双语阅读｜中国在线音乐付费终成气候？
HONEST souls intent on paying full whack for the music they listen to used to have a hard time in China. In the era of compact discs, rare was the shop which did not sell counterfeits. The same held true when discs turned into downloads and online streams of songs: hardly any service charged money.
以往，在中国，即便是最忠实的音乐迷也很难会花钱购买音乐听。在CD年代，不卖盗版碟的音像店几乎不存在。同样，将CD转为可下载或是在线音乐比比皆是：所有这些都是免费的。
Slowly but surely, China is becoming a market where people pay for music. Over the past five years, digital-music revenues for the recording industry nearly quadrupled, to $195m; most of that amount comes from music streaming (see chart). That sum may still be a tiny fraction of the global total of $7.8bn, but streaming has clearly taken off in China.
中国正渐渐地成为一个付费购买音乐市场。过去五年，在整个唱片行业，数字音乐收入增长了近四倍，达到1950万美元；大部分的收入来自在线音乐。相比于全球78亿美元的收入，这个数目可能仍然不值一提，可是，在线音乐已然在中国开始起步。
Not everybody is paying: of the 600m Chinese who listen to music online only 20m have a paid subscription, which costs between 8 and 12 yuan (between $1 and $2) a month. The rest tune in for nothing, but many do so on legal, advertising-supported services—Chinese equivalents of the free option on Spotify, the world’s biggest streaming service (which is not available in the country). “Piracy is collapsing,” says Ed Peto of Outdustry, a firm in Beijing offering services to the music industry.
不是所有人都在付费听音乐：在中国6亿在线音乐用户中，只有2000万付费用户，每月的费用在8至12元。其余的用户一分钱都不花，只是通过合法的，带有广告的音乐服务——如中国类似Spotify中的免费听音乐模式。Spotify是全球最大的在线音乐网站，还没有落地中国。“盗版现在正在消失，”Outdustry的Ed Peto说道。他所在的机构位于北京，服务于音乐行业。
If Chinese consumers have developed a liking for legal listening, it is for a combination of reasons. Smartphones, which have become ubiquitous in recent years, make it easy to subscribe to streaming services. Widespread use of apps such as Alipay and WeChat Pay mean that younger Chinese, in particular, are now used to making small purchases digitally. And, to take advantage of the commercial opportunities in music, China’s big internet platforms have begun to fight piracy.
如果中国消费者形成听合法音乐的习惯，那么这是多种因素造成的。近年来，无所不能的智能手机会让人很轻松地付费订阅在线音乐。广泛使用的第三方支付应用（如支付宝和微信支付）则尤其让年轻人如今习惯小额支付。同时，为了抓住音乐行业的众多商机，中国的一些大互联网平台都开始打击盗版行为。
Not all is rosy, however. The streaming market is dominated by one player: Tencent, the largest of China’s online giants, which is best known for its WeChat messaging service. According to some estimates, its market share in music streaming exceeds 70%. Each of the firm’s two leading streaming brands, QQ Music and KuGou, claims hundreds of millions of users.
不过，这所有一切并不都很美好。在线音乐市场出现了一家独大的情况：腾讯。有一些机构的估算，在在线音乐领域，腾讯的市场份额超过了70%。腾讯的两个在线音乐平台QQ音乐和酷狗拥有的用户数以亿计。
One cause of this market concentration is acquisitions: last year Tencent bought two big competitors. More importantly, however, it has paid three international record labels—Warner Music Group, Sony Music and Universal Music Group—a big, but unknown, sum for the exclusive right to stream their music in China. This means that Tencent gets to decide which songs rivals are allowed to play.
出现这种市场集中的一个原因是收购：在2016年，腾讯收购了两家大竞争对手。不过，更为重要的是，腾讯向三家全球音乐公司——华纳音乐、索尼音乐以及环球音乐——支付用了一大笔资金（具体数额不详），购买它们在中国的独家版权。这使得腾讯有权决定其竞争对手能播放的歌曲数量。
Tencent says that it needs such exclusivity to ensure the legitimacy of streaming services and to reduce piracy further. But having one firm with so much power “is never healthy”, says an executive at a rival firm. Xiami, a service owned by Alibaba, another Chinese internet giant, has lost lots of ground largely because it has failed to strike a deal with Tencent. With the market growing quickly, the labels may reconsider their deals with Tencent when they come up for renewal.
腾讯表示，这些独家权利能保证在线音乐服务的合法性，还能减少盗版现象。不过，腾讯的一家竞争机构的高管表示，让一家机构拥有如此大的权力，这“绝对不正常”。阿里旗下的音乐网站虾米音乐由于没有与腾讯达成分销协议而失去了大量的市场份额。由于中国在线音乐市场快速增长，各家音乐巨头可能会在续约时重新考虑与腾讯的协议。
Artists also still have gripes. Many services built their businesses on pirated music before they started licensing it. Even today unlicensed “indie” music is pervasive; independent labels and artists still get paid little in royalties, if anything at all, because of their feeble leverage in negotiations with the streaming services. In contrast, stars such as Katy Perry, whose new album “Witness” surged on its release to number one on NetEase Cloud Music, a Tencent competitor, are sure to get their fair share of revenue. Even so, the overall picture is one of progress. “We are going in the right direction,” says Mathew Daniel of NetEase Cloud Music.
音乐人也心怀不满。在开始购买版权之前，很多在线音乐网站都是盗版起家的。甚至在现在遍地都是无授权“独立”音乐；独立厂牌和独立音乐人获得的版税寥寥无几，原因是他们与在线音乐网站的谈判过程中处于弱势地位。水果姐等西方歌手的情况则完全不同。她的新专辑《目击证人》（Witness）则在网易云音乐上甫一发布就登上了排行榜第一的位置，必然能得到收入分成。即便如此，整个中国在线音乐的情况还是在不断改善的状况之中。“我们的方向是对的，”网站云音乐的马修·丹尼尔（Mathew Daniel）说道。
编辑：翻吧君
英文来源：经济学人