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TMEA's Top Ten Hits Become "Douyin Top Ten Divine Comedies": Who is deciding the "aesthetic contempt chain" of the Chinese music scene?

The author | Mia

On December 11, the third annual grand ceremony of Tencent Music Entertainment Group arrived as scheduled, but the first to go out of the circle was the "Annual Top Ten Hot Songs", and the "Top Ten Golden Songs" did not get much attention.

"Clouds and Sea", "White Moonlight and Cinnabar Mole", "Prodigal Gossip", "Dream That Can't Wake Up", "Stepping on Mountains and Rivers", "Thousands and Thousands", "Fallen", "Shepherd of the Cocoto Sea", "Empty", "Obsessed"... Just looking at the song title and singer, you may not recognize one, but listening to the melody will feel familiar, only because "you must have heard it on a mobile phone public TikTok occasion.".

The "Ten Divine Comedies of Douyin" dominates the list, causing heated discussions on various platforms such as Weibo, Douban, and Tiger Punch, and ranking first in hot searches. The shortcomings of the short video singers were revealed in the live performances - out of tune, broken tone, big white voice, and were rated as "too much emotion, no skill". Music blogger "Gan Dazi" (formerly "Music Car Accident Scene") complained: "I think the Chinese music scene is finished." ”

This spit forward has exceeded 60,000, and the following high praise comment is: "Plagiarism, earthy taste, pseudo-ancient style, low-quality cover songs, tailors are full of five poisons." "Everyone has been eating junk food for 15 years." "Are the top ten hits of the year serious?"

TMEA's Top Ten Hits Become "Douyin Top Ten Divine Comedies": Who is deciding the "aesthetic contempt chain" of the Chinese music scene?

When the "sinking market aesthetic" attacked, it triggered a collision of musical tastes of the "five rings inside" and "outside the five rings". What kind of iterative logic of the music world is hidden behind the divine comedy out of the circle? Who should define the "chain of aesthetic contempt"?

Drafts, streaming, short videos... The "Golden Decade" of the Chinese music scene?

Turning the clock back decades, from Teresa Teng, Lo Tai-yok and Beyond to the Four Heavenly Kings, Hong Kong and Taiwan completed the first "music export" to the mainland, and established the original paradigm of pop, rock and folk. Na Ying, Liu Huan, etc. have become iconic figures in the mainland music scene, and the influence of campus folk songs has emerged. Around 2000, international record labels such as SONY, Warner, and Universal entered the mainland, and singers such as Eason Chan, Jay Chou, Zhang Huimei, Lin Junjie, Tao Zhe and other singers broke out, and the Chinese music scene ushered in the "golden decade" and became an indelible emotional memory of the current post-90s generation.

In addition, at the beginning of the millennium, the first batch of Internet singers such as CAI Ling songs and Daolang, Pang Long, and Yang Chengang rose. At that time, there was also a vulgar controversy in Internet songs, and Daolang was called a "migrant singer" and "a spokesman for the people at the bottom", and Wang Feng once criticized, "This is a sad expression of Chinese pop music".

Starting from "Supergirl", the fan economy has gradually sprouted, and music talent variety shows have become the main way for the mainland music scene to replenish new blood. A group of singers from "The Voice of China", "I am a singer" and so on, after the online platform took over the baton, "Creation 101", "Youth with You" and so on to the music world to send more idols, singing and dancing artists, "China New Rap", "Rap New Generation", "Instant Electric Sound", "Summer of the Band" and so on are deeply rooted in the vertical field of music, and the circle musicians can get out of the circle through the variety stage.

All along, under the pressure of copyright costs, major streaming media platforms have laid out original musicians, TME launched the Force Stage Plan, the Wind Plan, and launched the "Billion Yuan Incentive Plan 4.0". NetEase Cloud Music has launched the Stone Plan, The Ladder Plan, and the Hard Ground Hearth Night, and as of June 2021, the number of independent musicians settled by NetEase Cloud Music has exceeded 300,000. As antitrust draws a pause for the copyright war this year, copyright differences narrow, and the importance of original music is further highlighted. The streaming media platform has indeed broadened the stage of musicians, and Xu Song, Wang Sutaki and Xu Liang are known as the "QQ Music Big Three".

TMEA's Top Ten Hits Become "Douyin Top Ten Divine Comedies": Who is deciding the "aesthetic contempt chain" of the Chinese music scene?

After 2018, more and more voices believe that with the outbreak of vibrato, the Chinese music scene has begun to "shake the surname". Driven by the algorithm mechanism, the 15-second era of musicians is coming, the music with a strong sense of picture and distinct rhythm is more popular on the platform, and the short video platform has become the best music publicity platform, and the traditional publicity path of music has been rewritten as "Internet celebrities use songs as BGM". The trend of short videos feeding back to original musicians on music streaming is becoming more pronounced.

In recent years, short video platforms have begun to penetrate more and more deeply into the upstream of the music industry, and this year Byte officially established a music division, douyin launched a music player "Feile", and a music distribution platform "Galaxy Ark". Kuaishou launched the industry's first music copyright settlement standard and opened the "Kuaishou Double-Click Music Plan".

Many musicians are still resistant to short videos. Traffic has always been a double-edged sword, and Liu Shuang, the creator of "Mohe Ballroom", wrote on Weibo: "Don't push, you can, and then brush it and it will change its flavor." It's good to walk slower. Fans are also ambivalent about the popularity of musicians in the circle.

