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

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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

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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

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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

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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:

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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:

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