Text | New Sound Pro, Author | Zhao Ming
「teen forever!」
On April 15th, the popular Japanese rock band king gnu (Wang Niu), who has sung OP for popular animations such as "Jujutsu Kaisensen", at the first concert in mainland China hosted by KILOGLLW and hosted by Sensenjutsu KILOGLLW, fans sang loudly in the first concert in mainland China.
PP, a 27-year-old lawyer from Shanghai, was one of the fans at the scene. When he was a freshman in junior high school, he started his own live music scene from a live broadcast of a twisted machine. After studying, I came to Shanghai and got in touch with more overseas musicians. He called Wang Niu's concert "the best stage I have ever experienced", the strength of the band itself, the choreography brought by the Japanese staff, "especially when I heard "Bubble" and looked up at the lights of the dome, I really had an ethereal feeling of being extracted from my soul. 」
In PP's view, although many people do not understand Rie Inoguchi's talk, art knows no borders, and everyone can feel his enthusiasm and respond to it. "Even in this era when it is becoming more and more difficult to build understanding and trust between people, everyone has been able to establish a brief resonance when singing 'Teenager Forever'. 」
This is a representative music performance after a large number of overseas musicians entered the domestic market this year. In the past year, the music performance market has experienced a "lineup involution", starting with the second half of last year, and after the beginning of spring this year, overseas musicians' performances ushered in a new explosion, returning to and surpassing the pre-epidemic normal.
Judging from the music festivals officially announced on May Day, Strawberry Music Festival, Bubble Island Music Festival, Dream of the Future: Flash Thousand Hands Music Festival, Cactus Music Festival, M_DSK, etc., have recruited more heavyweight internationally renowned musicians such as YOASOBI, HONNE, UNKLE, Fall Out Boy, Travis, etc. In addition, livehouse tours and concerts by overseas musicians are also more densely arranged in first-tier cities.
Through music, people are able to connect with the world and embrace each other in the field. The explosion of performances by overseas musicians is the result of the combined action of commercial logic, aesthetic choices, and social needs.
From a commercial point of view, this is a rational choice for the organizers to get rid of the price war of domestic artists and seek differentiation; from the perspective of music practitioners, this is their mission choice to establish connections and spread culture with music in an era when the world is becoming increasingly fragmented; from the perspective of music fans, this is also a fervent hope to seize a hope in life and find resonance in music that bridges the language gap.
Differential experience
After a year of market blowouts, this spring, the mixed music festival market has gradually entered a reshuffle period, and the change in the musician lineup is one of the manifestations.
From the many music festival lineups that have been released, there are many music festival lineups such as Strawberry Music Festival, Bubble Island Music Festival, Cactus Music Festival, Flash Thousand Hands Music Festival, and M_DSK Music Festival.
Among them, Cactus invited Fall Out Boy to participate in the Chinese mainland music festival for the first time, Beijing Strawberry Music Festival's Travis is a classic and benchmark band in the history of Brit-pop, more than ten years after the last visit to China; Bubble Island Music Festival and Dream of the Future · The festival features the Japanese phenomenal duo YOASOBI, the British avant-garde music group UNKLE and the British electronic music group HONNE......
This is also the natural result of the evolution of the market after last year's "involution".
On the one hand, when music festivals are no longer cultural activities belonging to a specific circle, but have a consumption attribute, the homogenization of content and the rise of artist invitation fees will follow. On the other hand, after three years of the pandemic, there is a growing need to reconnect with the world.
In addition to returning to normalcy, overseas music is another high-quality and broader content library, providing more differentiated, unique, and cost-effective content options.
Last year, Zhang Chongshuo, the former vice president of Modern Sky and the head of the Strawberry Music Festival, founded Chuangyu Unbounded, and the subsequent Bubble Island Music and Art Festival quickly became a high-reputation music festival IP in China. This growth rate has a lot to do with its lineup selection strategy.
"Unique works, unique stage presentations, rare faces, one-of-a-kind collaborations, etc., are all things that we are happy to find and promote. Zhang Chongshuo said.
