flyer by been

颜峻的私人客厅巡游刚刚结束，近三个月里，他在不同的私人空间一共顺利地完成了九场演出，参于过的人应该深有体会。在场的观众较容易全心的观看，更自然的静心聆听，更是少了在公共场所的嘈杂且避开了烟酒等社交工具所带来的浓浓气味，或许猜这就是客厅巡演的初衷。

Veteran sound artist Yan Jun has just finished a three-month-long tour of living rooms in Beijing, altogether encompassing nine unique performances, each leaving a deep impression on the people who participated. No noisy distractions of public spaces, no bar, no loud socializing… the audience of each private performance was allowed to simply listen and meditate in a closed domestic space. This was the goal of the tour.

闯入一个陌生的空间，坐等发声，眼神取代了语言交流，信息介于扩声器的频响范围之内，中途或者失去耐性，或者进入睡眠，甚或中枢兴奋，这都没有关系，没有人打算干扰你的自由，这本身即是一场声音触发性的行动。

Enter a strange room, sit and wait for the sound, communicate with eyes instead of spoken language. Information is mediated by the frequency ranges of the microphone, personal feedback. During the performance maybe you lose patience, maybe you fall asleep… it doesn’t matter. No one obstructs your freedom. In itself, the performance is about sound triggering personal reactions.

这次我们邀请颜峻在OUTDUSTRY办公室露天的小院里演出，并不是客厅巡演主题，而是于他私人客厅巡游之后的个人专场演出，但同样是走入一个他从未到的空间，给我们的耳朵制造不同的听觉体验。

Now Outdustry invites Yan Jun to perform at our headquarters, a small outdoor courtyard. It won’t be quite the same experience as a living room. It’s more like a normal performance, a follow-up, but similar in the sense that the artist will be improvising for the first time in a new space, and will give our ears a new sense and experience of hearing.

2011年10月14号，7点

Oct 14th, 2011, 7:00pm

北京东城区八宝坑胡同6号 [地图]

No.6 Babaokeng hutong,dongcheng district [map]

门票30元（免费的啤酒）

ticket: 30 RMB (free beer)

about the artist:

YAN JUN: yanjun.org

颜峻，声音工作者，文字工作者。

1973年出生于兰州。中文系毕业。住在北京。

作为即兴演奏者，近期现场使用反馈噪音，听多于演奏，乐器则处于控制和无法控制之间。创作亦涉及田野录音及相关声音艺术，人声，写作，出版。

撒把芥末/观音唱片发起者。2005年发明了实验音乐活动“水陆观音”和Mini Midi音乐节。

现为FEN（Fareast Network，大友良英，柳汉吉，袁志伟，颜峻）乐队成员。

曾在中港台及各国演出展览，2011年受亚洲文化协会资助在纽约驻村。

Yan Jun, working with sound and language.

Born in Lanzhou in 1973. Based in Beijing. B.A. of Chinese Literature.

As an improviser he uses feedback noise in recent concerts. He also does field recording, site-specific sound art, voice and writing.

Founder of Sub Jam/Kwanyin Records, which coordinated the weekly Waterland Kwanyin event series (2005-2010) and annual festival Mini Midi (since 2005).

Member of FEN (Fareast Network, Otomo Yoshihide, Ryu Hankil, Yuen Cheewai and Yan Jun).

He has performed extensively in China and internationally, enjoying support from the Asian Cultural Council as a resident musician in New York in 2011.

几段视听 mp3 and video: myspace.com/yanjunyanjun

一个新集体博客，以及电台 a new group blog and online radio station: miji.subjam.org

联系 contact: subjam at gmail dot com

Rampant piracy and a lack of transparency have long complicated efforts by record labels to do business in China. Still, for those willing to be flexible and patient, the Middle Kingdom could still prove to be a useful laboratory for new business models.

Relative to it’s potential, China’s music market remains microscopic. Recorded music sales totalled just $82 million in 2008, up 8% from a year earlier, according to IFPI data. But digital sales, which accounted for 62% of total music sales, provide a glimmer of hope, having surged 45% last year to $50.4 million.

Ed Peto, founder of the music business consultancy Outdustry in Beijing, believes artists must adopt a 360 degree approach to China. The man on the ground for the Beggars Group of labels, Peto works to tap a network of promoters, critics, DJs and Web entrepreneurs to position acts aiming to connect with Chinese music fans. Asked to identify the best means to promote music in China, Peto cautions that no single platform would suffice, given the China market’s fast pace: “The menu could change at any minute,” he says.

1. Land a billing at Beijing’s premiere live music event, the Modern Sky Music Festival

Founded in 2007 by Modern Sky record label boss Shen Lihui, past festival headliners included U.S. rockers Yeah Yeah Yeahs and local heroes Carsick Cars. This year’s event will be held Oct 4-7 at Beijing’s Chaoyang Park and will feature a roster including British Sea Power, the Buzzcocks, the Futureheads and Shonen Knife. Peto says Modern Sky is better organized than previous Chinese rock festivals, boasting sponsorship support, a wider range of bands and a more professional staff. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a really significant step up,” he says. Peto also suggests licensing a record to a local label first then using the fest to promote it. And don’t go shouting about politics like Bjork did about Tibet in 2008. “That incident did a disservice to everyone working hard for incremental change in music in China,” he says. “It is getting better, but she set things back five years.”

