China never fully adopted the “traditional” tools of music discovery and consumption: TV, radio and the print press are all heavily monitored by the government and relatively anodyne as a result; CDs never really gained any meaningful traction; live music events are circuses of permits and arbitrary cancellations.

The bleak circumstances of China’s music business have resulted in the Chinese consumer inadvertently leapfrogging into the next generation of music consumption, even before their western counterparts.

In February this year, after a 53% growth rate in 2007, the Chinese Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) finally declared the Chinese internet base to be the largest in the world with 221 million users. At 16% penetration, this still leaves huge room for growth.

The internet has not only afforded a freedom of expression and identity previously unavailable to the Chinese, it has also almost totally usurped the roll of all offline music media: portals, webzines, bulletin boards (BBS), video sites, music blogs, music streaming. In fact, so important has it become as a medium that a full 86.6% of all netizens use the web to listen to music – the highest of any usage including search and email.

Despite a vast audience, hungry for music, the Chinese internet suffers from poor depth of catalogue with an almost negligible “long tail”. Super portals like Sina, Sohu and clear leader Baidu (with 75% of the search market) bottleneck music into charts of 100, 200, or 500 songs on their front pages and pay little attention to anything else, meaning that while it is possible to find deep catalogue, the average user simply does not look past the hits. High charting - and therefore high visibility - is crucial and, as a result, payola and chart rigging reputedly abound.

Full track downloadable MP3s have been (illegally) free to user from the outset, partly because 86% of internet users earn less than $430 per month and partly because China’s poorly enforced copyright law is only just becoming a topic of public debate ie. too late.

Baidu’s MP3 search efficiently presents “deep links” to copyright infringing material, free for download. It is through this service that the vast majority of full track digital music is consumed in China, while Baidu generates revenue through advertising and mobile services such as ringtones and Caller Ringback Tones (CRBT) ie. the tone you hear when you are calling someone and waiting for them to pick up. No surprise then that the company is facing various lawsuits.

Leaked reports earlier this year suggest that Google China (g.cn) are planning on partnering with legal music site Top100.cn to offer free-to-user major label catalogue found through Google MP3 search. This arrangement, due to launch towards the end of 2008, would allow Google to compete with incumbent behemoth Baidu in the music search sector but would also signal a seismic change in music consumption: major labels conceding that music must be free-to-user. China is increasingly being seen as a brutal testing ground for radical new models that can survive in a “more than 99%” (IFPI) digital piracy market.

In this climate the real currency is the CRBT. The strength of this as a product is its “walled garden” environment: mobile operators China Mobile (69% of the market) and China Unicom (the rest) host a catalogue of music on their servers – the user pays USD $0.70 CRBT service charge a month and then USD $0.29 for every new CRBT, all without the music ever leaving the operators’ servers or payment systems.

China Mobile’s CRBT revenues might have leapt 74.7% to nearly USD $1.7billion, according to their end of 2007 report, but there is some way to go with the distribution of wealth. The operator keeps the service charge in its entirety and only divides the individual tone purchases up, with roughly 35% for master and 10% for publishing if the deal is direct with China Mobile rather than an aggregator.

According to M:Metrics an astounding 34.8% of the 530 million mobile subscribers in China use their phones to listen to music, compared to 5.7% in the US. China’s networks, infrastructure and data capabilities might need to improve but the mobile juggernaut is well on its way.

China Mobile launched the first over-the-air full track MP3 download service in February this year and expect brisk business. When you consider there are some 300 million people who own a mobile but not a PC, their phone is likely to be their first personal access to the internet and only consistent access to digital music. Whether this convenience will result in people paying for that music remains to be seen.

There is a lot of money to be made within that enormous walled garden. It might be a long time, though, before anyone other than the monopolistic mobile operators and a select few music stars can see any of the benefits.

© Ed Peto 2008

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Normally I would have turned this down as the money tends to be poor and the deadline was a bit abrupt, but the magazine in question was Rolling Stone China - re-named ‘InMusic’ after a disastrous launch left them unable to publish under that name - and the album was Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’.

Ultimately the prestige of the publication and the immediate relevance of the album (I had it on rotation at that point) saw me sitting down the following day to churn it out.

It was only after I got my copy back that I started to wonder why they had approached me, a westerner, to review such an important album. I met for a coffee with my editor Lua Zhou to ask how it came about…

Lua Zhou: There is a problem with Radiohead. We talked about this in the editors meeting and we found that so many people love Radiohead but no-one has ever clearly said why they are so good. There is no clear answer, no clear review in the past. So I thought maybe I should find a foreign writer to write about it. Especially someone who has experience working in the western music industry, or who is a musician, because they are really a musician’s band - that way we can find out technically why they are good.

Ed Peto: Would none of your writers be more suited to write about Radiohead for the Chinese audience?

LZ: In the past I have given my writers a list of things to write about to make a perfect article: Relationship the musician has with label, what kind of instruments do they use, who is the producer and how have they influenced the music. They all say to me, ‘why do you want to be so technical?’, because Chinese writers are only used to writing things from their feelings.

There is no clear line between categories of music as the genres are not mature enough, it is not so clear what type of music you are playing so things are described in a more general way. Reviewers do lots of comparisons - Say compare this album to Kid A. I don’t think they can do as much technical analysis. Traditionally they don’t do this. They always start with a factual band introduction - which I normally cut - then go into the spiritual side, the meaning of the lyrics and how it makes you feel.

EP: Do you think genre awareness is important?

LZ: I think China is a real mash-up country. We just listen to different stuff. The record shops don’t tell us what is what, they just put all the records together and you take all different styles at the same time.

EP: So would Chinese musicians not understand genres and the recording process and be able to write technically?

LZ: Actually, I included a small interview with a Chinese rock musician after your review. He’s a guitarist from a band (Sound Fragment) that actually quotes some of Radiohead’s songs in their music. He gave me very short answers. He could not explain why Radiohead is good.

• Do you listen to Radiohead? : Yes.
• How did you hear about In Rainbows? : The Internet.
• Why is it attractive to you?: Because they are Radiohead.
• Are you satisfied with the album? What do you think of Thom Yorke’s performance?: Surprisingly wonderful experience.
• What do you think of how they released this record?: Because they are rich, they can play with their record.

