Image credit: Li Yang

China’s music industry is showing healthy growth with digital music growing fast, making up over 20% of the total industry.

China has seen great growth of 4.97% in its music industry, totalling 492.9 billion yuan (roughly $68.59 billion) for 2024. This exceeds global music industry growth, which the IFPI reported as 4.8% year-on-year for 2024. This is according to the 2025 China Music Industry Development Annual Report.

China’s large population provides massive potential for music services and the industry. China Daily report that the number of online music users will reach 729 million, with online music service revenue expected to grow more than 20$ year-on-year.

For 2024, China’s digital music industry saw still impressive growth of 15%, reaching $102.7 billion yuan. This impressive number also raises an interesting fact, that the digital music industry now makes just over 20% of their total music revenue. Interestingly, music performances saw astonishing growth of 46.6 percent, but only reached 38.7 billion yuan.

Music performances making less than half of digital music income is incredibly unusual. For comparison, Music Industry Blog report that live music revenue makes up 6x more of an artist’s income than recorded revenues from sales and streaming. Of course, that is for the artist as an individual and doesn’t necessarily represent the total industry ratio.

Music performance box office revenues grew a whopping 66.5% in 2024, according to the report. This significant growth would quickly start catching up to digital music revenues, if it were to continue over the next few years. What is certain, is that China’s music industry is seeing incredibly positive results.

Local music powerhouse Tencent Music Entertainment, are helping to drive China’s digital music industry. Their hugely popular music apps helped the company make over $2 billion in music subscription revenue, in 2024. Artists can unlock free music distribution to Tencent’s apps and reach a huge audience in China with RouteNote.