(Update: It is worth noting that Modern Sky Festival ran into some….’trouble’ this year, after the article was published. The week before the event, the organisers were told that none of the international bands would be allowed to play)

2. Hire an intern to start a discussion thread about a single or album on Douban.com

Douban.com is the most transparent, frank, witty and active collection of critical writing about music, books and films in the Chinese blogosphere. Knowledgeable music editor Xu Bo is also the guitarist for one of the capital’s top bands, the post-folk punk quartet P.K.14.

Peto says 80% of the traffic to Outdustry’s online community/record label site MicroMu comes from Douban. “It is the light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “It’s what Myspace China wishes it could be.”

3. Make friends with Kelly ‘ZhaZha’ Cha

Cha is an influential TV/radio host educated partly in the United States whose shows on Hunan Satellite Television (“Midnight Mindtwist”), China Radio International’s Easy FM and the video channel of popular Web portal Sina.com (“The ZhaZhaClub Show”) expose fans to imported music by playing songs and discussing lyrics in English and Chinese. “She’s like a champion for Western music across a number of platforms in China,” Peto says.

4. License music to R2G

R2G is a Beijing-based online music distribution platform whose custom-built software detects illegal electronic listings of songs, then uses documentation of those posts (and the courts, if necessary) to negotiate legitimate royalty payments for future downloads from Web sites. Privately owned R2G takes a cut of the payments and thus far appears to have survived China’s Wild West environment by focusing on songs downloaded and used as ringtones and ringback tones by the nation’s 430 million cell phone subscribers. Peto calls R2G “the most transparent and Western-friendly of the music distribution sites in China”.

5. Upload a video to Youku

Youku is China’s largest online video portal. As with YouTube, a channel can be set up for free, pages customized and videos uploaded. “It is definitely worth adding Chinese and English subtitles,” Peto says. “Lyrics are very important to Chinese people, and having the translation there really adds value as the video also becomes an educational tool.” By posting a video, Chinese music fans can better appreciate a band’s over-all presentation, he says, noting that “where your music might not be particularly culturally applicable, your video might pique interest, be plucked from obscurity by the editorial team or community and hit a a feature page.”

Billboard article used with permission of Nielsen Business Media, Inc.

Outdustry’s in-house net-label MicroMu is proud to present a special performance from it’s first international signing, Fink…..

As the first acoustic act on legendary electronic label Ninja Tune, Fink has carved a unique path as a singer-songwriter. With a background in downtempo beat production and top level remix work, his brand of acoustic music is distinctly modern while remaining deeply intimate as a live show; a formula which has seen him share the stage with the likes of Zero 7 and Massive Attack and earned him rave reviews around the world:

“Mean moody and magnificent. One of the most original singer-songwriters around.” – Clash

“…say hello to your new soundtrack.” – NME

“Surprises when you least expect it. Sort of Revolution refuses to succumb to the obvious.” - Mojo

Fink will be performing solo-acoustic for two small shows in Beijing (MAO Live on Nov 5th) and Shanghai (Yuyintang on Nov 6th), followed by a mainstage appearance at Clockenflap Festival in Hong Kong (Nov 8th).

Acoustic legend Wan Xiaoli will be supporting Fink in Beijing. Shanghai support to be announced…

Tickets 50RMB in advance, 60RMB on the door

http://micromu.com

http://douban.com/artist/finkmusic

http://myspace.com/finkmusic

]]> http://www.outdustry.com/2009/10/26/micromu-presents-fink/feed/ 0 http://www.outdustry.com/2009/09/08/press-release-english-beggars-china-launch/ http://www.outdustry.com/2009/09/08/press-release-english-beggars-china-launch/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:34:36 +0000 Outdustry http://outdustry.com/?p=675

贝格集团登陆中国 BEGGARS GROUP LAUNCH BEGGARS CHINA

贝格集团继续扩大其全球网络，如今与其在中国的独家代表Outdustry(格外音乐)合作，并推出了一个中文（www.beigecn.com）网站.

Continuing to broaden their worldwide network, the Beggars Group are working with Outdustry as their exclusive representatives in Beijing and are also launching a dedicated website for Mandarin speakers (www.beggarschina.com).

实物唱片发行将在未来的几个月里由中国当地的京文唱片和台湾的HI-NOTE唱片发行。完整的歌曲目录可以通过音乐移动数字服务公司wa3.cn进行网上查询、认购. 此外，AlT风格的摇滚乐队“British sea power”是这种合作关系的第一个受益者，他们已准备在香港，台湾等地演出，并将于今年10月来北京参加摩登天空音乐节。

Key physical releases will be released in the coming months through local labels Jingwen and Hi-Note, while the full catalogue will become available through wa3.cn for online subscription and mobile distribution. Furthermore, the new partnership will be working hard to get Beggars Group artists in to the territory and the first to benefit are British Sea Power, who are playing shows in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Modern Sky Festival in Beijing this October.