So, when you write about Jigsaw Falling Into Place, it sounds like a band who has very good control of their music, of their skill:

“It is back to the five-guys-in-a-room for album highlight and first single Jigsaw Falling In To Place. If ever there was a song to unite all Radiohead fans past and present this surely must be it. Starting with a simple acoustic guitar riff, then beefed up with bass and drums, then enter the vocals and backing vocals. There aren’t many acts in the world that can build this level of heat from the basics of band music. It just requires the change in vocal pitch to send this into the stratosphere, ready for the smooth middle section on 2.53, once again building to a second climax, now including strings, then winding down to a breathless finish.”

- Excerpt taken from original English draft of my article.

It takes a good technical explanation to show this. Chinese writers would never write like this, how Radiohead make the peak, how they control it with the voice.

EP: How would a Chinese writer describe that song then?

LZ: They would use an image to describe it. I think it is about the language. The Chinese language is more about scenery than English - more emotional. I think English is more technical. Colder.

EP: So what do you think are the advantages to writing in a more cold, technical way? Why do you want to influence your writers in this direction?

LZ: I think we need professionals. It is a basic thing, as a music journalist, you should know how the music is made and then you can go on to talk about the emotional side. Because anyone can write about emotions.

After we published this article I sent it to all of my writers some of my review writers [amended 09.02.08] and said ‘take this as an example of how western writers write about music’. I think they can do this if they just learn.

EP: Is that not telling them that they do not know how to write?

LZ: Japanese review writers also always talk about their personal life or feelings in the review. I don’t care about their personal life, all I care is if this album is good or not, how did they make it, what type of sound it has. I guess this situation in Japan is similar to China.’

N.B: For any Chinese readers wanting to read Chinese music writers, here is a quick list of some of the better known blogs:

Yang Bo
Yan Jun
Haofang
Wang Xiaofeng
Sun Mengjin

© Ed Peto 2008

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Ahead of his MidemNet panel appearance, Mathew Daniel, VP of R2G (leading digital distribution company) in Beijing has a few observations and words of advice for labels seeking digital licensing opportunities in China:

As Olympic hosts and country-of-honor at MIDEM, China’s music industry is an increasingly common feature on the western agenda. There is, however, almost a whiff of the ‘Wild East’ in the way companies are approaching licensing in the Middle Kingdom.

It has to be realized that the vast majority of labels at MIDEM are probably currently unscathed by piracy in China and that’s likely because their music is so obscure in the Chinese consciousness that they have not even had the dubious honor of gracing the servers of China’s notorious MP3 search engine, Baidu.

Piracy in China often gets a lot of attention but many forget the other Ps of marketing and these are the basics that labels intending to come into China should first focus on. For dramatic effect, let me first quote Tim O’Reilly when he said that “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy“.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that one is worse than the other as it is a case of horses for courses. I would also add that in China, in true Darwinian fashion, one man’s piracy is another man’s marketing. But as O’Reilly explained, piracy eventually develops in a manner akin to progressive taxation in exchange for greater exposure and appeal: There is always the regretful possibility that one may eventually despair at the crossroads of Robert Johnson.

Ed Peto’s piece about the music business in China also noted the labels’ part in engendering piracy in China:

“The arrival of western product in the early 90s came courtesy of ’saw-gashed’ CDs: Excess stock and deleted titles from western majors attempting to avoid taxation and disposal costs. These CDs had their cases cut to mark them as defective and were then shipped in to China through free-market economic ports like Guangzhou, only to end up on the black market. An end result that can be seen as a partial shooting-in-the-foot for the western majors who then had to come in and fight against the pirate networks they inadvertently helped set up.”

Kaiser Kuo, one of the pioneers of China’s rock scene added, “During the 1990s they were an important source of foreign music”. And so, this rejected music from Western shores - a good proportion being hitherto obscure - has bizarrely taken root in China while the majors also propagate low common denominator fare like the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Celine Dion, Sarah Brightman et al in CD stores. A recent alumnus of this group, UK’s X-factor winner Shayne Ward was in Beijing this week and was awarded a Gold Record for sales of 15,000 for his new CD ‘Breathless’.

The major labels are still counting on physical distribution to help make their numbers in China and International Marketing Director at Universal Music China, Danny Sim has worked tirelessly to develop the market for international artists. In 2007 his efforts resulted in “a significant increase in revenues for CDs and I expect it to be even greater in 2008″, but in general international artists still account for probably less than 10% of the majors’ overall digital revenue in China. As more Chinese are being exposed to Western music via the internet and the media playing more Western music, Danny also hopes that the labels and SPs can work together to cultivate music genres and themes instead of single song hits.

However, this cannot happen in a vacuum and other Western labels who do not have the benefit of an existing network in China will have to do their part to sow the seeds in areas that are often taken for granted, like pro-actively providing artist information in Chinese, building artists’ websites in Chinese and, in general, stimulating more literature and musical discussions about artists online.

The following is an important checklist for labels intending to license digital music in China and illustrates the prior requirements before their music even tempts the pirates:

In this chart, ‘Music’ refers to whether the song is present or absent on the Chinese networks and highlights the necessity to take control and seed the song in China as the first step. Even if the label has not managed this, third parties might already have done so, which gives rise to the pirated presence. Only when the content has been put in front of the consumer in a meaningful way can they judge whether it appeals to them or not. There are multiple applications and formats in which music manifests itself in China and the challenge in the last mile is to manage the revenue collection or at least ensure that the application mix results in net positive revenue overall.

It is of paramount importance that an infrastructure is developed wherein information about artists is propagated combined with recommendation engines to guide the user along in unfamiliar territory. Ian Rogers recently lamented the death of the album cover but in China a more profound barrier exists that stunts the dissemination and understanding of Western music: The lack of basic and standardized metadata including genre classification that allows listeners to recognize song titles and artists.

As part of this initiative, R2G has developed one of the largest Chinese music metadata databases in the world complemented with licensed lyrics.