Although the ability to push songs is amazing, most of the short video divine comedy "saliva songs" are arranged at a simple level, the lyrics are piled up, and the life cycle is too short like short video internet celebrities and popular gameplay, which is too short, and basically every few months will usher in a replacement. Most short video singers are still in the embarrassing situation of "people are not red". Some music production companies create "brainwashing divine comedies" that are too fast-food, short and fast, and in the fastest case, it takes only four hours for a song to go online. Among the top ten hit songs, "White Moonlight and Cinnabar Mole" and "Dream That Can't Wake Up" have plagiarism and "music tailor" controversy.

TMEA's Top Ten Hits Become "Douyin Top Ten Divine Comedies": Who is deciding the "aesthetic contempt chain" of the Chinese music scene?

After several iterations of shuffling, the Chinese music scene has not yet given birth to a second "Jay Chou". The Divine Comedy of Flowing Water, The Iron Hit Jay Chou. Recently, Apple announced in the Apple Music App Chinese mainland the top 100 hottest songs in 2021, jay Chou accounted for 9 of the TOP10 songs, and 54 of the TOP99 songs were exclusively owned by Jay Chou.

Who occupies the upper echelons of the chain of aesthetic contempt?

Controversy is always there. In the past, when similar lists were occupied by traffic artists, they also caused heated discussions. The short video Divine Comedy dominates the hot song list and has also been going on for some time. "Green" appeared in the first TMEA Top Ten Golden Songs, and the list of the second top ten hot songs last year was also dominated by douyin divine songs such as "Mangzhong" and "The World Is So Big or Meet You", but this year it has aroused special attention from public opinion. After the regulatory authorities strictly control the draft and traffic artists, for a long time, the trend of Divine Comedy contracting hot song lists will continue.

Just like the bizarre rural world recorded by Tongkuaishou, some users once felt magical and surprised. "Kuaishou is a mirror of the real world, and what people see in it is a projection of the world." The hot song list calculated by big data, just from the dimension of popularity, is the mainstream choice of the most real 1.4 billion people, reflecting the current music appreciation average, and it is also doomed to not be sunny and white.

TMEA's Top Ten Hits Become "Douyin Top Ten Divine Comedies": Who is deciding the "aesthetic contempt chain" of the Chinese music scene?

Similarly, in October this year, the topic of #How strong is the netmap filter of the #Little Red Book, with 380 million reads and tens of thousands of comments, caused netizens to complain. On October 17, Xiaohongshu posted an apology to users, "Whether it is a user who has experienced disappointment or a user who has not encountered a "cheat", we sincerely apologize." And said that in the future, it will try to launch a scenic spot rating list and a pit list to facilitate users to obtain more diversified information. While puncturing the Internet celebrity bubble, it also triggered another layer of thinking about the freedom of filters and whether aesthetics should be uniform.

According to the "spiral of silence" theory in communication science, most of the typical short video Divine Comedy audience does not have the conditions to make a sound, they are the "silent majority". Music critics, professional musicians, and heavy music fans with a large accumulation occupy the upstream end of the aesthetic contempt chain, setting certain standards for higher value music.

Aesthetics are accelerating fragmentation. But should the "short video divine comedy" be completely rejected? Does it have its own value? The answer still needs to be marked with a question mark. From the "Wild Wolf Disco" that set off a retro wave earlier, to the "Mohe Ballroom" with the fire Mohe Tourism, with billions of traffic and on the Spring Festival Gala stage, these short video divine comedies have achieved a circle breaking in the real sense and entered the mainstream vision. These two blockbuster songs create a multi-level experience with rich storytelling, romantic and retro conflict, and while being loved by the public, they have also been recognized by "elite aesthetics" such as industry insiders and music critics, proving that short video songs are not completely linked to saliva songs, and musicality has been significantly improved with the influx of more high-quality musicians.

Li Zongsheng once commented on Daolang: "I have heard his songs, simple and straightforward, and there is a power that touches the soul of the listener. If a singer wants to win, he must have his own characteristics, such as Daolang's nationality and pop, such as his unadorned personality voice, which I really like. Li Jian said: "Many people think that online songs and folk songs cannot be on the table, but to some extent, popular music is also a contemporary folk song, Daolang's works are very musical, there is an audience and a market, which is the mainstream of contemporary music." These reviews also apply to some short video divine comedies.

Russell once said, "Variability is the source of happiness." The same is true for the tolerance of aesthetic evaluation standards for spiritual and cultural products.

In the end, what kind of hot song list can be born fundamentally depends on the average music literacy of the public, as well as the level of domestic music education, and the "top ten hot songs" are the results of everyone's thumb voting. Gan Dazi said: "With the decline in the cost of music consumption, people have lost their motivation in an environment where it is easier to obtain music resources... If you feel that capital has buried all the good songs in good money, then you should be the one who rebels against capital, take the initiative to dig out the real good songs in the era of scarcity of good songs manipulated by capital, and the moment you find good songs, you have already stood on the head of capital, and I wish everyone can sing some new songs in KTV. ”

Is the Chinese music scene "finished"? The answer is a matter of opinion. Perhaps, in ten years' time, we may wish to revisit the changes in the industry and the changes in aesthetic standards.

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