China is the place to be if you're in...well...just about any industry at the moment. You can check out Music Times' look into the future of music from earlier this year to hear folks like New Music Seminar founder Tom Silverman discuss how streaming in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is where the industry needs to go if it's going to find profit in streaming. Warner Brothers Music is jumping ahead of the crowd with a series of recent actions in the world's most populous nation: It completed its acquisition of the Gold Typhoon Group, a huge Chinese entertainment company (via Billboard).
Gold Typhoon features a catalogue of 600,000 songs from many an Asian act, but also holds the rights to several Western bands as well, including rockers Evanescence.
Warner Music China has also made a deal with Chinese web giant Tencent Holdings Ltd to allow the company to place the label's vast catalog on its music and video streaming services. In other words, exactly what Silverman called for.
"Since expanding our presence in China with the acquisition of Gold Typhoon, we have focused on establishing market-moving partnerships with innovative players such as Tencent that are successfully harnessing the incredible demand for music in one of the world's most rapidly changing territories," said Warner Recorded Music international president Stu Bergen "Our exceptional teams have forged this partnership to help advance licensed music services and create new artist development possibilities. Providing music fans with access to high-quality music, and the right mix of regional and global artists, will be integral to the growth of the digital music sector in China."
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