Five Major Western Labels Formally Enter Taiwan

Source: The Development and Evolution of Taiwan’s Music and Entertainment Companies (Part Three)
From: Popular Music Antiquary
Date: September 13, 2012. Author: Strange-e Red Jack

In the early 1990s, multinational record companies arrived in Taiwan with abundant capital and resources, formally entering the Taiwan popular music market by establishing local subsidiaries. These transnational corporations entered Taiwan’s record market through direct establishment, mergers, and acquisitions — not only importing music resources from other Chinese-speaking regions, but also galvanising the internationalisation of the domestic record market and intensifying the concentration of Taiwan’s popular music industry. The primary companies were the five major transnational music conglomerates (Warner, Universal, EMI, Bertelsmann, Sony). After entering Taiwan, these multinationals transformed Taiwan’s popular music industry from a “creativity-driven” sector into a “capital-intensive” industry focused on return on investment and profit growth rates. They introduced budget-controlled and financially forecast modes of record production, with priority placed on meeting financial projection targets rather than musical quality. As a result, it was no longer musically creative producers who drove record-making, but company managers expert at calculating performance metrics.

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External Links

• After Transnational Music Conglomerates Enter Taiwan: On the Creative Autonomy of Record Producers (Chinese Communication Society)
• Film, Television and Entertainment: Moving into Asia (Commonwealth Magazine)
• Exposing the True Face of the Transnational Record “Industry” (Chien Miao-ju thesis)
• A Brief Introduction to CD Edition Variations (Daily Headlines)
• Under the Tide of Globalisation and Regionalisation: An Analysis of Taiwan Record Companies’ Mandarin-Language Music Production Strategies (Chinese Communication Society)