MIDEM 2011: A Conversation With The "Godfather" Of Taiwan And China's Music Industry

As China's stature on the world stage grows, so is the attention being paid to its music industry, and for good reason: With 620 million mobile users and 420 million Internet users, it already has the potential to be the world's largest music market. A consumer population that massive will also have growing influence overall on what the world listens to. What is much less understood is that when one looks at China's music industry, they are really looking at a mirror image of Taiwan's, which has played a pivotal role in the development of modern China during the last 60 years.

Consider these numbers:
* Over 80% of the music created or produced in the Greater China market comes from Taiwan.
* Taiwan's music repertoire is responsible for 70% of music sales in Mainland China, while international artists account for 12% and Jpop/Kpop sales account for 4% of sales in the China market.
* In the 2009 live performance market in China, 55 concerts featuring Taiwan artists generated US$210 Million in ticket sales.

In order to better understand this often underlooked music market, I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Tsu-Tsu Wu, who is part of the Taiwanese delegation attending this year's MIDEM conference. In addition to being President of UFO Records, Mr. Wu is the Founder of The Association of Recording Copyright Owners (ARCO) and The Music Copyright Society of Chinese Taipei (MÜST). In recognition of these outstanding achievements Mr. Wu was presented the "Special Contribution Award" at the 16th Golden Melody Awards (equivalent to the Grammy Awards).

Mr. Wu was also the co-founder of the Rock Record together with Sam Duan. Later he formed UFO Records and produced, released and managed many top-chart selling pop artists. In 1993 he sold UFO Records to Warner. He was president of Warner Music in the Greater China Region for 5 years. During his time at Warner, Mr. Wu released the first Chinese international pop album, Dadawa "Sister Drum", to the world market. He also arranged Dadawa's performance at MIDEM during the mid-1990's. Sister Drum sold over a million copies worldwide. This album remains today as the only Chinese album to have sold over a million albums worldwide.

I'm pleased to share Mr. Wu's insights on Taiwan's pop music industry, it's influence on the mainland, the role of new medias in developing talent and MIDEM 2011 -
read the full interview here: http://www.musicdish.com/mag/?id=12838
http://china.musicdish.com/midem2011/