Much fuss has been made about the impressive revenue from mobile music in China - iResearch estimates that Service Providers (SPs) and Content Providers (CPs) earned up to RMB 3 billion (US$400 mil) in 2006 and China Mobile reported revenues of RMB 5 billion in the first half of 2007 for Caller Ring Back Tones (CRBT) alone, but before prospectors start packing their digging tools, it is important to note three facts:

1. Of all the mobile applications, Caller Ringback Tones generate the largest revenues but it has to be noted that the bulk of it goes to China Mobile. When a user first subscribes to their CRBT package of choice (from one song to ten), only the first sign-up fee is shared amongst China Mobile, the SP, the distributor, the label and the music publisher after which the full monthly subscriptions of 5 RMB goes solely to China Mobile. However, substantial amounts can be made by top Chinese singers who can sometimes sell between 10 to 20 million subscriptions, but this is a rarefied space that is not breached by Western artists. (Graphics by China Mobile. Note: In Chinese lingo Color Ring = Caller Ringback Tones):

   

2. The bulk of the revenue in mobile music is being garnered by Chinese music albeit dominated again by low common denominator fare - and I do suspect that the rural population does sway the popular vote. An examination of the CRBT sales charts for 2007 reveals a dearth of non-Chinese tunes with notable exceptions being Groove Coverage’s ‘God Is a Girl’, with 2004/05 hits Michael Learns To Rock’s ‘Take Me To Your Heart’, Emilia’s ‘Big Big World’ and Backstreet Boys’ ‘As Long As You Love Me’ still earning residual revenues in 2007.
3. Small CPs and especially Western CPs are at a natural disadvantage in negotiating deals with SPs and regardless of whether a deal is struck, there is every possibility that the CPs songs (assuming that they have sufficient appeal) will appear on SPs properties for distribution/sale. And it being an extremely time consuming and technology intensive effort to find out who is pirating the songs, and also to verify how much is being actually made by existing SP partners, CPs are likely to realize much lower revenues than those actually being earned.

William Bao Bean, analyst at Softbank China has calculated that such slippages or under-reporting of revenues to CPs averaged at between 20%-35% while R2G’s close monitoring via its proprietary SCM system has caught a number of SPs under-reporting CRBT revenues by as much as 50%. It is thus critical that a trusted music partner is sought in China in order to maximize one’s revenues whilst monitoring accounting piracy levels.

Mobile for now seems to be the domain of Chinese music so Western labels coming to China would do well to invest and focus on developing their training wheels in other areas so that they too can make the leap into this relatively more lucrative arena.

The Chinese song universe is estimated to be not more than 300,000 with a smaller commercial subset with the potential to provide meaningful revenue - and in discussions that some of us had with Chris Anderson during his trip to Beijing last month, he also concluded that there is currently no Long Tail of Music in China. This Long Tail will evolve in China and will be populated by international music and this is where the opportunity lies. Evolving tastes and growing individualism are already seeing Chinese listeners trying seek out non-mainstream music, but this music is poorly represented on the free networks and that is an opportunity to be tapped by Western labels.

It has to be realized that almost all full-length mainstream music in China is currently being downloaded for free, facilitated by P2P networks and search engines like Baidu and Yahoo (who have both already been found guilty of infringements by the courts). And until music labels pro-actively put in more effort to inhibit Baidu’s ability to illegally deliver music, the few existing paid full-length music retail download stores will have a hard time. However, I do believe that with better metadata and genre classification, music education and accessible representation of some of this niche music eg. classical, jazz, heavy metal, punk etc, a paid model at fair prices can exist.

Tim O’Reilly encapsulated it best in 2002:

“Services like Kazaa flourish in the absence of competitive alternatives. I confidently predict that once the music industry provides a service that provides access to all the same songs, freedom from onerous copy-restriction, more accurate metadata and other added value, there will be hundreds of millions of paying subscribers. That is, unless they wait too long, in which case, Kazaa itself will start to offer (and charge for) these advantages. (Or would, in the absence of legal challenges.)”.

For ‘Kazaa’ read ‘Baidu’ and certainly, China is currently in such a situation where if a viable alternative is not delivered soon, the opportunity will be hijacked by less well-meaning entities. Labels who are seeking to move into China should first seek trusted partners and forget about seeking a quick buck via minimum guarantees or advances and instead should help to build up the infrastructure accordingly. Labels that do not do their homework will inevitably get burned by unscrupulous partners.

Likewise, licensing music for streaming to SPs will only provide returns if there is sufficient marketing support for the artists and also supporting literature and metadata. For example, one of the top music streaming sites 1ting.com records Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend as the top ranked English song for 2007 at a lowly position of 132 with 25,000 streams. The top song for 2007 registered 3 million streams in comparison.

In conclusion, it is important to note the following:

1. China offers its opportunities but when a new Western label comes into town, it naturally falls into the Long Tail.
2. The Long Tail will be a black hole unless the supporting information and tools are provided to help the labels’ acts stand out.
3. This will involve working with a trusted partner who not only knows the China market but also understands the label’s culture and potential of its acts. It might possibly also involve sharing of investment and development costs.
4. Giving away music is not the solution - there is potential to develop a paid model with a valued service. The search engines would have us believe otherwise as befits their objectives.

There is no silver bullet in music for China and the gold at the end of the rainbow can only be mined with a proper infrastructure supported by the labels and retail partners.

© Mathew Daniel 2008

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When Pop Idol imitator ‘SuperGirl’ hit China in 2004, the final was watched by 400 million people. The rush of mobile votes sent the government into a panic and severe restrictions were implemented, preventing the show ever happening in the same format again - The idea of a democratically decided pop show proving too much for a one-party state.

Further down the pecking order, regional TV is a bit more conversational about the idea of coverage but the act really has to be sizeable due to the broad audience - Mass appeal rules. You have to go to the foreign owned stations to find recognisable music programming. MTV has a minute presence in China and has only been granted ‘landing rights’ (access to broadcasting through terrestrial cabling, thereby becoming available to everyone) in Guangdong Province. The most successful foreign-owned music channel in China is a subsidiary of News Corp’s Asia flagship station, Star TV - Channel V. Channel V doesn’t have any landing rights in China, so both it and MTV are essentially satellite stations, available only in foreign designated compounds and three star or above hotels. Their main methods for broadening exposure is through syndication of content and large scale events, such as Channel V’s Summer Shake and the Channel V Chinese Music Awards, the longest running music awards show in China, now in it’s 13th year.

Reliable viewing figures are almost impossible to come by as there is no transparency when it comes to data gathering. The stations themselves are mildly embarrassed about their lack of reach. Excellent brands with poor penetration.

Major labels regularly buy their way into programming for these channels. As with all media, quality is not the deciding factor for coverage. Programme packages have to be paid for to get on air, in most cases by a third party sponsor, so you might have the best half-hour tour documentary in the world but the response from the channels will probably be along the lines of ‘what’s in it for us if we broadcast it?’ Content is not king. Money is.

Radio reads in a similar way. The government is very protective of its airwaves and rules its network of regional licensee stations with a rod of iron, both in broadcast policy and physical presence - The live studios are frequently under armed guard for fear of them being stormed by subversives. Radio’s potential potency is well highlighted when you consider the millions of new cars pouring on to China’s roads every year, with a thousand new cars a day on Beijing’s roads alone.