引用 QUOTES:

“从我们的初次参加了由AIM和英国贸易投资总署主办之旅的中国之旅以来，我们一直在访问中国，并对中国进行了数年的接触，如今我们很兴奋的宣布与 Outdustry(格外音乐)正式合作，Outdustry(格外音乐)是一个最前沿的公司，致力于帮助排除中西方音乐的市场差异。我们已经见证到中国的音乐市场相当有活力，中 国的音乐发展非常迅速，对我们来说这个市场充满了挑战和良机。我们相信，通过将我们的艺术家推向市场，强化市场意识建设品牌形象，我们将在众多机遇选择中 处于有利地位。” (Simon Wheeler, Beggars集团 ）

“From our first trip organised by AIM and UKTI, we’ve been visiting China and developing our contacts there for a number of years now so it’s exciting to announce our partnership with Outdustry, a company at the forefront for helping bridge the gap between China and the western music market. We’ve witnessed there’s a vibrant music scene within China and awareness of western music is developing fast so it’ll be a challenging market for us to work in. We’re confident that by bringing our artists into the market and building awareness for our labels, we’ll be in a good position to take advantage of whatever opportunities arise.” – Simon Wheeler, Beggars Group

“中国音乐市场需要激进的思想以及真正的冒险意识，这两个优点毫无疑问贝格集团都已向大家证明。贝格在中国的发展是一项开拓性的项目，通过Outdustry(格外音乐)我们期待能帮助此项目初具规模.” （艾德 Peto, Outdustry | 格外音乐）

“The Chinese music market requires radical thinking and a real sense of adventure, two qualities which Beggars have proved to have in spades. The development of Beggars China is a pioneering project and we here at Outdustry are looking forward to helping this take shape.” – Ed Peto, Outdustry

更多信息 FURTHER INFORMATION:

贝格集团的音乐重心是针对独立音乐。成立于1976年，集团旗下目前包括四个活跃的唱片厂牌（4AD，Matador 唱片, Rough Trade唱片和XL 唱片），并被认为是世界最大的独立音乐厂牌。

The Beggars Group’s musical focus is fiercely independent. Founded in 1976, the Group now consists of four active labels (4AD, Matador Records, Rough Trade Records and XL Recordings) and is considered to be one of the largest Independent Group of labels in the World.

目前与之合作的艺术家包括:

Artists currently working with the above labels include:

Adele, Anthony & The Johnsons, Basement Jaxx, Beck, Belle & Sebastian, The Big Pink, Blonde Redhead, Bon Iver, Camera Obscura, Cat Power, Jarvis Cocker, F_cked Up, The Hold Steady, Mogwai, Monsters of Folk, M.I.A., My Morning Jacket, Mystery Jets, The National, The Raconteurs, Radiohead, Scott Walker, Sigur Rós, Sonic Youth, The Strokes, Super Furry Animals, Emilina Torrini, TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, The White Stripes, Yo La Tengo and The XX.

Outdustry(格外音乐)是一家专门从事市场进驻，项目发展，中西方音乐产业合作的专业的中介公司。目前曾经服务过的公司包括：Sterling Sound，可口可乐， Transmit，伦敦发展代理处以及NBC美国全国广播公司。

More info on Outdustry can be found here.

网址 WEBLINKS:

http://beggarschina.com

http://beggars.com

http://outdustry.com

As a market where digital content has largely been free from the get-go, China is an obvious case study along with other developing nations such as Brazil. Chris has therefore devoted a chapter to these markets, looking at how people are dealing with such realities.

I met Chris for breakfast during one of his research visits to China towards the end of 2007 and, amongst other things, outlined the basic concept of MicroMu (不插店) to him a good 8 months before we actually got round to trying the idea out. A year and a half later (and a year into the MicroMu project) and our copy of Free arrives through the post, complete with a whole page devoted to MicroMu as an example of an experimental free music model:

“”The moment you put a fee on accessing music in China is the moment you cut off 90% of your audience,” says Peto. “[Paying for*] Music is a luxury for the middle class in China, a flippant expenditure. This model works against that. We simply use free music and media as a way of saying that ‘everyone is welcome’, building a dialogue, building a community, becoming the trusted brand of the grassroots music movement in China. To do this though, we have to become all things to all men: record label, online community, live events producers, merchandise sellers, tv production company.”

*Just to clarify: It is the idea of paying for music and not the idea of music itself that is a luxury for the middle class. The words “paying for” were not included in the original text.

The pressure is on to deliver! Many thanks for the mention Chris and good luck with the book launch.

