Source of this article: Time Weekly Author: Tu Mengying
Singer-songwriter Zhang Lichao is 30 years old this year. He has been on fire, and his original "I am alone in Nanchang" has been played on the short video platform more than 10 million.
Today, he has some songs he has written, but he doesn't have time to produce them, because most of the time he relies on commercial performances and hosts to make a living.
There are many such music creators, some people create songs that are popular on the Internet, but the copyright fee is only a few hundred yuan per month, and some works are too niche, and it even takes more than ten years to recover production costs.
Not long ago, Wu Xiangfei, a well-known songwriter who had written songs for singers such as Eason Chan, complained about universal music copyright because of copyright fees, even if Eason Chan sang the song "The Road Has Always Been There", in the list of universal music copyright fees, it only brought him 271 yuan a year.
The copyright company takes most of the creator's income. "If it had been like this, who would have written songs?" Wu Xiangfei was indignant, "Writing songs, it is better to pick up waste." ”
On the other hand, the online music war between internet giants is in full swing. Tencent Music once paid $350 million plus $100 million in equity to obtain the exclusive rights of Universal Music, while from 2018 to 2020, NetEase Cloud Music's cumulative cost of purchasing copyright content services in three years reached 9.6 billion yuan.
Users who listen to songs are not stingy, and Tencent Music's annual revenue in 2020 is as high as 29.15 billion yuan.
As Tencent "gladly accepts" and hands over the exclusive online copyright it holds, the user-side of music creation and the online music platform pattern will undergo new changes.
The living conditions of music creators are still not optimistic.
According to the "2020 General Report on the Development of China's Music Industry" released by the Communication University of China, 52% of musicians have no music income, and 100% of musicians rely on music income, accounting for only 7%.
But the number of musicians is exploding. According to NetEase Cloud Music data, in 2020, the total number of Chinese musicians exceeded 200,000, an increase of 100% year-on-year.
Recently, the Time Weekly reporter interviewed a number of music creators. They told their stories peacefully, without sorrow or joy.
(Source: Visual China)
Tension Super:
What about the song, I may starve to death with music alone
In 2012, I released my first song. I was a college student at the time and used my spare time to participate in off-campus singing competitions. After getting the rank, I sold the prize and exchanged it for cash to release my own songs. From the sophomore year to the present, he has also released many original songs.
In 2018, "I am alone in Nanchang" was on fire, which is a song with regional feelings, a bit like Zhao Lei's "Chengdu". This song has been played more than 10 million times on Douyin, and for every ten local Douyin users in Nanchang, eight people have used this song as background music.
But the song is on fire, and I still don't have a decent income. Kugou, NetEase Cloud Music and QQ Music are several major platforms combined, and the copyright fee given to me every month is only 400-500 yuan.
However, during the most popular period, there were more opportunities to perform. There are 6-7 performances a month, with an average of one or two thousand commercial performances per week, and there are one or two thousand people on a small scale, and tens of thousands of people in large ones, and the monthly income has doubled several times.
At that time, there were suddenly many so-called friends around me, and every day people invited me to dinner and wanted to know me. The heat passed, and all those friends were gone. Some people think that I wrote songs for consumption in Nanchang, and some people think that I copied "Chengdu", but in fact, my songs were released earlier.
Now, I don't have many performance opportunities, on average, one and a half a month, or even less. Originally, there was a show in July, and if I could perform smoothly, my mortgage for the next two months would have gone, but the show was canceled.
(Zhang Lichao, courtesy of the interviewee)
Over the years, my most regrettable and sad thing is that I didn't let my mother see me on TV. In 2017, CCTV had a program that asked me to record, and I needed to shoot a story in the early stage. At that time, my mother was suffering from cancer, and the program team also let me go to the hospital to shoot an interview video, and my mother felt very relieved that my son could go on CCTV, but in the end this program did not let me participate.
Soon after, my mother died and she didn't see my performance on TV. I will never forget this in my life, this is my heart knot, I may not be able to live in my life.
In order to fulfill my mother's last wishes, I realized that I had to try to realize the life event of getting married and having children as much as possible, and the musical dream had to be slowed down a little. Many songs have already been written, but I haven't recorded them yet, and I haven't produced or released them. Because life is very stressful now, there is a mortgage every month.
With music alone, I might starve to death. As far as I know, most of my peers are like this, and they have to find some other way to make ends meet. In addition to commercial performances, I also take over the work of the host and take videos to receive advertisements on Douyin.