Despite the increasing importance of radio as a medium, the country’s radio programming remains in the stone age with very little choice available to the listener. Western music, in the few places it is played, is almost entirely restricted to UK and US Top 40 acts. There have been attempts by foreign companies to come in and shake things up a little. In 2003 Virgin Radio made a pioneering half million USD deal with China Radio International (CRI) to re-launch it’s Beijing western music station, HitFM. After a year of excellent programming, CRI decided to increase its asking price eightfold. Virgin obviously pulled out immediately.

Stations like HitFM (which remains the only real western music station in Beijing) are open to the idea of a few spins and an interview around a tour but this requires good connections within the station. Unsolicited contact is fairly futile.

© Ed Peto 2007

NOTE: This is an extract from the ‘Access China’ report commissioned by UK Trade and Industry Department and British Underground.

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How To Do Business In China, China CEO, The New Chinese Consumer… my shelves here in Beijing are stacked full of such books, all trying to throw some light on a country and market of seemingly endless allure to the west. A population of 1.3 billion people has marketeers around the world girding up their loins to do business here, each with a How To Do Business In China book tucked under their arm.

Unfortunately for the western music entrepreneur or artist, these books are helpful in only the most general terms. While there is a slew of practical, detailed advice on how to deal with rubber-ball factories and sales chains, the fledgling music industry here is such a bewildering state of affairs that fully-rounded advice simply isn’t available yet.

As in most other Asian markets, pop music has a real stranglehold over the mainstream - Mando-Pop, Canto-Pop, J-Pop, K-Pop - glossy, inoffensive music that satisfies the censors as well as the ‘bland criteria’ necessary for across-the-board media coverage. Despite the diverse musical heritage of China, mainstream pop is almost entirely informed by western music, from the basic pop song format through to instrumentation and lyrical content, although general production quality is still fairly poor. The Chinese audience, therefore, are already well familiar with all of the stock traits of western music: Guitar solos, crap raps in the middle-eight of pop songs, warbly diva vocals, key changes at the end of ballads, pseudo-rock bands, pseudo-hip-hop bands etc.

Your average western band, therefore, does not sound totally alien, it’s just that no one is willing to spend money promoting an international (and therefore niche) act when 90 per cent of CDs are counterfeit and an even higher percent of online music is pinched. It’s all about hitting the mass market straight out of the box and selling big, if you want a chance of making money.

Such a high piracy rate leaves you with a legitimate physical market of only $86m a year (2006 figures), making China - a country of 1.3 billion people, remember - into only the 20th largest market in the world. Physical has never really had a good time in China. The all-important distribution process never really found its feet, and labels find it a constant battle to get their product on the shelves before, or instead of, the pirate versions. The pirates, though, were given a surprising headstart…

The arrival of western product in the early 90s came courtesy of ‘saw-gashed’ CDs: Excess stock and deleted titles from western majors attempting to avoid taxation and disposal costs. These CDs had their cases cut to mark them as defective and were then shipped in to China through free-market economic ports like Guangzhou, only to end up on the black market. An end result that can be seen as a partial ‘shooting-in-the-foot for the western majors who then had to come in and fight against the pirate networks they inadvertently helped set up.

A standard pirate CD retails for about 60p, whereas the legitimate product goes for around two to three times that - £1.50 to £2. This obviously makes piracy a big business with plenty of people profiting, plenty of vested interests and not a whole lot of will to change. There is the occasional very public haul of counterfeit CDs, but realistically this is already a lost battle when you consider the impending end of the CD format.CD manufacturing plants are mainly state run but this does not deter rampant ‘third shift piracy’ in which, once the two normal daily factory shifts are completed, a third one goes on through the night to make the same product for the pirate market. That’s right, state-run piracy.

As with most areas of business, the retail sector is a black hole of statistics, where misinformation and mendaciousness are key pirate protection devices. A visit to China will clear this up for you nicely as you only have to wander around a few streets and speak to a few ‘legitimate’ retailers to see the impossibility of gathering any meaningful statistics. Even legitimate retailers like FAB stock some pirated goods and it takes a very keen eye to spot the difference in some cases, although most pirated CDs are laughably poor quality.

As you might imagine in this environment, the major labels are shadows of their western motherships and there is a gaping hole where the independent record label scene should be. While the traditional record label model isn’t exactly going through a golden age in the west, it never even had a golden age in the Middle Kingdom. In order to survive it has become necessary for labels to take over an artist’s entire life - recording, publishing, management etc. - obsessively tapping all revenue streams in order to survive. You can count the number of recognisable independent labels on a pair of chopsticks.

Modern Sky is one such label. It has just celebrated its tenth year in existence and, much like its rabbit warren of an office in West Beijing, it’s business model is a convoluted arrangement of media company, record label, artist management and design house - a model that has allowed it to survive in this most hostile of environments. In the process of surviving it has also amassed a significant percentage of the Chinese rock catalogue. Physical releases are practically a loss leader for Modern Sky with digital revenue also remaining a minor consideration.

Label Manager Meng Jinhui explains that they normally take over management, allowing them to promote the hell out of the artist rather than the album. Resultant brand co-operations with these artists and the label itself generate the bulk of Modern Sky’s income, alongside consultancy for mobile content and a wide range of video production and design projects. You have to be versatile to survive for 10 years in China.

The ‘big four’ majors are all over here in some form or other. However, like all foreign companies wanting to operate in China, they have had to enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies, yielding 51 per cent of the new China collaboration in the process. Warner Music Group created Warner Music China, EMI joint ventured with Push Typhoon, SonyBMG with Shanghai Audio And Visual Press, and Universal Music partnered with Shanghai Media Group.

Normally taking up just one or two floors of an office building, the majors have also had to adopt different tactics in order to survive. They own the lion’s share of domestic pop music (”domestic” in this case would be better translated as “regional” - Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong all contribute heavily as their less pirated markets allow for better artist development) but with regards to international repertoire, they stick very much to front line releases and global priorities with the occasional catalogue title. Universal Music China, for example, is pushing its reggae catalogue throughout the year to see if it can find any sort of audience.

Danny Sim, international marketing manager at Universal Music China, is optimistic about growth in western music sales. UMC will release 40 per cent more international titles this year - bringing it to roughly 100 albums - and expect to see a 10-15 per cent growth in revenue. Sim puts his optimism down to: “a) More people getting a better education, and therefore more people with English as a second language, b) More western music spread through the internet, and c) More media channels will become western music friendly.”

