The dominant economic model in China is socialism, but there is an increasing tendency for the media industry to move towards capitalism. I would like to introduce one of the biggest entertainment companies of the media industries in China, which is YUE HUA Entertainment.
YUE HUA Entertainment’s business consists of four major segments: music, agency, film and television, and variety shows. YUE HUA Entertainment is a multinational entertainment company cooperating with many top international entertainment companies and film companies. Furthermore, this company has a wealth of content resources in music, film, and television, and has established long-term friendly cooperation with wireless operators, Internet companies and other channels. At the same time, YUE HUA has several famous actors, singers, and idol groups under its banner. These factors make it one of the largest entertainment companies in China.
YUE HUA Entertainment was established in 2009; in the past 12 years, it has produced around 15 films, signed over 30 artists, and released over 40 albums for different artists. Therefore, we can conclude that selling entertainment products and the artists’ popularity to attract commercial resources such as endorsements and advertisements are the main methods to make profits and create commercial value. In addition, YUE HUA Entertainment also entered a partnership with NetEase CloudMusic, one of the biggest music apps in China. YUE HUA Entertainment licensed NetEase as the exclusive playback platform for YUE HUA’s music. The collaboration is a fusion of capital and media, with YUE HUA Entertainment providing the artists’ traffic, buzz, and influence, and NetEase providing active young audiences and capital. The new business model of making profits from artists’ reputations instead of any real commodity reflecting YUE HUA Entertainment had moved away from the traditional Chinese socialism business model and developed towards a business model that combined capitalism and liberalism.
In the past, all media were regulated by state investment; in this case, audiences had no right to decide the content of the media. The emergence of YUE HUA broke this mode, as YUE HUA monopoly on making money through the popularity of the idols themselves allowed it to accumulate many business partners. Still, it also gave the audience the right to participate and decide. Referred to McChesney, democratisation’ means audiences could determine the meaning of consumption to some extent (McChesney R, 2015). In this case, whether it is to support the artist by buying the commodity, or purely for the commodity itself, or not because they hate the artist. The rights of the audience are emphasised in this way. Democracy is based on citizen autonomy, which means that there should be many civil society groups, and the YUE HUA’s business model invariably encourages audiences to form teams to regulate media content from the bottom up. YUE HUA also allowed its media to play the role of “government watchdog” and “public sphere”. YUE HUA’s business model simplifies the complexities of information, removes his own media platform from the market economy, brings the perspectives back to the perspectives themselves, and achieves democratisation to some extent.
Conversely, the over-entertainment brought by YUE HUA also risked the successful commercial penetration of the mass media, allowing popular preferences to guide the media industry’s direction, which might potentially create the over-commercialisation of the media that McChesney worried about.
Resources
McChesney, R. (2015) ‘The media/democracy paradox’, Rich Media, Poor Democracy. New York: The New Press. Read up to the top of page 9.