China’s recorded music market overtook Germany in 2025 to become the world’s fourth largest, expanding 20.1% in a single year, the fastest rate among major markets, according to IFPI data. Yet for foreign artists and labels, the headline figures obscure a reality: China is not one market but a stack of separate markets, each with its own gatekeepers, rules, and revenue streams.
Performance permits and the local partner requirement
In most Western countries, an artist can independently promote a show, sign a distributor, and license a recording to a platform. In China, each of those steps must pass through a licensed domestic entity. A commercial performance requires a permit from the local Culture and Tourism authority, and a foreign act cannot hold or apply for that permit itself. The application must be filed by a licensed performance agency, and the setlist is submitted for approval before tickets go on sale.
Permits are tied to a single venue, date, and lineup. They can also be frozen during politically sensitive periods that have no connection to the music. The common advice to “find a local partner” understates the reality: that partner is the legal holder of your permit, controls your approvals, and often sits inside your rights chain. The most frequent failure points in agency and sub-licensing agreements are who controls the performance permit, how rights move down the sub-licensing chain, and who absorbs the loss when an approval is pulled at the last minute.
Copyright law: stronger on paper than in practice
The assumption that China lacks copyright protection is outdated. The Copyright Law amended in 2020 and effective from June 2021 introduced punitive damages for willful infringement. Article 45 granted sound recording producers a right to payment when their recordings are broadcast or publicly performed, a right that the United States does not extend to terrestrial AM/FM radio. In the U.S., only songwriters are paid for radio play; recording owners are compensated only for digital and satellite transmissions via SoundExchange. China’s statute reaches further on paper, covering traditional broadcast and public performances of sound recordings.
The practical gap is collection. Walk into a shopping mall, a chain restaurant, or a bubble-tea shop, and current hits play constantly, often within days of a Billboard chart debut. Almost none of that generates a public performance fee that reaches the rights holder. The right exists; the infrastructure to collect it barely does.
Two bodies handle collective licensing. The Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC), founded in 1992, is the sole collective society for musical works (composition and lyrics). The China Audio-Video Copyright Association (CAVCA), founded in 2008, is the sole society for sound and video recordings. The framework dates to China’s WTO accession era. MCSC manages musical works, while CAVCA focuses primarily on recordings, particularly karaoke licensing. There is no competitive layer of societies like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR for publishers to leverage. Registration among independent and foreign rights holders remains thin, and the distance between a right held and money received is wide.
Contractual pitfalls: the buyout default
A large share of Chinese music deals default to a buyout, a single payment for a broad transfer of rights. Foreign songwriters routinely sign away more than they intended because the document assumes assignment where they assumed a license. The rights clause should be read as if every word costs money.
Streaming exclusivity: a narrow but potent tool
Spotify does not operate in mainland China. Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) runs the market through QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo, with NetEase Cloud Music as the main challenger. Licensing rules shifted in 2021 when China’s market regulator ordered TME to relinquish the long-term exclusive lock-ups it held with the global majors, after finding the company controlled more than 80% of exclusive library rights following its 2016 merger with China Music Corporation.
What survived is narrower and still legal: exclusive deals with independent artists for up to three years, and an exclusive release window of up to 30 days for new songs. That 30-day window has become a competitive lever. When TF Entertainment, the company behind some of China’s biggest idol groups, signed with both TME and NetEase, TME secured a first-release window. For a foreign artist with genuine demand, that short exclusivity is a point of leverage that a platform may pay a premium to lock down for a launch.
