On Policy and Proximity in the Music Industry in China: An investigation of policy intentions and experiences

Sammanfattning: China is promoting the development of “music industry system” in recent years, by publishing policies and regulations that supporting music industry system with funding, clusters, protecting copyrights, and so on, in both national and regional policies like Chengdu. The difference between yearly developing reports of music industry in 2018 and experiences on the ground shows in the growing of the digital music and live performance on the national level but declining on the level of independent musicians. The gap between the policy and the experiences on the ground is due to misusage of “music industry system”. This gap results in the requirement for understanding policies, on-the-ground experiences, and the relation between them. A concept framework of proximity (cognitive, social, institutional, organizational, and geographical proximity) based on previous frameworks and the context of China is built to understand the policy documents and on the ground experiences. The concept of proximity is suitable for analyzing the music industry because its relationship with innovation, building trust in social network and promoting cooperation are all suitable to the instincts of music industry system, especially the experiences of independent musicians. This thesis chose national and regional policies that influence Chengdu and the economic activities of Modern Sky and its independent musicians as the case study of policies and proximity in the music industry of China. The study indicates that there exist similarities and differences between policy and experiences. Policies shows significant promotion to music companies and independent musicians, but has negative influence on the musicians as well, which mainly shows in the copyrights and too much organizational proximity. Different levels emphaze different dimensions of proximity. In the policy level, institutional proximity, organizational proximity and geographical (clusters) are emphasized, on the company level, organizational proximity, social proximity, and geographical proximity are emphasized. On the musician level, social proximity, cognitive proximity, organizational proximity, and temporal geographical proximity are emphasized. The difference between policies may come from the conceptual gap of “music industry system”. The differences in emphasis are due to the instincts of music industry system.