companies and intermediaries are themselves simply in the game to enrich themselves via other ancillary services and products which use the pull of music and the accompanying audience, with minimal revenues trickling back to the very creators of the music.

Whilst this tug-of-war continues, one casualty is the increasing reference to music as a commodity,which is a gross misrepresentation of what music really is. Music is food for the soul which creates an emotional attachment with the listener and where it strikes a chord, an intrinsic value in the music is realized.

The industry needs to re-focus on this value in music that many seem to have forgotten, and which others have seemed to have contributed to its devaluation.”

Here is a link to Matthew’s Blog and his presentation from the Transmission Conference I recently attended in Vancouver.