Mandopop

Mandopop is Mandarin language popular music, and the acts filed here come from two places that work quite differently. Taiwanese groups are often assembled through a music competition series and released by a specialist label, with a debut single and a first album following within months. Groups from the mainland are frequently created and released by a streaming platform itself, formed by audience voting at the end of a broadcast season and given a defined period of activity from the outset.

That second arrangement explains a pattern visible across these entries: a group debuts, releases two collections, holds a closing concert on a scheduled date and ends, while its members return to the companies that trained them. A performer can therefore hold two group records in this catalogue within three years, one for the project act and one for their own label’s group.

For readers following a face from a series rather than a chart, this section is where the earlier half of that career usually sits, and each entry names the line up, the label and the dates it covers.