Sim has neatly summed up the problems facing western music marketers in China. While there is already a smattering of English in a lot of homegrown music, a full English language track is a different thing altogether. Learning English is a high priority for your average urbanite and consuming English language media and entertainment is a natural part of this. There is some way to go, however, before this manifests itself in legitimate music sales. As Sim points out, a good starting point would be an increase in western music coverage in the media. As a niche concern, very little western music is played on China’s state-run radio. An exception would be a station like Beijing’s HitFM which plays US and UK Top 40 hits to an audience of English language students, expats and western-trend-conscious young people. This is an exception, though.

The government is very protective of its airwaves and rules its own network of regional licensee stations with a rod of iron, both in broadcast policy and physical presence. The live studios are frequently under armed guard for fear of them being stormed by subversives. The same applies for TV as the Chinese government are acutely aware that broadcast media is the most effective medium for delivering key cultural and political messages. China Central Television (CCTV), the state-run national station operates a range of channels, which, in the main part, are barefaced propaganda and state trumpet-blowing. Their large scale, televised music galas showcase traditional and government approved music forms and are regularly watched by audiences in the hundreds of millions. These are the kind of viewing figures that excite people about China, but in reality the shows are impregnable fortresses of glittery, spandex-clad state guff.

When Pop Idol imitator SuperGirl hit China in 2004, the final was watched by 400 million people. The rush of mobile votes sent the government into a panic and severe restrictions were implemented, preventing the show ever happening in the same format again. The idea of a democratically decided pop show proved too much for a one-party state to countenance.

So for international music marketeers there is a limited spread of outlets through which to promote artists. This is especially true when you consider that music coverage is based more on cold hard cash than on merit. You could turn up to one of the few music-specific TV channels like Newscorp’s Channel V or MTV (which has a minute presence in China) with the best pop video in the world looking for airplay, but the response is likely to be “What’s in it for us?”. In this sort of climate - where media needs to be bought - the returns simply do not justify a label allocating a significant marketing (or coverage) budget to “break” niche foreign artists. They generally rely on larger artists’ spill-over publicity from the west.

As in the rest of the world, the internet is changing everything. Where broadcast media and press are government owned or heavily government-monitored, the internet is seen as a more effective way of promoting releases, with freedoms and readership figures that make printed press almost insignificant.

It’s actually possible to find niche audiences and interact with them effectively on bustling chat boards and blogs. While the internet is reportedly monitored by 30,000 “internet police”, the sheer volume of activity means that smaller, non-threatening outfits can operate in a relatively uncensored capacity.

The problem is that niche online audiences are very niche indeed. Genre awareness is perhaps one of the biggest spokes in the wheels of music development in China. It is possible to find all major genres - as well as a great deal of sub-genres - represented in tiny fan-groups online. However, the elaborate categorisation of music we seem to so enjoy in the west is the preserve of only a few music obsessives in China. While Converse trainers and drainpipe jeans might make your average Chinese high street hep-cat seem like an alternative cognoscenti, the chances are that understanding is lacking and there is very little consistency between any two elements of their identity, including music preference. Whilst hanging at the bar in Beijing underground live venue D-22, I noticed a Chinese girl next to me with crazy hair, blackened eyes, torn clothes and black fingernails. I got talking to her and asked her what kind of music she listened to. “Backstreet Boys,” was her immediate reply.

The kind of deeper involvement with a genre that would mean a goth could never admit to liking the Backstreet Boys is noticeably absent here. This girl is just as likely (or unlikely) to go out and download an Aaron Carter track as she is a Lacrimosa one. Music online is rarely searched out or bought according to genre. In fact, not only is your average MP3 not sold as part of a genre, it is also almost certainly pirated, completely DRM-free, with no meta data attached and, in a huge number of cases, doesn’t even have a file title. You are left with a completely ‘naked’ piece of audio. China simply never went through the age where music was bought at a premium on vinyl, cassette or CD, then lovingly horded, categorised and put on display for all your dinner party guests to see, encouraging in-depth dinner discussions about prog-rock or jazz.

Today’s China sees single-track, naked MP3s being Bluetoothed, file-shared, emailed, flash-disked, hard-drive-dumped and herded around the digital sphere in complete anonymity. Targeting potential listeners for your band in this scramble of a market is incredibly difficult because, in a great deal of cases, even your potential listener doesn’t know what he or she is listening to.

Despite this, digital is the hot topic in China. Due to the under-developed, pirate-dominated physical market and burgeoning mobile environment, China is on track to becoming the world’s testing ground for the digital age.

The statistics are pretty staggering, with some suggesting a digital market of US$1.5bn by 2010. With the second largest broadband network in the world, the advent of 3G later in 2007, 460 million mobile users and five million new mobile subscribers a month, who, on face value, would doubt them?

The view from the ground, however, is that all of these statistics need to be taken with a bucket of salt. All attempts by the Chinese government to combat online MP3 piracy, including all public ‘victories’ against pirates, should be seen as totally superficial - a lip service to the lobbying western majors. Internet MP3 piracy remains endemic, with fewer than 10 per cent (a very generous estimate) of downloaders actually paying (average price) 14p/download for the privilege.

Even the big boys are at it, with market leader Service Providers (SPs) like Baidu (over 50 million users per day) openly hosting ‘deep links’ to pirated tracks and making money through advertising while they’re at it.

Legal sites such as Top100 and 9Sky are on the rise, but change will be painfully slow due to a dislike of DRM, lack of will from the government, and a public who have been getting free music off the internet from day one. It is becoming increasingly common for record labels to give away MP3s for free in order to build profile for a track and then profit from where the real money potentially lies, namely Mobile Value-Added Services (MVAS).

While only a tiny percentage of Chinese people own a credit card (thereby making online download purchases difficult), the cash-pre-pay nature of mobiles means there is an established, digital payment system existing between the user and the mobile operators.

This allows for easy purchase of MVAS such as ringtones, caller ringback tones, background music and wallpaper. MVAS generate revenue of over half a billion dollars (US) a year but accounting is far from sturdy - SPs are habitually siphoning off millions of dollars by simply under-declaring sales in what is known as “accounting piracy”.

Even the legitimate numbers don’t look too rosey at the moment. The breakdown on your average truetone (for example) looks something like this:

15 per cent is returned to the telco, and 10 per cent to the publisher. Of the rest, the service provider takes half, with the remaining 37.5 per cent being split between the aggregator and the sound recording rights owner, with the aggregator taking anywhere from 20 to 50 per cent for his troubles. In this example, assuming you have a 50/50 deal with the aggregator, this leaves you with a grand total of 2.6 pence for every ringtone sold.