No matter what, in the future, I will continue to make music, and people must have faith and love when they live. Just sticking to your hobbies while being able to support yourself is the most basic. If you have not eaten all the time, what time and energy do you have to pursue what you love?
Zhang Hanyuan:
With no money to take the bus, my drummer friend ran a few kilometers home with dumplings
I am 42 years old and graduated from a teachers' college majoring in music. 20 years ago, I gave up my job as a music teacher and came to Beijing. I've been in the music making industry for 26 years, but to be honest, the first 15 years were just a build-up process, including ability, circle, and experience.
For 10 of those years, I made ends meet by playing the piano in hotels.
Since 2001, I have been playing the piano and singing in many hotel bars in Beijing, playing at a fixed time every day, and I can get thousands of yuan a month. There is a very well-known five-star hotel in Wangfujing, and I played the piano there for ten years and three months.
During this long time, I tried to find opportunities for my work to be listened to by more people.
Finally, the opportunity came. In 2009, a friend invested in a movie, the production was completed to require the theme song, in the case of the lyrics determined, my composition was successfully selected, the song was sung by the lead BOBO group of the film at that time, the members of the group are now known as Fu Xinbo and Jing Bairan.
Around 2010, I had an important turning point in my music career. By chance, I met the well-known singer Zhou Yanhong, when her company was preparing to sign a new person, I sent her more than twenty songs I created, she listened to it and admired it, so she signed a 7-year contract with me. After that, I slowly became a professional creator, but before that, I had been writing songs for 15 years.
Now, my main job is to write songs and music production, although the popularity in the circle is not as high as the big names, but it is impossible for everyone to be Jay Chou. As a music singer-songwriter, it is already good to have a small position in the industry on your own.
(Photo courtesy of Zhang Hanyuan interviewee)
It's a really brutal line. In the early years, I formed a band with my friends, but soon disbanded because of survival problems, and after the dissolution, I became a pianist. On New Year's Day that year, I met the band's drummer on the road, and I asked him what he was going to do, and he said he was penniless and hadn't eaten yet, so he went to a friend's house to get leftover dumplings. Because he didn't have money to take the car, he packed the dumplings in a plastic bag, carried them in his pocket, and prepared to trot two or three kilometers all the way back to the place where he lived.
Just thinking about this, I am particularly sad, it is really difficult to be able to keep making music. Like my drummer friend, after the band disbanded, it was very depressing. The music industry, unlike other industries, can be quickly employed, especially songwriters, in the early stage of creation, if there is no well-known work, it will be a lonely and economically embarrassing state for a long time.
Especially if it is an original song, if you want to release it yourself to obtain copyright revenue, there is no large amount of capital investment behind it, and there is no way to achieve it. "A song is likely to take 10 years to get back the production cost, because if the song is not hot, the monthly income may be dozens of yuan, or even a few dollars."
I was a music teacher in a training class in Shijiazhuang that year, and I took more than 100 students before and after, and most of them later went to the north, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to develop, and after many years, among the more than 100 people, less than 5 people insisted that they were still making music, and everyone else changed careers because of various problems.
I feel like the music scene right now is like a hodgepodge, there are all kinds of genres, and overall, it's booming. As long as everyone has a musical dream, they can become free musicians and use various platforms to promote their works, but there will also be some problems behind them.
For example, the threshold is lowered, resulting in shoddy manufacturing. Many people are not professional, and they cannot achieve excellent standards in all aspects of equipment and production, resulting in many musical works being varied and uneven.
Sukey：
Our songs are placed on the music platform, but there is almost no revenue
In 2014, I was 16 years old, in a 48-series girl group in China, belonging to the third term of the group. In the girls' group for a few years, they will receive some commercial performances or sing and dance in the exclusive theater. At that time, the concept of girl group was not very popular, and we were a sister group cooperating with a well-known Japanese star girl group.
In the women's group, the income is not high, I am not a head member, or I am a package to eat and live, and the salary is close to the white-collar level. As the year increases, some basic salary will be gradually increased, and the other is to see the commission of foreign affairs arranged by the company.
(Photo courtesy of Sukey's girl group period interviewee)
After leaving the group, the biggest feeling is to become free, mentally relaxed, and there are not so many restrictions on identity. Before, I had to work hard to be an idol, sweet and youthful, and many styles could not be tried, but now I can.
But the main pressure now is that income is unstable.
