The Path Impact of the Popular Music Industry Structure on Higher Education: A Comparative Study of China, the United States and South Korea

Abstract

 Driven by streaming media, the global recorded music industry has maintained growth for many consecutive years. China has entered the ranks of the world's top five music markets, with the total scale of the music industry approaching 500 billion yuan (IFPI, 2024; Zhao Zhi 'an, 2024). Compared with the macro figures, there is still a significant asymmetry between the popular music education in colleges and universities and the musician ecosystem: on the one hand, there is a rapid expansion of enrollment scale and a proliferation of majors; on the other hand, there is a shortage of creative and compound music talents, and young musicians generally face high pressure in the environment of independent production and music project-based systems. This article takes China, the United States and South Korea as references. Based on sorting out the global music industry pattern, it compares the educational paths of popular music in the three countries from three aspects: "starting time - discipline naming - curriculum structure" (Lu Houting, 2014; Xie Jiani, Kim Hyun-tae, 2024;) Powell (2015) pointed out that the core issue currently faced by China's popular music education is not "whether to offer majors or not", but "how to connect the majors offered with the industry and how to match the musicians needed by the market". Based on this, combined with reports on China's music industry and front-line teaching practices, this article proposes several reconstruction ideas from three dimensions: the education system, the musician ecosystem, and the urban/industrial structure. This includes courses reorganized along the "creation - production - dissemination" chain, the establishment of a collaborative practice platform for "universities - cities - industries", and deeper creative guidance centered on youth aesthetics, social issues, and local cultural experiences. This article aims to provide a set of reference frameworks that are both realistic and operational for the China Conservatory of Popular Music in the new round of discipline construction and talent cultivation reform.