To thoroughly implement the "dual circulation" development strategy (integrating domestic and international markets), seize the economic and trade dividends of RCEP regional integration, address industry pain points such as scattered overseas channels for domestic musical instrument brands and insufficient supply-demand matching in the ASEAN market, open up stable channels for Chinese musical instruments to enter Southeast Asia, and build a two-way circulation system by linking exhibition resources at home and abroad, a delegation led by Wang Shicheng, Director of the National Musical Instrument Industry Expert Committee and former Chairman of the China Musical Instrument Association (CMIA), Liu Yong, Full-time Vice Chairman of CMIA, together with Wu Jianghong, General Manager of Shanghai International Exhibition Co., Ltd., Gu Yuan, General Manager Assistant, and Project Directors Wu Bing and Zhang Zeheng, visited Indonesia and the Philippines from June 25 to July 2 to carry out industry market research, industrial service docking and cultural exchange activities.

The inspection covered three core musical instrument distribution hubs in Southeast Asia: Surabaya and Jakarta in Indonesia, and Manila in the Philippines. The delegation visited local chain musical instrument stores, music training institutions, leading musical instrument distributors, regional exhibition organizers and multinational musical instrument production bases on site, and held multiple seminars to gain an in-depth understanding of the local music education ecosystem, end-consumption characteristics and shortcomings of the exhibition economy, so as to provide practical paths and cooperation support for domestic musical instrument enterprises to expand into the ASEAN market and build a two-way trade platform.

Analysis of the Musical Instrument Industry and Market

Supported by multiple favorable factors including a large young population, a growing national enthusiasm for instrumental music learning, and RCEP tariff reductions, Southeast Asia has become the fastest-growing emerging market for musical instrument consumption worldwide. Indonesia and the Philippines, in particular, serve as core hubs for regional musical instrument retail, distribution and exhibitions. The delegation conducted in-depth visits to end channels and collected first-hand market information across four dimensions: consumer demand, education and training formats, local exhibitions, and pain points in overseas expansion.

1. Clear Tiered End-Consumption with Prominent Demand for Localized Product Adaptation

The delegation successively visited leading local chain stores and independent outlets such as Melodia Musical Instrument Plaza, Surabaya Musical Instrument Company, Salamo Musical Instrument Company and JB Music, and conducted in-depth exchanges with operators to summarize the core characteristics of the consumer markets in the two countries:

Strong rigid demand for entry-level mass-market products: Acoustic guitars, electric guitars, affordable electronic keyboards and percussion instruments lead the market in sales. The popularization of children's music training has directly driven the continuous growth of teaching-oriented musical instruments. Professional orchestras, music studios and art colleges make steady purchases of mid-to-high-end wind instruments, string instruments and professional electro-acoustic equipment, forming a consumption structure with both high-end and low-end segments developing in parallel.

Core consumer demands focus on three dimensions: Cost-effective pricing, sound local after-sales and training systems, and special processes adapted to the tropical high-temperature and high-humidity environment (such as moisture-proof treatment of wood, rust prevention for metal accessories, and high-temperature resistance upgrades for electronic components). Direct export of standardized general musical instruments from China is prone to poor adaptation to local conditions.

Obvious national differences in consumption: The Philippines has prominent demand for acoustic guitars and ukuleles, forming a distinctive niche market. Indonesia has a larger population base, leading the market size of affordable teaching instruments and mass percussion instruments, while there remains a large supply gap in mid-to-high-end professional instruments.

Supplementary price research shows that the mainstream retail prices of entry-level teaching instruments in the two countries are concentrated in the range of 300–1,200 RMB equivalent, mid-range performance instruments are priced at 1,500–6,000 RMB, and high-end instruments priced above 10,000 RMB account for less than 8% of the market. Local brands dominate the low-end market, while the mid-to-high-end market mainly relies on overseas imports, leaving room for China's high-quality mid-range musical instrument brands to enter.

2. Integrated "Musical Instrument + Training" Model Becomes Mainstream, with Broad Growth Potential for Teaching Equipment

Musical instrument stores in Indonesia and the Philippines generally adopt an integrated business model of "musical instrument sales + offline courses". The number of small community music training institutions has grown at an average annual rate of over 15% in the past two years. Local pop music teaching, school wind orchestras and percussion study tours are the mainstream market formats. Profits from traditional offline musical instrument sales account for 40%–55% of total store revenue, while course training and grading examination supporting services contribute the remaining revenue.