After inviting French electronic music producer FKJ, Russian post-punk band Motorama, Thai band HYBS and other lineups last year, this year's May Day file, Bubble Island North China Station launched a lineup with a higher content of overseas artists and more attention, including the popular Japanese band YOASOBI, the well-known Swedish band MANDO DIAO, and the British soul electronic group HONNE.
Last year, international musicians accounted for 15 percent, and Zhang Chongshuo said that this year's target is 35 percent. Behind the "international" lineup, he values the pursuit of the uniqueness and long-term value of the festival's IP. For some talented overseas artists, Bubble Island will invest one or two years to invite cooperation. For example, in order to win over the French musician FKJ, who is very popular in China this year, Chuangyu Wujie exchanged more than 170 emails with him and communicated for a year and a half.
At a time when the music festival lineup is gradually moving towards homogenization and causing aesthetic fatigue to young consumers, Bubble Island attaches importance to freshness, and Zhang Chongshuo calls it a new face + new way to play. The former corresponds to artists who rarely perform or perform in China for the first time, such as last year's FKJ, this year's YOASOBI, Mando Diao, etc., and the new way of playing is limited stage cooperation with old faces, such as Wu Qingfeng & Chen Li, Chen Li & Chen Qizhen last year, Zhuang Dafei & Yao Chen this year, etc.
To this end, Chuangyu Wujie has established a "buyer network", on the one hand, it discusses the invitation lineup with special buyers who are good at different regions, and on the other hand, it maintains long-term communication and cooperation with artists and agents in important countries.
Bubble Island's rapid establishment of user minds in the market is also related to Zhang Chongshuo's attention to the music needs of young audiences. He is accustomed to maintaining communication with post-00s professional music fans living overseas, including young creators and heavy music lovers. By playing with young people, he absorbs more needs from young audiences and further improves the product experience of the festival, a consumer product of youth culture.
Music buyers
New Noise, Impactful City Sounds, and Live Nation are playing the role of professional "music buyers" in what Zhang Chongshuo calls them, and "KILOGLOW", which Zhang Ran founded last year, is an emerging force in this. Since 2012, Zhang Ran has established China's first international music industry exchange and trading platform, "Voices of Influential Cities". After being acquired by Modern Sky, Zhang Ran became the Vice President & General Manager of the International Affairs Department of Modern Sky, cooperated with hundreds of groups of musicians, and accumulated a large number of overseas artist resources and experience.
Last year, Zhang Ran realized that this year would be the year of the festival's differentiation war. If the music festival is a competition between restaurants, Zhang Ran wants to be the one who provides the dishes for the restaurants. He decided to start his own business and established "KILOGLOW" to be the organizer of overseas musicians' performances and to provide overseas artist invitation services for other music festival organizers. "Bring to China the scenes of good overseas musicians that we have seen, and the scenes that domestic audiences may enjoy. 」
"We have taken a lot of detours for you," Zhang Ran said, adding that this work involves a lot of cumbersome transactional details, such as the process of applying for visas for musicians from different countries, the approval materials provided by different cities, and the need for experience in international equipment transportation, formal international remittances, and landing stage production.
In addition, there are many unknown risks that the organizers face. When an overseas musician cancels a performance due to force majeure, the overseas musician will not be able to refund the ticket, and the overseas musician will be deemed to be the maximum liability for breach of contract and will not be compensated for any other damages. However, for domestic organizers, the taxes and fees when making international remittances are also "wasted".
As a professional music buyer, providing a good live experience is the basic criterion when selecting musicians. Zhang Ran divides musicians into pop musicians and independent musicians. The former will look at the number of listeners, fans, and review quality of platforms such as spotify, NetEase cloud music, QQ Music, apple music, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu, while from the perspective of independent musicians, he tends to those musicians with their own distinctive characteristics, background stories, and recognition.
Compared to three years ago, there are more Japanese musicians coming to China today. Young people such as the post-90s and post-00s generations are deeply influenced by ACG culture, and independent music such as Japanese rock, folk, and electronic music is also very popular in China. This, combined with the proximity of geographical proximity and low travel costs, and the fact that Japanese musicians value past collaboration experience more than the price of their bids – in turn, is the reason for the relative decline in the number of overseas musicians in Europe and the United States.