Micro numbers like this are hard to get excited about, but if the devil is in the detail, then the angel is in the scale. Music and the booming Chinese nation are at the start of a wonderful relationship on a scale that will dwarf any other territory in the world. It’s just that no one is making any money out of it - certainly not with conventional, western business models.

China needs to be seen as a blank canvas. While the numbers might suggest it is already going through a “boom” period, this is clearly not the case in relation to the copyright dependent industries. The boom is yet to come and the salient business models are yet to show themselves. What is certain is that the record label as you know it is dead and in its place have risen “digital entertainment companies”, who only produce single-track MP3s and are just as savvy at dealing with brand partnerships, pre-loaded mobile content and online guerilla marketing as they are at making music. While all these facets are increasingly important in the west, they are essential in China.

It is understood that DRM is not the horse to back. The pay-per-download system is also looking shaky and attention is increasingly turning to subscription models. China will be quite a way ahead of the west in turning the corner into this more fluid consumption of digital music.

So while there is no How To Make Money Out Of Music in China handbook yet, I suspect that when it is eventually written, it will be translated into a hundred different languages and ultimately be tucked under the arm of every music industry executive in the west, from London to New York.

© Ed Peto 2007

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As a musician and DJ (and regular pool hall patron) David couldn’t take much of this. He politely suggested to the management that he make compilations for them to play. The bosses were thrilled with the idea so the next day David brought back a lovingly compiled CD of vintage funk and soul. The pool hall played it, loved it and asked him to do the same again, which he did, a number of times. Before long, however, David began to suspect how much people were actually paying attention to his finely crafted mixes. His friend Matt suggested that, as a test, he make a CD which featured the same song repeated 18 times on it, the song being ‘What A Fool Believes’ by Michael McDonald/Doobie Brothers:

As normal the management put the CD on loop and, after two hours of playing pool to the same song, David asked the management and some of the regulars what they thought of it…The assembled staff and punters unanimously declared it to be their favourite CD so far. They absolutely loved it. That was the last CD David gave them.

It is difficult to know what conclusions to draw from this story, if any, suffice to say that the Chinese engage with music in a totally different way to the west. Recognition through repetition is a stock feature of the Chinese psyche, the most obvious example of which being the teaching of characters in Chinese schools (with some 11,000 characters in use in modern Chinese, classes are a necessarily ‘parrot fashion’ learning environment where children repeat pen strokes and character recognition ad nauseam). If a song hits a chord with the country and reaches a certain level of exposure/repetition, it will take on a life of it’s own, become a MONSTER hit to be played, replayed, covered, sync-ed, performed live and sung at KTVs (Karaoke bars) with a fervor very rarely seen in the west - it will become a part of the fabric of everyday life.

If you were to compile a ‘Now That’s What I Call Chinese Pop Music’ you could get away with a five track EP (rather than the 40 track annual double albums we get in the west) and still cover 60% of the musical mindshare of urban China. The relentless repetition of these monster hits in almost every conceivable environment and incarnation mirrors the teaching of Chinese characters and the CD in the pool hall: There is an overriding comfort to be had from recognition alone.

That’s enough theorizing. Anyone who has spent any length of time in China, regardless of whether or not they listen to the radio or watch TV, will recognise at least one, and probably more, of the following songs. These are what the Chinese monster hits sound like, with Mouse Loves Rice being the biggest by some distance (a real phenomenon, the story of which neatly sums up the music environment in China, but that’s for another time):

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL CHINESE POP MUSIC Vol.1:

David Tao & Jolin Tsai - Jin Tian Ni Yao Jia Gei Wo (Today You Must Marry Me):

S.Wing - QQ Ai:

Yang Chen Gang - Lao Shu Ai Da Mi (Mouse Loves Rice):

A Niu - Tao Hua Duo Duo Kai (Peach Blossom):

Kenny G - Going Home:

© Ed Peto 2007

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New podcast ‘Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain’ will be a real godsend to anyone looking at making sense of this exciting little scene. Podcasters Ian Sherman (who also happens to be Music Editor for Beijing Time Out) and Kyle Schaefer’s high-brow, yet somehow low-brow, ramblings will also be a godsend to anyone who enjoys apocrypha, obscure references and general verbosity.

Kyle Schaefer and Ian Sherman

These guys know their stuff. They play good tunes as well. Here are links to the first two gloriously amateurish installments, hosted on the Tagteam Records site:

Sept ‘07

Oct ‘07

I took it upon myself to send a few questions their way - pulling back the curtain on Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain, if you will. They replied in a typically wordy and waggish fashion. Good stuff. Read on…

Ed Peto: DESCRIBE THE OTHER PERSON’S BACKGROUND A LITTLE BIT. WHAT QUALIFIES HIM TO COMMENT ON THE BEIJING MUSIC SCENE?

Ian Sherman: I always imagine him [Kyle] coming from a place where it’s always dusk, people are polite but wary and there’s always a cooler full of beer on the back porch. It’s essential that there is a back porch. Kyle has a history as a DJ on late night college radio where, as far as I understand, he would mix Ministry with Diamanda Galas and Star Wars samples and no one would give a shit, ‘cos no was listening, except whatever girl he happened to be corrupting at that point. Said girl would think that he was the greatest thing since the cheese grater and would no doubt demonstrate her admiration for him through the medium of repulsive carnal depravities. He is very good at radio/podcast stuff, even though he puts on a special ‘voice’ for broadcasting; In real life he has a voice like Betty Boop’s castrato cousin. Still, he actually thinks about what he says before he says it, unlike my impetuous self.

[Kyle] has been intimately connected with Tag Team for a few years now. He goes to a lot of shows - not as many as me, but then he’s an indolent fucker. Most important, I suppose, is that he, like me, wants to and we have both been here an awfully long time so, in our own small way, we’ve been witness to the development of the Beijing scene. That’s it.

N.B. The ‘Bamboo Curtain’ podcast is not exclusively about Beijing. We’ll play any Chinese music, no matter where it comes from. We’ll be starting a Beijing specific podcast within the next few months (it won’t be on the Tag Team site but elsewhere)

Kyle Schaefer: Well, aside from his professional credentials, Sherman is one of those people with an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of rock ephemera. I’m not sure if that ‘qualifies’ him to do anything (I don’t think we had to take a test or anything), but it’s nice to be able to find out who the back-up cymbalist was in the original line up of the Yardbirds and if there is any truth to the rumor that he made a series of novelty records with tape loops of whale song (Ian says no). As far as being an able commenter on the developments of independent music here in China… Ian’s an avid, enthusiastic and informed gig-goer, which is more than I can say for most.