© Outdustry 2009

It seems like it has been a hell of a lot longer, but our little concept record label MicroMu (known in Chinese as 不插店, or ‘Buchadian’), turns 1 year old today. You can feel paternal pride radiating throughout Outdustry HQ as we package up a one year compilation album of b-sides and rarities to celebrate:

Zip file album download, or track by track:

1.Zhao Guang – No Cloud In The Sky

2.Liu Dongming – Bird’s Nest

3.Gangzi – Untitled

4.Zhang Yiding – Red Scarf

5.Zhang Weiwei – Song

6.Wu Ningyue – The Lotus Blossom

7.Zhang Qianqian – Improvisation

8.6 Kings – Drinking Song

9.Di Ku Ai – Migrant Bird

10.Shouwang – Run Away

11.Liquid Oxygen – All Things Are Uncertain

12.Wu Junde – Lullaby

13.Li Zhi – Happy When You Feel Pain

MicroMu is our attempt at a sustainable record label model in an environment where people, by and large, aren’t used to paying for music. The solution? Give music (and lots of other things) away for free, build a loyal community around it all, and then support this (largely) through a partnership with a brand who shares your audience. Or, as we say in our label intro:

MicroMu is an experimental, sponsor-driven, free-to-user record label model designed to discover new talent, create original music and reward artists in seemingly impossible conditions.

It is obviously a lot more complicated in reality and in the long run involves a number of other areas of revenue generation, but you get the gist. I’m sure at some point we will get round to laying the whole thing out for you but we are still in a very ‘developmental’ stage so don’t feel justified in holding ourselves up as a successful case study quite yet.

How It All Began

Back in June 2008, we were putting on a show for folk legend Zhou Yunpeng in Beijing and were looking for a suitable support act. We heard demos from a young singer songwriter in Nanjing called Zhao Guang and liked what we heard to the extent that we paid for the engineering student to travel up to Beijing and support one of his all time heros. It seemed a waste for Zhao Guang to come and go without doing some recording while he was up here. It’s just that we didn’t have a record label.

The MicroMu concept had been fully laid out at Outdustry some time before, but this recording opportunity with a new artist seemed to get those fires going again, except this time we had a deadline of a few days to get things rolling. One phone call to Plastered T-Shirts supremo Dominic Johnson-Hill later and we had our cash sponsor. Dominic’s clothing brand has seen rapid growth in recent years, largely thanks to his relentlessly creative marketing and appreciation of audience (and, of course, cool t-shirts). It was a perfect match. We were aiming at a young, alternative-culture loving audience, so was he. Money well spent on his behalf, money gratefully receieved on ours…

After the Zhou Yunpeng show we took Zhao Guang for a midnight recording session at rehearsal rooms up near Gulou. He was in and out within an hour, having laid down six tracks, most in the first take = our first release.

Within the following week we had come up with a name, MicroMu (in reference to the compact nature of the business model, amongst other things), set up our website and, exactly a year ago today, made our first blog post:

So, What Is MicroMu?

Lets keep this simple to start with:

MicroMu is a record label – We discover musicians, record these musicians and then release the recordings to you, the fan.

It is obviously a lot more complicated than this in practice but, to be honest with you, this is a huge experiment so lets start slowly. The most important thing for you to know at the moment is that we are going to give away all of our recordings for free through this blog.

The whole process is funded by one sponsor: Beijing based T-Shirt company Plastered. Why are they doing it? Simply because they love the idea and want to support independent music. Did we mention that they make the best t-shirts in China ?

We will obviously explain a lot more about how this will work as we go, through the blog. There is a long journey ahead of us and we hope you can help us along the way. Please, download our music, leave comments, tell a friend. Together we can change the way that music is made in China, in a way where everyone wins.

It’s all about the music.

MicroMu

Simple enough really. We then obviously had to go on and explain how this music could be free in another post, the idea being to involve the fans in the whole thinking behind the label in a never ending dialogue conducted through the blog. Nice and transparent:

How Can This Music Be Free?

MicroMu is an incredibly simple idea. Here is a handy bullet point guide for you:

• MicroMu records some music
• This music is put on MicroMu.com for free download.
• All of this amazing, free music means loads of people come to our website.
• Loads of people coming to our website means that a brand will want to share all the attention and will pay money to do so.
• Plastered T-Shirts is that brand. They are making the whole thing possible by paying us money to be our brand partner.
• We use this money to cover all of our costs and pay the artists.
• The more people that visit the site, the more money Plastered will give us.
• The more money Plastered gives us, the more music we can make, the more royalties we can pay artists…..the more free downloads we can have on the site!

You see how simple it is? The most important thing for us….is YOU! You are ‘paying’ for this music just by being on this site.

Tips on how to help:

• Visit the site often for updates.
• Leave comments, tell us what you think.
• Tell a friend
• Tell them to tell a friend
• Tell them to tell a friend to tell a friend
• Instead of emailing/bluetoothing our songs to people, send a link to where they can download them for free on MicroMu.com
• Write about us on your blog
• Turn up to our shows.

Very kind of you. Thanks a lot..

Fifteen releases, 100 blog posts, 2000 comments later and here we are. Oh, and a whole heap of videos:

Dead Flower by Shouwang

There are big plans in the pipeline for MicroMu but as with all big plans they are prone to big changes. As I said, it is all a huge experiment and we are amazed and hugely encouraged to have gotten this far. Particularly encouraging is the warmth of reaction we have received from the Chinese music fans. Our music has quickly found its place in the hearts of an impressively wide audience as well as plaudits in some of the most demanding forums of the Chinese media and internet. We have also been lucky enough to work with, and in some cases record, some of the biggest and best names in Chinese independent music. That’s about as good a start as we could have hoped for. Onwards and upwards!

