The entry of western music streaming sites in China such as Apple Music, Tidal and Pandora failed to topple a local music streaming site from its top spot. Douban.com continues to dominate the industry, accounting for around 40 percent of the market.
Although the music portal is considered a bare-bones site, it attracts around 270 million Chinese netizens who visit Douban.com monthly out of 649 million internet users in China, according to the New York Times. Users more than just stream music but also interact with artists on its social network.
Michael Pettis, founder of D-22 and XP, music bars in Beijing, explained the extreme popularity of the site to Chinese music lovers to every artist in China being on Douban.com and having a page on the site. “It plays a role that I don’t think there’s anything comparable in the West. It’s this massive forum that whoever you are, famous or not, good or bad, you’re likely to have a page,” Pettis said.
The streaming site was launched in 2005. The site has become so influential that even western media outlets are using it as a key barometer to gauge representative opinions and attitudes toward foreign content in China. However, one limitation of the site is its failure to explore in English the full range of tools for harvesting and analyzing Chinese-language datasets, according to the authors of a study made by researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia.
The study was published in the May 2016 issue of Participations, the Journal of Audience & Reception Studies.
When internet adoption rates in China grew tremendously at the turn of the millennium, a library of previously music that was not available to Chinese listeners opened, causing the dumping of western popular music at once. The exposure to these music inspired young Chinese musicians to form bands and Douban in 2005 which led to the music streaming platform.
Yan Yulong, lead singer of Chiu Wan, an experimental band formed by members made on Douban, said the streaming site is the most important website for China’s music scene.