As a promoter, in the past six months, KILOGLOW has booked overseas musicians for the Bubble Island Music Festival, Universe Island Music Festival, Dream Future Music Festival, West Lake Music Festival, Xiami Music Festival, etc., and has also held FKJ, King Gnu, and ずっと真夜中でいいのに. , HYBS, 水曜日のカンパネラ and other bands on China tour.
After cooperating with many music festival organizers, Zhang Ran found that the market level is actually uneven, and many music festivals do not have the ability to be overseas artists in terms of backstage reception or stage presentation.
"If most music festivals just put together traffic artists, then what else does this industry need us to do? Why do we do this industry? This deviates from our original purpose of being a music industry. Although he considered the festival to be "the least profitable, the most risky, and more complicated to operate", he decided to run his own music festival belonging to KILOGLOW. "I want to provide high-quality performances for professional music fans who love music, and for those who love music, we think we can see the best performances. 」
After that, the organizers of the West Lake Music Festival, Dakuai Culture and Creative Entertainment, joined to make the Flash Thousand Hands Music Festival take shape in Hangzhou. As a domestic music festival with the highest international lineup, it has attracted the attention of a large number of music fans.
Cultural scene
If the music festival is a large-scale youth event and a large-scale traffic entrance to the music industry, a small livehouse is more inclined to a cultural scene, a music transit station for urban residents to live alone and provide aesthetic and cultural life for urban residents.
Bandai Namco Shanghai Cultural Center is one of the venues chosen by many overseas musicians in Shanghai. As early as 2006, Yang Yumin operated China's first livehouse Beijing Starlight Live, which was also the first venue to invite overseas musicians to perform in China. In 2011, she was involved in the initial construction of the Bandai Namco Shanghai Cultural Center, supporting the music performances and incubation scene there.
This year's blowout of performances by overseas musicians is also reflected in the schedule of Bandai Namco. Yang Yumin said that this year's weekend schedule of the venue has basically been filled, and the proportion of overseas musicians' performances has reached 50%. Taking the April schedule as an example, more than half of the performances are from overseas musicians, including Soshina Itsuki, Short Paris, April Rain, Naotaro Moriyama, etc.
Bandai Namco Shanghai Cultural Center was first founded by Zhu Yin, chairman of Xingzai Culture, who used Japanese experience standards to improve the configuration of the venue, such as leaving a space for bathing in the backstage, and the stage side car can be driven directly onto the stage. For a city like Shanghai, where there are many venues, the level of configuration also determines the advantages of content introduction.
Shanghai is regarded as China's western wharf and a must-pass for many overseas musicians when they come to China. "We see our platform as an offline transit point for musicians and audiences. Yang Yumin said. In addition to being a venue, the star culture behind Bandai Namco is also bringing in more overseas musicians on its own.
SUM41's farewell performance at Bandai Namco Shanghai Cultural Center
How to make young audiences interested in overseas musicians who are not familiar with it? Yang Yumin said that when deciding on cooperation, he will pay attention to the stories behind those musicians. "Young people need stories, and music has its own story. 」
For example, Keigo Oyamada, a musician that Yang Yumin has loved for many years, has influenced a generation of young musicians as the godfather of Shibuya music. "It would be perfunctory to summarize some musicians only in terms of avant-garde and experimental, but in fact they are also the founders, witnesses and experiencers of a certain period of historical development. 」
Although most people still target consumption, there are also some young people who have established the habit of watching performances, and will take the initiative to learn about new musicians and watch performances through the introduction of the venue.
On the other hand, in a city like Shanghai, where there are more venues, some venues also need to supplement their content with performances by overseas musicians.
After the end of the epidemic, the content dilemma of livehouse is not over, and with the explosion of the music festival market, many waist musicians who used to tour livehouse have chosen music festivals with more lucrative remuneration.
A healthy musician market should be spindle-shaped, but now it's a dumbbell – a little hit single is known to the public through the Internet, and a musician with a waist can go to the festival and get more exposure, and on the other hand, there are a lot of unseen musicians who need to be on tour, but for practical reasons, it is difficult for the venue to afford the risks of such performances.