Local training institutions generally lack standardized smart teaching equipment, complete sets of music teaching aids and systematic supporting textbooks. China's mature smart digital pianos, rhythm teaching devices and children's instrumental music teaching aids have significant export advantages, making this a high-quality track for small and medium-sized musical instrument enterprises to expand overseas with differentiated products.

3. Obvious Shortcomings in Local Professional Exhibitions, with Foundation for Two-Way Linkage Cooperation

The delegation visited the Surabaya Musical Instrument Exhibition, which opened on June 25, held discussions with exhibition organizers in Surabaya and Manila, and exchanged views with some participating Chinese enterprises. They sorted out the existing shortcomings of musical instrument exhibitions in Southeast Asia: current exhibitions are all small regional events, lacking a comprehensive professional trade platform covering the whole country; exhibitors are mainly lighting and audio equipment brands, with a low proportion of pure musical instrument brands; service systems such as venue supporting facilities, business matching, industry forums and on-site performance experience are imperfect, and overseas purchasers have scattered customer acquisition channels, resulting in low supply-demand docking efficiency.

Compared with the mature exhibition model of Music China 2025 - which boasts 140,000 square meters of exhibition area, over 1,800 global participating brands and full industrial chain coverage - local exhibitions in Southeast Asia have huge room for improvement in specialization and scale. This also creates cooperation opportunities for Music China to export exhibition organization experience and build a two-way trade docking platform.

4. Multiple Pain Points Highlighted for Chinese Enterprises Going Overseas, Frontline Distributors Summarize Practical Solutions

The delegation held a special seminar with Sumber Jaya Music, a leading local distributor with over 20 years of deep involvement in Southeast Asia, and sorted out four core constraints for domestic musical instrument enterprises expanding into the ASEAN market: First, comprehensive logistics costs for cross-border sea freight and warehousing account for 12%–20% of cargo value, leading to high overall operating costs. Second, import tariffs and product access standards for musical instruments differ between Indonesia and the Philippines, resulting in high compliance costs. Third, local low-cost counterfeit musical instruments divert the sinking market, fueling severe homogeneous low-price competition. Fourth, there is insufficient layout of localized social media marketing and offline experience channels, and customer acquisition relies solely on one-time exhibition participation, leading to a low customer repurchase rate.

Combined with the distributor's years of practical experience, the delegation sorted out four feasible overseas operation solutions: differentiated product line layout, deep partnership with local first-tier distributors, local social media promotion on TikTok and Facebook, and centralized customer expansion through linkage of domestic and overseas exhibitions.

Operational Experience of Local Factory Establishment

To explore paths for domestic enterprises to build factories overseas and arrange production capacity, the delegation made a special trip to the Indonesian production base of Samick Musical Instruments. Accompanied by the factory general manager, they visited full-process production lines, warehousing and logistics centers, and product R&D exhibition halls, and held in-depth discussions with the factory operation management team, fully exchanging views on topics such as regional production capacity positioning, differentiated product R&D, domestic and overseas market layout, and industrial upgrading and transformation.

Established in the 1990s, South Korea's Samick Indonesian factory has gradually expanded from initial wood raw material processing into the core global manufacturing base of the Samick Group. Fully leveraging three core advantages of Southeast Asia - labor resources, log raw materials and RCEP tariff reductions - it focuses on mass production of mid-to-low-end pianos and affordable guitars, precisely matching the mass consumption capacity of ASEAN. It has built a regional distribution network covering Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, and simultaneously upgraded wood environmental protection and moisture-proof processes and automated production lines to balance production costs and quality requirements for tropical usage scenarios, forming a mature business model of "overseas production base + regional multi-level distribution".

Affected by the global economic downturn and declining piano demand in recent years, Japan's Yamaha decided in 2025 to terminate all piano-related production at its two major production bases in Indonesia (for materials and final assembly), and integrated its production capacity into factories in Japan and Hangzhou, China. South Korea's Samick Piano has also adjusted its piano production in Indonesia and actively expanded new business lines.

The factory currently employs over 1,100 local workers and produces 240,000 guitars annually. Compared with domestic production in China, its advantages in labor costs and material transportation costs reduce comprehensive manufacturing costs by about 20%, providing a complete reference model for leading domestic musical instrument enterprises to set up overseas factories in Southeast Asia, carry out OEM manufacturing, and optimize regional production capacity layout.

