Playlisting your music in China

Originally posted by Teemu Uimonen at musicinfo.io

All musicians with a passion and trust in their own music want their songs to be heard. I am one of them for sure. I know that my music comes from the heart and there are people out there who would like the sounds I have created. So how to reach those people?

Aside from the furious social media posting and promotion, playlisting your music on Spotify and other Western streaming services is something that most indie artists have tried or at least thought of, maybe you have too. It is an effective way to increase your streams, build a following and pour your music into the ears of new listeners and there are many companies which offer these services. First you pay, then the company checks out your song and gets in touch with the playlist curator who has suitable playlists for your music, then the song is playlisted. Simple!

The same way works in China

Promotion activity with playlists might be familiar to you in the Western music market, but how about the lesser known, fast-growing gigantic music market of China? Musicinfo distributes music digitally to mainland China and can do various promotion actions in Chinese social media and streaming services, including playlisting. Musicinfo provides playlisting to popular playlists (100,000 to millions of accumulated streams and growing) in NetEase, which is one of China’s biggest music streaming providers with over 800 million registered users. Your playlisted songs are in the playlist for at least a month and we aim to get them placed as high as possible in the top 10. After playlisting a lot of songs from different artists we can say with confidence that playlisting songs in NetEase increases the visibility of the artists music just like in western streaming services. 

Unlike in most Western streaming services, in NetEase the users can comment on individual songs. A good way to see the increased visibility almost immediately after playlisting your music is to direct your eyes to the comment section of the playlisted song. Musicinfo artists have gotten on average around 150 comments per playlisted song. It is good to know that most songs in NetEase start with a completely silent comment section. 0 comments is quite a sad sight to behold. After all we are talking about the concrete products of someone’s imagination and feelings! They deserve listens, feedback and attention in my opinion. 

To see if my own music would get visibility this way in China, I purchased Musicinfo’s playlisting service and playlisted a prog rock song Into the Light by my band Bailout. It got placed to the top 10 on a popular playlist with mixed genres and 1.9 million accumulated streams and it was on the list for 1 month. During that one month it got over 100 comments from brand new listeners and some even seemed to like it :) I was really happy to get my music heard and witness Musicinfo’s playlisting services in action. I will playlist more of my own music for sure. 

Musicinfo has plenty of other artists with various genres who have gained visibility by playlisting. For example singer-songwriter guitarist Gráinne Duffy and her song Blue Skies (120+ new comments), Hip-Hop artist Leo Ganza and his song Perkin & Purgin’ (170+ new comments) and DJ Thera with his track It’s a Fine Day (120+ new comments). The list goes on.

Bailout Playlist Link on Netease

Promotion is essential

Getting the comment numbers jumping with playlisting highlighted a phenomenon when distributing music to streaming services: the music is not guaranteed to get much listens if it just exists in the services. When an artist uploads new music to Spotify, it won’t get listened to without some kind of promotion unless the artist has already a steady fan-base which visits the artists Spotify page frequently. The music needs to be promoted, no matter the song, streaming service or destination country.

Many reasons to get excited about the Chinese music market

The music market in China is possibly unknown for many and might seem unreliable or even scary. There is no reason to mistrust this booming music market, since piracy is no longer an issue, the mechanisms of the market are similar (royalties from listens, shares, likes etc.) to what we are used to and most importantly the users of the services are real people like you and I. When they hear a good song, they might leave a nice comment, follow the artist and link the song to a friend.

Let’s get your awesome songs heard

So long story short, by playlisting your music in China you can increase the visibility of your music and Musicinfo can do it for you with solid results. The Chinese music market is big, exciting and growing fast so it is a good idea to distribute your music there and have it heard by the massive audiences. Why not get started? Maybe your music will get a breakthrough in China!

If you want to playlist your music on NetEase, please reach out to Musicinfo by sending your artist name, the name of your song and the genre of the song to han.zhang@musicinfo.io. They’ll find your song in NetEase, check it out and send you an offer about the perfect playlist for you! If you do not have your song yet in NetEase, don’t worry they will give you free distribution for your song on top of the playlist.

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Links and Sources:

NetEase user amount: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/chinas-netease-cloud-music-with-over-800m-users-gains-rights-to-use-1-3m-warner-chappell-music-songs/

Piracy no longer an issue: https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/24/technology/china-streaming-music-video/index.html

Bailout streaming: https://fanlink.to/Bailout

Bailout - Into the Light (NetEase): https://music.163.com/#/song?id=1432341807

Gráinne Duffy Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Uz1iG3enjltFOqqwAhQ2Y

Gráinne Duffy - Blue Skies (NetEase): https://music.163.com/#/song?id=1422256180

Leo Ganza Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5qO2baRd4LQJIHm7LMxfPo

Leo Ganza - Perkin & Purgin’ (NetEase): https://music.163.com/#/song?id=1501805014

Dj Thera Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3wnWv1CbRJ0JuDgOcsBPfd

Dj Thera - It’s a Fine Day (NetEase): https://music.163.com/#/song?id=26781674

Playlisting your music in China