EP: HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONAL TASTES IN MUSIC?

IS: I know its a fatuous thing to say, but I simply like good music. Alright, I’ll try again. My ‘comfort blanket’ music is Van Morrison. The man can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned. But much like the religion it borders on, that’s a personal thing and not really something that comes up all that often. I like slow and loud music: Mogwai, Godspeed, MBV etc. Or I like shit with a lot of guitar. Distortion please - lots of fucking distortion. I generally look for a melody - it can be as fucked up as you like, just as long as its there. Or I like good old fashioned power pop. Or I like Acid Rock. Or the holy trinity of 70s metal (Zep, Purp and, to a lesser extent, Sab). Or Ennio Morricone. Or mid-60s psych. I find most recent British music uninteresting - either prematurely ponderous or glorified stodgy pub rock. Enough, I hate being pinned down on this, it may well change tomorrow. Extremely broadly, though - I’m an indie kid.

Kyle’s inner goth is barely hidden, but he manages to function nonetheless. He and I have rather different but quite complementary tastes in music. He’s kind of hard to nail down - just when I think I have him pegged as a machine-music person (which he is, very), he’s an archetypal yank indie kid, and then he’s a punk, but wait… now he’s into weird shit like hyper hardcore. I think we share a love of mesolithic riffheavy sludge rock, but I could be wrong. I have a fairly extensive, not to mention anal, knowlege of the dark nooks and crannies of music - past and current - but when we DJ together, I spend most of the night in a state of awe at the endless succession of wonderful obscurities (to me) he pulls out of nowhere. Bastard. It’s an education with Kyle.

KS: I cut my teeth on horrible noise. Shuddering distortion is my bread and butter. I’m also rather fond of gloomy things and absolutely anything synthetic. Ian is bit like the rainy-day craft drawer, all these bits and bobs and glue-on wiggly eyes. Just a little something of everything. He’ll probably say ’shoe-gaze’ after agonizing for a few hours, but the man can comfortably shift from Van Morrison to Norwegian death-twee.

EP: HOW DID THE PODCAST IDEA COME ABOUT?

IS: Well, I think I once heard a podcast back in 2002 and thought ‘fuck I could do that’. Of course, I couldn’t - not without someone who actually could. One of us bought it up last year, I think, and nothing happened. But I have these rare, and really rather shocking, spurts of decisiveness. Every morning I wake up, stare into space and let my mind fill with brilliant plans, then I’ll have my weetabix and fall asleep on the sofa. Occasionally, though, I’ll actually follow through on these plans. This would be one of those instances. It’s all a question of presentation really. If you go to the pub and float the idea of a podcast, it’ll get kicked around the table for a bit and then the conversation’ll get back to Kagler’s latest distribution deal; but if you stride in purposefully and slam an actual plan down on the table, it’ll happen.

KS: It was Ian’s idea. He started bugging me and I went along with it. I’m a remarkably passive person. I’d had a similar idea for Tagteam, that we should do a podcast of b-sides and live stuff and interviews to coincide with new releases. Everybody thought it was a good idea but I couldn’t manage the motivation to actually produce it. When Ian said we should do a music thing I jumped on his wagon (Seriously, he has a wagon).

EP: WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE WITH THIS PODCAST?

IS: Less time asleep on the sofa. Oh… and demos, lots and lots of demos. Basically, shitloads of free stuff. Maybe a girlfriend as well. Doesn’t seem too much to ask.

KS: The usual: Global Domination of Popular Culture. But I’d settle for getting Ian a date.

EP: DESCRIBE THE PREPARATION THAT GOES INTO EACH SHOW AND HOW YOU GO ABOUT RECORDING IT.

IS: To be honest not much. We both negotiate with each other about time and place of recording (probably the most complicated part of the whole process), show up. There’s a slight internal struggle - whereas I would be happier with an hour long podcast, Kyle is more of a short and sweet kind of bloke. He tends to win because otherwise he gets all passive aggressive and I am powerless in the face of a steath sulk. We each bring three or four tunes with us and erm… that’s about it. We don’t necessarily know anything about the music the other wants to play. I’m happy with that. I’ll like to learn and be suprised and that’s mainly what keeps me interested, that and the sound of my voice. I don’t really want to do that much preparation or, god forbid, rehearsal. That just sucks the life out of a cast. We’ve had complaints from would-be-management that we should have a big meeting before hand and share all information. Those people can eat my shit, in the best possible way.

Generally, we’ll waste all the best banter just talking to each other as we set up. The mikes are switched on and then… well, as is easy to tell, then we just make it up as we go. I like it that way, but inevitably we will get more organised and professional as time goes on.

For source material, I’ve got a pretty good pipeline for new demos and albums, but I tend to spend a lot of time scouring the interwebs for good stuff that I may have missed over the past few years. Kyle has this enourmous library of older Chinese music from his days in the wilderness when that’s all there was. As for newer stuff, he probably gets most of it from me - that’s how cool I am.

KS: We spend about two weeks putting off actually seeing one another. Then we sort of rush around and try to get mics hooked into computers. We’re sorting out the technical stuff as we go (we’ve learned that mics need to be turned on, etc.) We assemble all the music and trade off on selections, generally pontificate a bit and then cut it together on Ian’s laptop. It takes about six hours longer than it needs to, but most of the fun is actually making the damn things. I try to forget about it as soon as we finish and start thinking about the next one.

EP: D-22’s MICHAEL PETTIS HAS BEEN QUOTED AS SAYING THAT “2007 WILL BE THE YEAR BEIJING BROKE”. WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THAT?

IS: Sheesh. How many thousand words do you want on that? Pettis would say that. I think the argument is moot. Pointless. If he means ‘break’ as in San Francisco ‘67, New York ‘78, Chicago ‘86 or Seattle ‘91 then no. Who cares whether Beijing ‘breaks’ internationally - what is important is that Beijing in 2007 finally had a great scene that you could talk about without having to couch it in terms of regional context. A scene is made up of bands. Bands break, cities do not. Bollocks to that. Pettis’ hyperbole is unfair. Plenty of bands ‘broke’ in Beijing in 2007, but not in the way he means it. No one sold out Madison Square Gardens or had Rolling Stone blowing coke up their arse, but finally bands that we know and love started putting out decent records and non-derivative bands were on the rise in 2007 - Hedgehog, Guai Li, etc - spun out of nowhere and didn’t really sound like ONE BAND, which has blighted the beijing scene in the past. The dynamic changed. Typically Beijing bands who blazed live put out shit, unrepresentative albums that turned everyone off. This year not only have excellent live bands been putting out excellent discs (cf. Hedgehog), but even bands who want to make me kill myself when I see them live have put out great - and I mean great - fucking albums (cf. Carsick Cars and Queen Sea Big Shark). That is the way it should be. Bands, if they have to chose, should suck live, not in the studio.

