According to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the production value of the cultural industry reached 44 billion USD in the period 2018-2022, the labor force increased by 7.4%/year. Vietnam aims to bring the contribution of the cultural industry to the economy to 9% by 2045, 80% of cultural industry products are digital products, 5-10 national brands.
Sharing at the event on the sidelines of announcing the Conviction 2026 event recently, experts emphasized that Vietnam needs more foundations to create economic value for content creators.
According to Lawyer Phan Vu Tuan, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Intellectual Property Association, one of the problems Vietnam must solve is the lack of digital content distribution platforms, all of which are based on some global platforms.
Mr. Tuan pointed out that every year Vietnam publishes hundreds of thousands of works, but only about 3,000 works are coded from Vietnam. Meanwhile, the number of works using foreign codes (especially the US) is almost incomplete. This reflects a reality, according to Mr. Tuan, Vietnam is lacking data infrastructure to manage and connect the cultural industry ecosystem.
Meanwhile, according to Mr. Nguyen The Vinh, co-founder and CEO of Ninety Eight, Vietnam's digital culture industry is still heavily dependent on foreign social networking platforms such as YouTube, Facebook or TikTok. Not only are user data located on international infrastructure, these platforms also prioritize content, creating many views instead of reflecting the real value of the fan community.
Mr. Vinh said that Vietnam needs a technology infrastructure built by Vietnamese people and dedicated to the fandom economy (an economic model in which the affection, loyalty and cohesion of the fan community are transformed into commercial values, highlighted through concert ticket purchases, items and services related to idols).
According to the Overview Report of the Vietnamese Music Industry 2025-2026 conducted by RMIT University, the digital music market has a scale of nearly 1,400 billion VND in 2025, with over 800 large and small music events. Fans are willing to spend 200,000 - 500,000 VND for branded products combined with artists; items alone can be spent at a higher level from 500,000 VND to 1 million VND.
From the potential of the fandom economy in Vietnam, Mr. Vinh and his colleagues have built FANOS - a Blockchain platform to record and authenticate the entire journey of fans' companionship. Each activity such as attending concerts, owning items, interacting or supporting artists is stored as transparent, uneditable data.
In addition to connecting artists and fans, Blockchain also helps the platform expand to copyright and intellectual property issues. The platform supports digital certification for works, builds Content ID for Vietnamese music and creates a more transparent copyright distribution platform when the legal corridor for digital assets is completed.
Meanwhile, rapper Pjpo, the first artist to release an album on Blockchain in Vietnam, shared that previous releases achieved positive results.
However, for Blockchain technology to truly create differentiated value, fans, both old and new, still need more experience to clearly feel the benefits that this technology brings.
