AI changes the score

Across China's music industry, artificial intelligence is no longer on the sidelines. It is shaping how songs are created, filtered, distributed, and valued.

That shift set the tone for the 11th Music Industry Forum in Beijing earlier this month, where researchers and industry leaders examined an industry expanding rapidly, but also reinventing itself at the same time.

The numbers remain strong. China's music industry generated 519 billion yuan ($76.64 billion) in gross revenue last year, up 5.3 percent year-on-year. But beneath those figures, a different story is unfolding:AI is not just speeding up production, it is changing the structure of music itself.

A separate industry report, White Paper on China's Digital Music Industry (2025), coproduced by Tencent Music Entertainment Group, TME Research Institute and the Digital Music Committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, describes 2025 as a "year of acceleration". Not just in consumption, but in creation.

The data is striking. Tencent Music Entertainment Group's platforms now receive 107,000 new song uploads every day, up from 76,000 in 2024. By December 2025, AI-generated songs accounted for 36.2 percent of all new releases. On AI music platform Suno, users generate more than 7 million songs per day. Music creation is no longer scarce — it is abundant, continuous and increasingly automated.

Professional musicians, for the most part, have adapted. The report notes a shift from caution to adoption, with AI now widely used to generate lyric ideas, arrange drafts and assist production. Music is no longer created solely by humans or machines, but through collaboration between the two.

Yet, this explosion of content has not simply diluted music, it has reorganized attention.

Algorithms and short-video platforms now account for more than 80 percent of new music discovery. Increasingly, listeners are not searching for songs; songs are finding them.

As production becomes easier, value is shifting from making "more music" toward making "more meaningful music".

One of the report's most significant findings is the rise of "super-fans". Listening has evolved beyond streaming into an expression of identity, participation and emotional connection. In China's digital music economy, these highly engaged users generate outsized value, spending far more than average listeners and driving demand for experience-based services rather than simple playback.

That reflects a broader global trend. Growth in traditional streaming is slowing as the industry shifts its focus from expansion to engagement. New users increasingly come from emerging markets, while future growth will depend less on scale than on the depth of audience relationships.

In China, that engagement is becoming both more intense and more global. The country became the world's fourth-largest recorded music market in 2025, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the organization that represents the recording industry worldwide, with revenue rising 20.1 percent. Yet, per-user revenue remains well below that of mature markets, leaving considerable room for growth. At the same time, Chinese music is increasingly reaching overseas audiences through its distinct cultural identity rather than translation.

Soundtracks from games such as Genshin Impact and Black Myth: Wukong, along with viral rap tracks, are finding global audiences through platforms where rhythm, tone, and visual identity often matter as much as language.