Many thanks to Dominic Johnson-Hill: Scholar, philanthropist, patron of the arts, dyslexic. Many thanks also to Eggplant and all of our artists: Zhao Guang, Liu Dongming, Gangzi, Zhang Yiding, Zhang Weiwei + Guo Long, Wu Ningyue, Zhang Qianqian, 6 Kings, Di Ku Ai, Shouwang, Liquid Oxygen, Travellers, Li Zhi, Zhou Lao Er, Zhang Guonian.

© Outdustry 2009

Will and I actually first met over a beer at a music venue I was booking at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005, when he was working as a music journalist for Straight No Chaser. We have both taken somewhat drastic turns in our careers since then and, by happy coincidence, Will stumbled across this very blog and decided to get in touch to reminisce. We have been chatting ever since about his work, particularly with regard to it’s relevance to China.

Will Page

His latest report The Long Tail Of P2P, co-authored with Big Champagne‘s Eric Garland, was presented to much fanfare at this year’s Great Escape Festival in rainy Brighton, UK, an event I was lucky enough to be invited to attend (Thanks Jon McIldowie and UKTI). Will has kindly agreed to me running a few questions by him on the subject:

Ed Peto: There has already been a good deal of coverage on your work on the demand curve for digital music consumption – from New Scientist to the Financial Times – particularly with regards to your contention of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory – but, for the benefit of people who haven’t read it yet, could you give us a quick elevator version of your latest Long Tail Of P2P report and its findings?

Will Page: Sure. The original Long Tail concept, as laid out by Chris Anderson in a famous Wired Magazine article in October 2004, goes like this: If you offer people more choice, and help them make that choice, they will take that choice. It proposed that in a world of widespread Internet access, it no longer makes sense to cater to the public appetite for the most popular CDs, DVDs and books. Instead, even the interests of the smallest niche might now be served. In short, the tail of available niche products would lengthen (supply-side effect) and then fatten with sales (demand-side effect). And so the “Long Tail” emerged.

To recall, Anderson’s theory relies on a change in the nature of the supply curve given barriers to entry falling and a great many new products can now get to the market. However, it takes two curves to tango in economics, and consideration of the demand curve completes the picture. What we uncovered from that analysis was a shock to some and no surprise to others: a ‘hit-heavy, skinny-tail,’ log-normal distribution for legal online music consumption; a distribution not that dissimilar from what one might expect from a more traditional, bricks & mortar store.

This dormant tail, pinhead pattern appeared across a number of digital music providers, in the markets for singles, albums, as well as streams – the three markets for legally consuming music online. But of course the illegal music market has been with us for longer, and is considered to be much larger than the legal one – so the next intuitive step was to understand the shape of demand in P2P. What we uncovered was another hit heavy skinny tail distribution, and that’s what we presented at the Great Escape. The results raised a few eyebrows, that’s for sure.

EP: Here in China we see also see an incredibly head-heavy distribution curve, with pop hits dominating the musical landscape. I tend to explain this by suggesting that, in China, music is used as a way of fitting in and not as a differentiator as it often is in the west. In short, the reason, I believe, is largely cultural (with censored media being another contributing factor).

According to your research, however, western consumers also largely seek out hits even when presented with the essentially infinite choice offered by illegal services such as P2P. Do you think that, like the Chinese, western consumers also have a deep-rooted cultural proclivity for hits, or is the behaviour you have identified in your study a hangover from a period of limited inventory, limited access and bottlenecked media and marketing? ie. Is it nature or nurture?

WP: That’s a great question. Firstly, the fact I’ve uncovered this hit heavy distribution for music does not mean the Long Tail is dead – there may be other examples of ‘fattening’ tails in books, film and television. But then perhaps that’s the point – some forms of media goods are for sharing (i.e. music at a festival) and others are for private consumption (i.e. a book on a train journey). Maybe that’s why ‘Book Clubs’ still haven’t taken off in a social networking era?

Now to your question. I don’t think it’s a hangover – there have always been niche markets, and one could argue that they were more effective prior to the long tail era kicking in. For example, I wrote for the niche music publication Straight no Chaser for seven years, and spent a large amount of time digging for rare Brazilian and African vinyl.

Point being, the magazine has closed (advertising revenues in a digital age) and lots of those niche shops have closed down. So I reject the hangover assertion, there may well be examples of the tail being a lot fatter prior to the book coming out. On that note, let me also add that you have to really think about the quality of data, both then and now. Niche music products are often purchased in second hand record stores – I can testify to that as I practically live in them! Not only is there no data on second hand sales, there’s no copyright either. That’s an important dynamic in an online physical world like Amazon, where first and second hand goods are priced side-by-side. A fat or skinny second hand niche market is therefore (i) hard to prove and (ii) even harder for artists and songwriters to benefit from. It’s an anomaly that’s really worth pondering. .