2007 has been enormous for the Beijing scene, as m’collegue Kyle says; ‘all of a sudden you turn around and you’re in a city with good bands’. Credit where credit is due - a lot of this has been down to Pettis and D-22. At a press conference this summer, Jason Magnus, mediocrity-loving honcho of the Beijing Pop Festival, used the expression ‘a D22 band’. At that one instant not only was the expression rendered incredibly passe, but also pervasive. D22 was set up to encourage and propogate a scene and by criminy that’s exactly what they’ve done.

KS: I think that’s total bullshit and probably true. The environment for music and musicians has been relentlessly improving since Wham! played Beijing in 1984 and I think it’s impossible not to feel like we are reaching some sort of critical musical mass here, but people said the same thing in ‘87 and ‘97 and they might still be saying it in 2027. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves and, frankly, M. Pettis has more invested in the local scene than most. What’s been different this year is the number of promising new bands and albums and the amount of international press Beijing is starting to receive. (White) people are finally really taking an interest in Chinese music, and in 50 years when music historians start digging through the documentation, the paper trail may certainly look like it all started now. However, until Chinese musicians start forging truly unique musical paths that ignite something in the collective imagination, Beijing’s just another big city with a great local scene. I also feel, quite firmly, that if Beijing breaks it will be beholden on us to fix it pretty quick.

EP: WHICH BANDS ARE YOU CURRENTLY MOST EXCITED ABOUT?

IS: Every single band in beijing, because most of them are so nearly there… except Mafeisan.

KS: Fistpig, The Boyfriends of Nancy Drew, Sudden Infant Sex Syndrome, The Prone Position… which aren’t real bands but I’m going to make some t-shirts anyway and I’ve got a rad stencil for Fistpig I made to put on all my notebooks and my Trapper Keeper. Seriously, do people still get ‘excited’ about bands? Ian and I will choose the exact same ones anyway… Guaili, Muscle Snog out of Shanghai, basically everything we put on the podcast, or I wouldn’t put it on.

© Ed Peto 2007

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The Mechanical Copyright Society of China (MCSC) was set up in 1992 as the sole administrator for composition but it’s effectiveness is often brought into question by the publishers. In the last few years, the majors have taken it upon themselves to either do their own collection or find independents to take it on for them.

While the MCSC claims that they maintain a good flow of revenue back to the western rights owners, there is no mechanical collection agreement in place between MCSC and, say, the MCPS in the UK. There is a 6% first-run mechanical (PPD) but the draw back is that you need to be a China registered company to collect direct from the MCSC. One way mainland international independents get around this problem is by dealing with The Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong (CASH) who have a reciprocal representation agreement with MCSC and are more approachable/transparent.

The PRS entered an agreement with MCSC in 1995 but due to a non-existent airplay royalty system last year’s PRS China returns were roughly equivalent to the likes of Estonia, Jamaica and Kazakhstan. Up until amendments to the Copyright law in 2001, broadcasters were not obliged to pay publishing royalties. Now, six years after these amendments, there has been no real pay off. Such is the way in China - Surface impressions are all important and it often takes many years for public gestures of compliance to gain any traction in real-terms, if at all.

MCPS-PRS International Manager Liam Donnelly explains:

“PRS is working closely with MCSC by helping to lobby the Chinese authorities along with other international rights bodies, governments and the European Commission to bring about improvements in the Chinese collection system. These won’t happen overnight - indeed we’re taking a long term view of the market - but I think we’re making some progress.”

In truth, there really isn’t a lot of western content currently being broadcasted anyway but this situation will slowly improve - a very long-term view is the only way to go. Optimists are suggesting that broadcasters will be paying performance royalties by late 2008 but, knowing China, you might have to wait a lot longer.

As with other areas of the industry, digital is a glimmer of light as the payment structure actually has publishing factored into it at source. The accounting system is still far from perfected but this represents a tiny foothold in a relatively promising area. The unspoken consensus is that the industry is moving towards 10% publishing at source for Mobile and 8% for Digital. As I mention elsewhere, when you consider that a ringtone retails for 14 pence and even frontline western digital catalogue tends to be sold in the hundreds and thousands rather than the tens of thousands, no-one is going to be triumphantly high-fiving anyone any time soon.

Covers are hard to come by as the standard practice is for the songwriter to sell their songs lock-stock to the label, meaning that western practice seems awkward in comparison.

Ad syncs show promise. You do hear of the odd reasonable sync license but even major operators are regularly caught with uncleared tracks in campaigns, with no real repercussions. Once again, very early days and a sea-change in copyright attitude is required for this to become the staple it is in the west.

It really needs to be said that publishers are not having a fun time over here. There have been a couple of brave, pioneering outfits setting up shop but they have been met by a very bleak landscape and their futures are uncertain.

© Ed Peto 2007

NOTE: This is an extract from the ‘Access China’ report commissioned by UK Trade and Industry Department and British Underground.

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There’s no doubt as to who the hot new prospects are though. I put Hedgehog on for a show here in June after being impressed with a few D-22 gigs and they were outstanding.

They describe themselves as being ‘Noise Pop’ which actually isn’t far off the mark: The scuzzy side of guitar pop; catchy as hell without being disposable, with Cure basslines, plenty of invention and the best drummer in the world bar none. ‘Atom’, as she is called, may measure in at well under five foot and have the face of a cherub but she can’t half smack the crap out of a drum kit, in time, while singing backing vocals. In the words of so many tv talent searches, she has ‘the x-factor’. Here they are blowing away a mid-afternoon crowd at last week’s inaugural Modern Sky Festival. Atom broke a drum stick one minute into the first song and two more through the rest of the set:

International scrutiny might be wildly premature but while the rest of Beijing gears up for the Olympics in 2008 with all it’s obscene construction and flag waving, the indie rock scene is quietly developing into something pretty special. Don’t begin the hype yet as this scene is simply too fragile to deliver. With bands like these on the up though, there is an unquestionable optimism about town. For the moment, however, please take Beijing off your ‘cities to watch’ lists, talk about Sheffield for a while longer and come back in 2009.

© Ed Peto 2007

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