The age of consent: Traditional music, intellectual property and changing attitudes in the People's Republic of China

The 1990s boom in world music sampling by commercially successful popular musicians has brought ethical and legal issues to the ethnomusicological fore. Taking the People's Republic of China as a case‐study, this article emphasizes the need for scholars to keep abreast of the often rapidly changing intellectual property laws and attitudes towards traditional music in countries outside the Western world, and to incorporate into the fieldwork process discussions and documented agreement of future uses of AV materials deemed permissible by originating musicians and communities.