Cooperation Outcomes of Exhibition Linkage

Adhering to the core two-way approach of "going global to expand markets and bringing in to gather buyers", this inspection reached consensus with the two major local core musical instrument exhibition organizers in Indonesia and the Philippines respectively, achieving two outcomes: short-term introduction of overseas procurement delegations and medium-to-long-term overseas exhibition organization, thus realizing the interconnection of domestic and foreign industry resources.

Outcome 1: Organizing Southeast Asian Professional Procurement Delegations to Shanghai to Empower Cross-Border Trade at Music China 2026

It is agreed that local exhibition organizers in Indonesia and the Philippines will integrate high-quality professional buyer resources such as local musical instrument store operators, training institution principals, regional distributors, professional orchestra purchasers and cross-border traders, and plan to organize a joint procurement delegation of over 200 people to participate in Music China 2026 (China (Shanghai) International Musical Instrument Exhibition) in Shanghai from October 28 to 31, 2026.

Supporting implementation measures: The organizers will carry out pre-promotion through local industry communities and instrumental music media, and collect demand lists such as procurement categories, budgets and purchase volumes in advance. The CMIA and Shanghai International Exhibition Co., Ltd. will match domestic exhibitors of corresponding categories in advance, conduct online pre-docking, and arrange one-on-one business negotiation activities on site during the exhibition.

As Asia's leading full-category musical instrument trade exhibition, Music China fully covers the entire industrial chain of pianos, orchestral instruments, Chinese folk musical instruments, electro-acoustic instruments and music education. The arrival of this Southeast Asian procurement delegation will significantly expand the scale of overseas professional visitors to the exhibition, help domestic manufacturers directly connect with ASEAN end channels, reduce the cost for enterprises to expand customers overseas independently, and effectively increase the scale of cross-border order transactions at the exhibition.

Outcome 2: Organizing Delegations to Participate in Overseas Exhibitions in 2027 to Jointly Build a Standardized Professional Musical Instrument Exhibition Platform in Southeast Asia

Based on on-site research into market demand, venue supporting conditions and buyer procurement preferences, the three parties reached a medium-to-long-term cooperation consensus: In 2027, led by the China Musical Instrument Association and Shanghai International Exhibition Co., Ltd., outstanding brand enterprises in domestic fields such as pianos, wind instruments, guitars, electronic musical instruments and musical instrument accessories will be recruited to form a delegation and set up Chinese brand exhibition areas at exhibitions in Jakarta and Manila.

The Chinese side will also fully export its mature exhibition organization system, including full operational experience in professional business matching systems, industry development forums, on-site instrumental performances and exhibitor supporting services, to assist local organizers in improving the professional level of exhibitions. Relying on domestic delegation resources to enrich the lineup of high-quality exhibitors, it will build a core window for the concentrated display of Chinese musical instrument brands in Southeast Asia.

Through this cooperation, an initial linkage mechanism of "Shanghai main exhibition + Southeast Asian regional tour exhibitions" will be established to realize two-way sharing of supply and demand resources and complementary advantages, and continuously expand the exposure of Chinese musical instrument brands in the ASEAN market.

Prospects for Win-Win Industry Development

Southeast Asia is a core incremental market covered by both the Belt and Road Initiative and RCEP policies, with a large young population and continuously releasing music consumption demand, highlighting outstanding development potential for two-way circulation of the musical instrument industry. This inspection has achieved multiple practical results, including first-line market investigation, benchmark enterprise exchanges and the implementation of two-way exhibition cooperation. Further in-depth analysis will be conducted to compile the China Musical Instrument Industry Overseas Expansion Guide (Indonesia), providing ideas, pointing out paths and building bridges for Chinese musical instrument enterprises to expand and take root in ASEAN.

At the same time, enterprises going overseas must objectively face up to potential risks in the regional market, such as the impact of local low-cost competitors, differences in tariffs and access standards among countries, difficulties in product adaptation to high-temperature and high-humidity environments, construction costs of overseas after-sales systems, and exchange rate fluctuations. Relying on the comprehensive service platform built by the association, enterprises should conduct market research, product improvement and channel planning in advance, seize the long-term policy dividends of RCEP, steadily explore the incremental market in Southeast Asia, and build a new development pattern of two-way circulation and mutual benefit for the domestic and foreign musical instrument industries.