In the above situation, overseas musicians have filled the vacancy of domestic waist musicians livehouse performances to a certain extent. However, as the competition for domestic musicians gradually spreads to overseas musicians, in a city like Shanghai, which has a large number of venues, "sitting and waiting for performances is too passive", and some venue managers are also planning to host their own musicians to tap more overseas musicians and control the content from the upstream.
Individual Links
In addition to music performances based on commercial logic, some communities built on the culture of the same people also maintain the musical connection between community members and the outside world through their own continuous vertical cultivation.
Different from the organizers and venues mentioned above, "Other Music" is built on the media influence accumulated by "BIE Other" over the years, forming a community with youth culture as the core, gathering a large number of young people who like music, culture and art, many of whom are creators themselves.
The "BIE Other" team has always had musical genes. The founder, Meng Jinhui, hopes to use the media platform and cultural influence he has established to make music a stronger language and form of connection among "BIE" brands through record distribution and performance hosting.
"Especially when the world is becoming fragmented and there is less and less dialogue. Music communicates and connects, and is a point of connection for dialogue from the perspective of the individual and the person. 」
Despite the restrictions on offline performances in the past three years, Other Music has continued to maintain communication with the world through global release of records, recommending musicians to perform at overseas music festivals, and co-creating content with overseas music festivals such as Le Guess Who in the Netherlands.
In 2018, Other Music founded bié Records, an independent label that distributes music to the world. Meng Jinhui hopes to break the Western-centric state of music, so that music can get rid of industrial standards and return to "fun" and "spirituality".
Compilation album Living Water: An Ongoing Discussion on the Fusion and Co-evolution of Eastern and Western Music, Triggered by Zhou Wenzhong
Bié Records' "Living Water" compilation album released last year is an attempt to bring Chinese-American composer Zhou Wenzhong into the eyes of more music fans. From the perspective of cultural exchange and integration, Zhou Wenzhong once talked about East and West, ancient and modern, and also echoed contemporary musicians. "As their explorations deepened, Chinese musicians who were first influenced by Western music began to think more about their own identity and culture. Meng Jinhui said. The collaboration with the South American label Shika Shika also allowed two labels and artists from different cultures to remix and produce each other's music, completing the exchange and collision.
Regarding the international music market, Meng Jinhui feels that if Europe and the United States still played a central role in the past, after the end of the epidemic, more and more fresh independent music from Africa, Asia and South America has emerged.
"We don't see ourselves as a promoter, our choices are based on our own aesthetics and preferences. It's not just the music that we value, it's the culture behind it and the people we connect with based on the music we choose. In his view, the large-scale music scene is more of a pop culture product, and small-scale events play a role as a cultural link.
Last year, "Other Music" held a "Farewell Party" in Aranya Jinshanling, which brought the Chinese premiere of many groups of overseas musicians, and it was also the first music festival after the epidemic with overseas musicians as the main lineup. Meng Jinhui hopes that the "other gatherings" will maintain an appropriate size, "because it is a vertical event, the purpose of the event is more consistent, the communication is more in-depth, and it is easier to attract like-minded people and build empathy. 」
From a personal point of view, for Zhang Ran, "music" is more than just a performance or a business cooperation. Just like during the epidemic, many musicians who have worked with him in the past sent him messages to ask if they needed to send supplies. The intensive communication and sharing with musicians during the tour cycle will also lead to a strong friendship between people across languages.
The music scene also represents infinite possibilities for Yang Yumin. When she fell in love with the freedom of rock music at a young age, "freedom in music, generosity in music" is also a state of mind for her as a behind-the-scenes driver of youth culture. "The promotion of culture requires these people who are quietly doing things behind the scenes," she said, "to make good use of the space we have now, to create culture, to promote communication, and to promote more possibilities together." 」
The practitioner's passion for music is ultimately reflected in each listener's experience. This is also the charm of going to the scene. Just like PP after meeting Wang Niu, "I feel that I am really alive instead of living in vain, I feel the vigor and sincerity of the musicians I love, I feel that there is not much distance between us, it is really like miyavi's "Under the Same Sky" singing, and I feel the phrase 'Now here to hold you'. 」