China's music industry continues steady growth in 2024: report

China's music industry achieved sustained and steady growth in 2024, driven by multiple factors such as technological innovation and policy guidance, showed an official report on Friday.

In 2024, the total scale of China's music industry reached approximately 492.915 billion yuan (about 68.6 billion U.S. dollars), representing a year-on-year growth of 4.97 percent, according to the latest Music Industry Development Report released by the Music Industry Development Research Center of Communication University of China (CUC).

The size of music performance market in China grew by 46.6 percent year on year to 38.733 billion yuan last year. Specifically, the ticket revenue from small-scale live shows and professional theater performances was approximately 9.097 billion yuan, increasing by 5.5 percent year-on-year, while that from large and medium-sized concerts and music festivals surged by 66.5 percent to 29.636 billion yuan, becoming the core driving force for the box office of music performances, showed the report.

"Against the backdrop of promoting domestic consumption, many local governments have introduced some incentive and subsidy policies and taken music performances as an important driver to boost the local entertainment consumption economy," said Zhao Zhi'an, director of the CUC Music Industry Development Research Center.

In 2024, the output value of game music was 369 million yuan, representing a year-on-year growth of 21.78 percent, while that of animation music was approximately 441 million yuan, increasing by 84.52 percent, according to the report.

The game music and animation music industries have shown a rapid development trend, benefiting from the refinement of content and the integration and support of traditional classic culture, said the report.

It noted that the application of artificial intelligence technology has enhanced the efficiency of game and animation music production as well as the personalized experience of audiences, saying that the combination of technology and cultural empowerment is driving the industry's high-quality and internationalized development.

In addition, the scale of the digital music industry reached 102.746 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15 percent. Online music, music short videos and music livestreaming have jointly driven the growth rate of this sector back to double digits, according to the report.

The number of online music services users climbed to 729 million, with the number of paying users continuing to grow. The yearly growth rate of revenue from online music services exceeded 20 percent.

Short videos are becoming an important platform for users to discover new music, said the report.

"Some background music on short-video platforms is also a new or even a relatively major channel for users to discover new works," said Zhao.

China's music industry continues steady growth in 2024: report

China aims to achieve secure and reliable supply of key core artificial intelligence (AI) technologies by 2027, with its industrial scale and empowerment level remaining among the world's forefront, according to a recent government action plan.

The plan, jointly issued by eight departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the National Development and Reform Commission, outlines an ambitious push to deeply integrate AI with the manufacturing sector, foster new quality productive forces and comprehensively empower new industrialization. By 2027, the plan targets the deep application of three to five general-purpose large AI models in manufacturing, the development of specialized, full-coverage industry-specific large models, the creation of 100 high-quality industrial datasets, and the promotion of 500 typical application scenarios.

It also aims to cultivate two to three globally influential ecosystem-leading enterprises, a batch of specialized and sophisticated small and medium-sized enterprises, and a group of enabling service providers proficient in both AI technology and industry know-how.

Furthermore, China plans to build a world-leading open-source ecosystem, enhance security governance capabilities, and contribute Chinese solutions to global AI development.

The document outlines measures including promoting the coordinated development of AI chips' hardware and software, supporting innovations in model training and inference methods, fostering key industry-specific large models, and deeply embedding large model technology into core production processes.

The plan also emphasizes making breakthroughs in key technologies such as security protection for industrial model algorithms and training data protection.

China aims for secure, reliable supply of AI core tech by 2027