Another angle towards answering your question is to consider the tools which are being used to understand media markets like music, film and books. I mean this whole Long Tail debate has been dominated by economics, and us economists are terrible at losing sight of reality. Another angle, which we raise in the paper, is that of ‘culture’. On that note, I’m inclined to cite Andrew Bud, the Executive Chairman of mBlox, who has been like a professor to me in pioneering much of this long tail work to date::

“…It means something that we are seeing a log normal distribution in the sales data for tracks. That only happens if the more successful a track becomes, the larger are the random forces affecting its sales. But then the question is how does the market know how big a track is? Why does the scale of a track’s success matter to the choices people make? An obvious answer is that it’s through people chatting to each other and seeing the music talked about in the media. That’s what culture is. So the fact we’re seeing the log normal distribution here may point to the power of culture on people’s choices. Whereas Chris Anderson’s hypothesis of a Pareto power law would be much more about random, individual choices – people alone with their computers. So perhaps, this debate of thick versus fat is really about the power of culture in determining demand…”.

- Andrew Bud

Andrew Bud

EP: Are you able to project future behaviour from this research?

WP: No. We have not attempted any projections or forecasts based on the analysis. The original singles, albums and streaming data sets we worked on were for the twelve months from 2007 Q4 to 2008 Q3. We kept the same time period for the illegal P2P file sharing study, to keep it consistent. What we’re doing now is to look at data sets concluding in 2009 Q1 – so whilst we’re not essentially looking forward, what we can now provide our management team with is monitoring and interpretation of the changes in demand over time.

On that note, co-author Eric Garland raised two concepts in the study which merit attention here: the primacy of listening and music hoarding. To recall, these trends lead to a peculiar irony: widespread listening to music that is never stored coincident with vast stores of music to which no downloader ever listens. I think you can use our rigorous long tail analysis and these two concepts to debate future behaviour. ‘Hoarding’ especially – that’s an incredibly important concept for the music industry to get its head around.

Eric Garland

EP: Do you think that once music recommendation/discovery services have fully developed you will still see the same head-heavy results as you are seeing now?

Consider the following hypothetical online music platform:

• Every track in the world is one click away, with negligible download/buffering time.
• Each user’s music preference profile is perfectly mapped and updated continuously in real time according to their actual listening habits, as opposed to music they just download and then ‘hoard’.
• Music is recommended to this user purely based upon this profile (and other users with similar profiles).

WP: The first thing to appreciate is that it could go either way – ‘good’ recommendation tools could fatten tails, or concentrate activity around heads. What’s going to be fascinating is that we’ll soon be able to answer your question with evidence. By that I mean that excellent sites like We7 and Spotify have gained incredible traction already this year, and that will allow them to further develop their offerings in line with the customer’s demands. From there, we can see what demand looks like, given the infinite choice from supply. .

There’s an important point to be made here, though – which is when critics have dismissed my work by saying that a long tail market without a good discovery tool is just noise. I mean, sure, I take the point – but I’ve got to counter it, as it implies ‘when the facts don’t fit the theory, then there has to be something wrong with the facts’. The objective, surely, is for these promising music sites to become profitable first and foremost, whereas fattening the tail is an optional extra. If the latter results from the former, cool – but it doesn’t necessarily have to work that way.

What I’ve seen so far – and by that I mean some of the staggering success stories of digital music in 2009 Q1 – suggests that the idea that ‘when you offer people more choice and help them make that choice’ their behaviour is a lot stickier, and their willingness to roam a lot more tamer, than the theory would have had us imagine. My colleagues Chris Carey and Gary Eggleton (who are both far brighter than me) think that our work in this area now has us close to helping the music industry understanding the limits of unlimited choice. That’s really exciting as we’ll be able to offer our songwriters and publishers important new insights that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

On that note, I’d like to quote psychologist Barry Schwartz who summarizes his excellent book, The Paradox of Choice, in a recent TED lecture: “There is no question that some choice is better than none, but it does not follow that more choice is better than some. There’s some magical amount, I don’t know what it is but I’m pretty confident that we’re long since passed the point where options improve our welfare”.

EP: How do the results of this research impact upon your work at PRS for Music?

This question is two-fold: what does it mean for PRS for Music and what does it mean for its stakeholders – the rights holders and users who we bring together. I think you can see three applications of the long tail work, those being costs, segmentation and investment strategies. With regards to the latter, there are some fascinating debates to be had. For example, Anita Elberse has looked into why you get irrational bidding wars in the book publishing industry, even when the market is not in a healthy state. Her work is really inspirational and I’d strongly recommend your readers check it out. My interpretation, for the music industry, comes down to this – if you’re in a market affected by the long tail, do you bet large, bet small or do you bet at all.

One final point, though, is this. My work is not ‘anti’ long tail, nor does it have anything to do with ‘bashing Chris Anderson’ – the press love a Punch and Judy show, but this is about understanding markets. Let me reiterate, I really rate the Long Tail Book and recommend it to anyone who hasn’t yet read it. Moreover, Chris Anderson’s ‘blog’ was an excellent tool for engaging people like me into the debate that we would otherwise not have known about. I’ve always said that as soon I find real evidence of the long tail at work, Chris will be the first to know and I’ll be the first to celebrate. There’s another collaborative project we got going here in London, it’s wrapped up in confidentiality just now but the way things are beginning to look, I should be letting him know very shortly!