Over the years, I've been working as an independent musician and have my own band, but I also take on other jobs, such as graphic shooting, part-time piano teacher, etc. I know very well that if you just engage in bands, it is difficult to have a stable income.
Truth be told, most indie bands don't yet have a way to earn a decent income from song copyright, and we're no exception. Our songs are placed on the NetEase cloud music platform, but there is almost no revenue.
Performance revenue is also minimal. In Shanghai, our band will be invited to perform at livehouse, a small venue of hundreds of people, tickets in 40-50 yuan, even if the tickets are sold out, in addition to the venue fees and other costs and miscellaneous fees, the band will be divided equally under a few hundred yuan.
More often, the band performs as two people, and if they receive a slightly larger commercial performance, they will also form a five-person lineup. A fairly good scale commercial performance, after the negotiation of intermediate brokers, and then divided into our hands, each person can have about 2,000 yuan. If it is a particularly hot band, the middle introduces people after drawing more.
(Sukey performs in the band, courtesy of the interviewee)
Recently, there have been fewer performances, I took a musical, signed a 2-month short-term contract with the crew, got up before 8 o'clock every morning, had to catch the subway for a long time, and went to work with white-collar workers.
For traffic and popularity, I don't have much hope anymore and go with the flow. From joining the girl group to now, after so many years, my mentality has been constantly undergoing changes, and I will no longer aspire to overnight fame.
In fact, in the past two years, there are many bands in China that are particularly popular, but there is also a curve that has attracted attention, and most of the band appearance fees will one day come down with the heat, and what will they live on at that time?
The heat is the icing on the cake, or do the music well, and live your life well.
Su Hang:
Selling songs 18 years ago made 3,000 yuan and felt like an upstart
I have been in this industry for more than twenty years, and I have known many people. For example, Xu Song and Li Ronghao, who were also in Anhui, in 2005, I often interacted with them, and At that time, Li Ronghao's music DEMO was already very good. They didn't fire at first, but then they slowly developed better than me, and I began to reflect.
In the process of reflection, looking back on my own experience, in fact, I began to sell songs very early.
In 2000, when I was exposed to recording on the Internet, I began to study how to use my music to promote on the Internet. In those days, if you weren't a star and a singer, it would be difficult to release music by your own ability because it was too expensive. But at that time, I began to use the Internet, publish my own works on some music platforms, and also introduce relationships through various friends, and slowly integrate into the circle.
In 2003, I sold my original songs on the Internet for the first time for 3,000 yuan, at that time, in our small county town in Anhui, the salary of civil servants was only 800 yuan a month, and the money from selling songs made me feel like an upstart.
The money was used at the time to help my father's printing house turn around a certain financial pressure. Since then, my family has never objected to me making music.
When I was in my hometown in Anhui County, I still made a small fuss. I've formed a band purely for fun, and every time I scrape together money to contract a theater show, most of the tickets are given away for free.
(Photo courtesy of Su Hang and his band interviewee)
In 2004, the band announced its dissolution, and I devoted myself to music creation and study, and successively sold many works, the highest price of a song, sold for 30,000 yuan.
After that, he went to Beijing and Guangzhou, and signed 3 record companies. But around 2013, feeling like I had been doing music for more than a decade and not making much money, I started to think about why.
(Photo courtesy of Su Hang interviewee)
After a sober analysis, I began to understand that the people who control the resources in the uppermost part of the entire music industry, that is, the companies that do copyright, are in the hands of these companies. In contrast, most musicians definitely don't make money, so I started to make a transition to copyright.
In 2015, I founded a copyright company called Suka Music and began to provide services related to music copyright, and musicians, record companies, copyright investors, and copyright owners are all my service objects. In the past few years of contact with copyright, I have realized that many musicians do not understand the relevant copyright knowledge, which is not conducive to their survival and development, because the most basic basis for musicians is to rely on works to eat.
Now, I will publish a video of copyright knowledge science in Douyin under the pseudonym of "Su Xiaojia", hoping to let more musicians understand copyright knowledge, have copyright awareness, and do not let their hard-earned works fall to nothing. Let everyone know that as long as the work is good enough, it can get good income through copyright.
The line is mixed. On the one hand, the domestic music market has a lot of opportunities to develop for young musicians, but because most of them are purely commercial operations, there is a conflict with the idealism of musicians; on the other hand, capital monopolizes resources, the income treatment of musicians is not fair, and good opportunity resources are still in the hands of a few people.