G.E.M., who says she’s learned Spanish in order to write and record an upcoming album for fans in Latin America. Photo Credit: Warner Music Asia
Amid continued growth for China’s music industry, Warner Music Asia has announced plans to release the debut Spanish-language album of Shanghai-born singer-songwriter G.E.M.
The Warner Music Group (WMG) division just recently unveiled the forthcoming project from 31-year-old G.E.M. (real name Gloria Tang Sze-wing), who is according to the major label poised to become “the first Mandopop artist to release a full-length Spanish album.”
Entitled Revelación, this effort will specifically be “a fresh take” on Revelation, which the “Light Years Away” act dropped last year. Despite being recorded in Mandarin, the 2022 release is said to have “been highly popular in South America” for G.E.M., who boasts 1.68 million monthly listeners on Spotify and 2.69 million YouTube subscribers.
“With her signature powerhouse vocals and unique style, G.E.M. has infused this latest album with Spanish-language influences,” Warner Music communicated of Revelación, which is set to become available to fans on July 10th. “Despite not knowing the language at the beginning of the project, G.E.M. managed to write and release an album entirely in Spanish.”
In a statement, G.E.M. (who’s evidently been experimenting with Spanish recordings for at least six months) likewise indicated that she’d taught herself Spanish before writing “the entire album by” herself. And in remarks of his own, Warner Music Asia co-president Jonathan Serbin touched upon the upcoming album’s perceived potential to “achieve great success and introduce her to new fans around the world.”
Now home to the fifth-largest music market, according to the IFPI, China has in recent quarters seen leading domestic streaming players such as Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music (a significant piece of which belongs to Sony Music Entertainment) post seemingly strong financials.
Besides the particular popularity of certain China-based acts in the nation of about 1.4 billion residents, a growing list of western artists (among them Taylor Swift and The Backstreet Boys) are cashing in on the country’s rapidly evolving music space.
Moreover, Universal Music Group (UMG) has also taken a number of steps during the past year to broaden its presence in China. Upon announcing a pact with Beijing’s Ryce Publishing in November, for instance, the major label expressed the belief that “the time of C-pop” had arrived.
Meanwhile, Latin America’s various music markets – in which streaming accounts for a substantial portion of overall revenue – are achieving material growth in their own right, according to the relevant sales data.