© Outdustry 2009

As far as Danish bands go, I particularly enjoyed Oh Land‘s orchestral experimentation on the opening evening, as well as Kiss Kiss Kiss‘ danceable indie-pop on the P3 stage, with the Danish crown (in my ill-informed opinion) going to one of the best live acts I have seen in a while, Who Made Who, who rocked a packed out mega-barn of revellers on the Saturday night.

I also have to make an honourable mention of Norwegian artist Rockettothesky who’s esoteric take on song-writing – including a track about ‘horny ghosts’ – stayed with me for some time after the show, to the point where I bought her album Medea off eMusic as soon as I got home. Good stuff.

As far as me ‘spewing forth’:

Video made by (and courtesy of) SPOT Festival

Thanks very much to everyone at SPOT, particularly Martin Røen Hansen and Henrik Friis, for a fantastic weekend.

© Outdustry 2009

I was at the “Techno Papa” Juan Atkins’ show the other night, talking with top Hip-Hop critic Badbrain about this year’s live music market. We both felt that there’s nothing to say but “sigh”.

Back in 2007, however, this market was full of hope.

Crowds at Beijing Pop Festival ’07

In 2005, I started to work for a magazine that covers western pop music. I had a lot of regret for leaving there in the end of 2007 because, as I predicted, that was the year live western pop music “took off” in China. Everything that happened before was just laying the groundwork, and pathetic jokes like the Suede in Beijing show happened too, but since that year I started to feel that there’s something going on in this market.

Suede’s Brett Anderson plays Beijing Pop Festival ’07

The strongest evidence is the blooming of music festivals. 2007′s Beijing Pop Festival staged the best international lineup ever in China: Nine Inch Nails, New York Dolls, Brett Anderson, Public Enemy, and the drummer of Ramones. In the same year, Yeah Yeah Yeahs headlined Modern Sky Festival and Faithless appeared in Yue Festival.

Though there was still a sizeable gap between this lineup and what the fans dreamed of, the reaction in the market is pretty positive. There were rumours that two promotion companies backed by foreign funds were preparing for an even bigger festival, and one of them had already sent staff to Korea to take lessons from the promoters there. At that time, it seemed that they are going to do something never has been done in China.

At the same time, the organizers of Beijing Pop Festival, which had scored three successes in a row, were looking forward to 2008 too. Someone working for them told me that they were going to get a bigger lineup than 2007′s.

Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor plays Beijing Pop Festival ’07

Other than those festivals, the who’s-who of acts performing here in 2007 included Roger Waters, Eric Clapton, Avril Lavigne, Sonic Youth, and Christina Aguilera. These things meant the market appeared to be flourishing. Unlike the fake flourishing which The Rolling Stones brought in 2006 – where 70% of the audience were foreign – the main consuming force in 2007 were Chinese people.

Mick Jagger + Cui Jian play Shanghai

October 4th, 2007 10pm, when I was standing in the muddy water under the pouring rain with thousands of audience of the Modern Sky Festival, and shouting for Yeah Yeah Yeahs together, I cannot help but felt a change is gonna come.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Modern Sky Festival ’07

Then all of a sudden the market is almost totally ruined by the incident in Shanghai on March 2nd 2008.

Before the incident, the market was still going on well. Dream Theater and Nightwish made a good start of the year. Even shortly after the incident, the Maroon5 show in Shanghai (March 24th) was a huge success. My only regret is that Smashing Pumpkins cancelled their show that was almost confirmed.

As the aftermath of the incident surfaced, and the bumpy political situations at home and abroad, it has finally become the turning point of the market. The promoters and officials of relative departments got punished, and the procedures for examination and approval were getting harder.

The one direct responsible for the March 2nd incident is a company (Emma) backed by considerable foreign funds, and then had done the Rolling Stones, Avril Lavigne, Eric Clapton and Xtina before. Because of this “accident”, many gigs and festivals rumored to be organized by them vanished.

Many other shows were impacted too. As the Olympic issue became obvious and political risk and cost soar, Modern Sky Festival, which was said to have foreign star acts headlined, announced that they won’t invite them in, and Beijing Pop Festival cancelled as a whole, to name but a few.

Some minor shows went ahead: the British pop phenomenon James Blunt, renowned French singer Keren Ann and long-established electronic duo Air became the only ripples in the stagnant water. Even Air’s second show was almost cut in half.

Everyone was looking forward to the post-Olympic era, especially Linkin Park‘s China tour. As the best selling band in 2007, Linkin Park would become the biggest contemporary band ever in the history of western popular music show in China. After the huge success of the film Transformers, in which they performed the theme song, Linkin Park’s popularity in China was brought up to a whole new level. Their tour in China could become a shot in the arm in the much-suffered market of 2008.

