"Big Four" in China.

As we all know, the big four in the industry of recording are the EMI, SONY&BMG, Warner and Universal. In the last decade, all of these four companies get into the China market. However, china is still a special market. With the big financing background, will they achieve same success as they achieve in the domestic market? The truth is, they get a lot of problems in china. First of all, music piracy is a huge problem for the big four. Even though the Chinese government is doing their best to change this situation, there are still a large number of people who choose to “steal” music instead buy CDs. And the number of people who choose to “steal” music is weigh much than those people who buy CDs. Second, big four have to face the challenge of independent recording company. Those companies often sign contract with some native Chinese singers who are attractive to public especially Chinese people. What's more, those native companies are very familiar with Chinese market and are good at dealing with the government. Those independent labels are easy to adapt to the change of market. However, because of bureaucratism of big companies, big labels such as SONY&BMG, EMI always take too much time to change theri distribution policy. These disadvantages made the big four are less competitive to those native small labels.

How are big four doing right now? Let’s start form Warner China. Lately, many artists left Warner to other company. This is because of the seriously bureaucratize happened in Warner China. Now, Warner china has 36 Chinese artists. SONY&BMG just lost a ready source of money: Jay Chou.: the Justin Timberlake in China. Jay Chou left Sony and signed a huge contract with an independent label. Universal is busy for sign artists who are from talent shows like American Idol.

In a conclusion, if these big companies want to get success in china, they have to make change and try to adapt their marketing strategies for this special market.