>...and yet music industry revenues are on the up again.

I keep seeing this mentioned, but seriously, it was only in 2015 the revenues bottomed out and started to rise again. And it is not anywhere close to its peak in the 90s in real terms, and less so in terms of % spending.

Globally, China's music industry make less than $100M a year. That second largest economy in the world, and its Music revenue is less than half of Thailand.

The industry has changed, and in the west Musicians made much more money in their live performance, K-Pops have all their songs on youtube for free. Chinese Pop stars get much more from advertisement deals and other media. Japanese still loves CDs. A lot of people have grown up to consume music which is totally free.