You have to expect the unexpected. The singer of Linkin Park broke his back and cancelled their whole Asian tour including the stops in China, another heavy blow in the performance market in the Mainland.

Maybe it was not that bad, at least Live Nation came in. As the biggest promoter in the world, Live Nation not only serves the top bands like Coldplay, they also signed the 360 degree contract with superstars like Madonna, U2, Jay-Z and Shakira. The Ge Hua Lai En promotion company that Ge Hua co-found with Live Nation, made a Chinese market – that had been longing for superstars like Coldplay, Madonna and U2 – finally see a light of hope. And the Kanye West and Kylie Minogue show, which Ge Hua Lai En organized, made the light even brighter.

This year the light keeps on shining. Shortly before the Spring Festival, the news that Oasis was coming over made the fans shocked and are telling one another about it. Brit-pop is the one of most accepted genre among Chinese rocks fans, and Oasis’ reputation here is only second to the Beatles. If this gig was carried out, it’s meaning could not be over-estimated. Of all the bands who have come over before, including Linkin Park, none of them has influenced this generaion of Chinese youth as much as Oasis. Their value was made clear when the promoters claimed one million RMB worth of tickets were sold in 8 days.

And then…

The impact of the”Oasis incident” might be even serious than the Bjork one. Because the almost forgotten Free Tibet gig has now been blown up, along with the bands involved with it, they might no longer be able to slip through as Sonic Youth did. The blacklist of bands is now considerably longer, including long expected bands like Radiohead, U2 and Blur. This put the promoters in a very awkward situation. The acts accepted by this market are mainly well-established ones, and because of the western culture and political environment, most of those bands are involved with “that” issue. (Oasis is famously not political).

Mainland Chinese fans after Oasis’ show at Hong Kong’s Asia Expo Centre, April 7th. Photo found here

As for the new bands, even Kings of Leon or Fall Out Boys would struggle to fulfill a 3000 seats venue, and their cost cannot be covered by the ticket sales of that kind of venue alone.

Of course we cannot come to the conclusion that the international acts’ live market in China has already crashed. Small indie or novelty groups still have enough room to breath. But for those fans who want big time parties, they might have to be patient. All the same, the market that was going to be a big cake, has been zhetenged into something like this, is not too far away from “crashed”. You see, the promoter (China West) that brought James Brown and Black Eyed Peas disappeared without a trace, they wanted to do music festival too. And there’s no sign of the Beijing Pop Festival will come back to life.

Pilos Chan

Outdustry clients Sterling Sound have just mastered a couple of cracking Beijing indie albums. Hedgehog went so far as to say that they “could die happy” after hearing the results:

So far there is not much in the way of English language coverage of this story, but here is a translated version of Google’s blog post on the matter. This service is intended to boost Google’s fortunes in China, a market in which it is being comprehensively outgunned by resident search behemoth Baidu. Baidu themselves have responded to these announcements, translated here.

A quick search suggests that they do indeed have a deep catalogue. Try it for yourself here.

Bizarrely, however, at least one song we found had the following in the tagging: “RiP BY MUJi”, suggesting that their MP3s are not from the most wholesome of origins.

In China’s biggest C2C online shopping site Taobao, $200USD iTunes gift cards are for sale at 17.9 RMB, roughly $2.6 USD.

There are thousands of cards for sale at the same time. Choose one seller whose Taobao IM is online, talk to him a little bit, purchase his product and pay money to Taobao’s online payment system, Alipay, which supports most banks in China.

All the seller actually sells is the gift voucher code which they send you directly through Taobao’s IM software. You can then redeem the card in your iTunes account:

Once successfully redeemed you then click ‘confirm’ and Alipay transfers your 18 RMB to the seller and you are free to start downloading:

The owner of the Taobao shop told us frankly that the gift card codes are created using key-generators. He also said that he paid money to use the hackers’ service.

Half a year ago, when they started the business, the price was around 320 RMB for 200 USD card, then more people went into this business and the price went all the way down to 18 RMB per card, “but we make more money as the amount of customers is growing rapidly.”

“The hackers are based in China, but I don’t know if they do the same thing in eBay”, the Taobao shopkeeper said.”Most of our customers use iTunes store for music, then Apple applications (bear in mind that the iPhone is only available in the grey market in mainland China) and films. iPod games are least popular.”

So, this gives Apple a depressing price point for its iTunes services in an otherwise unfathomable online music market: $2.60 (18RMB) for $200USD worth of products.

© Outdustry 2009

Modern Sky boss Shen Lihui says that “compared with the enthusiasm of the Modern Sky Festival, the Strawberry Festival will have a warmer tone….the park will be your pleasure ground”.

Organisers also suggest it will be the “biggest music festival in Beijing during the May holidays” and that the Modern Sky main festival will go ahead in October as well.

Since it’s release on Jan 22nd, the Jiangsu folk hero’s first offering since 2007 has been meet met with unanimously glowing reviews across the Chinese internet. At the time of writing, well over a month after it’s initial release, it is still sitting strong at number 6 on uber-review-site Douban‘s Best New Release list, ahead of some pretty distinguished company: