The big question is where do those 20,000 indie music fans (and people like them) go for the rest of the year? Midi costs £3.50 per day, so is a cheap way for these fans to see pretty much every rock band in China in one sitting. Outside of the festival, a similar ticket price is essential if you really want to reach the ‘Midi crowd’. £3.50 obviously isn’t enough to pay for an international band to fly into China on ticket sales alone. Sponsorship is the only way to pick up the slack. Slowly you are starting to see brands become interested in the idea of forking out for an opportunity to market to this hip, new music crowd. Getting brands to bite for global names like The Rolling Stones, The Black Eyed Peas and Eric Clapton is a no-brainer but the idea of sponsoring emerging artists is fairly new and may take some time to develop.

The truth is that the domestic live scene is in a glorious shambles – Fragmented but bursting with potential. In any major western city worth its salt you can’t move for well promoted live nights, from pretty much any genre, making it easy to find a promoter with a ready-made, genre-specific crowd to work with. Not so in China. I was standing next to a Chinese girl at a gig in D-22, a Beijing underground rock venue. She was dressed as a goth, with crazy hair, blackened eyes, torn clothing and black finger nails. I asked her what sort of music she was in to. ‘Backstreet Boys’ was her immediate reply. Genre awareness is a real problem, leaving music marketers and promoters in a real pickle when it comes to introducing new international bands to anyone but the most well-versed of Chinese music fans.

Good mid-level acts have started to come over in recent months eg. Go! Team, Maximo Park, The Roots, Ziggy Marley, The Infadels. While all have been well received gigs, the crowds have predominantly been expats, with door prices ranging from £25 for The Roots, through to £5 for The Infadels (a ticket price that still did not guarantee a crowd). As with everything else in China it’s early days. None of these promoters are going to retire on their earnings any time soon and the dream of the West’s finest new bands playing to packed theatres of their chanting Chinese fans is still a fair way off. It’s all part of the slow education process. Western acts are generally way ahead of most of their Chinese counterparts in terms of performance discipline and showmanship so every international gig will be a small step in the right direction.

If you decide to pay for yourself to come over here, there are gigs to be had but do not expect to play to hordes of people who are just thrilled to have a western band playing. The Chinese are slightly harder to impress than that. Especially in Shanghai, which is predominantly a DJ city, boasting, as it does, roughly four decent small/mid-size rock music venues for a city of 18 million people.

Then there is the issue of performance permits. All performances require permits from the local cultural bureau as well as the national Ministry Of Culture. These permits have to be obtained by a government approved ‘performance company’ who will provide the application service for a fee. The permits themselves vary in price according to size of band and venue. Materials required include scanned passports, band biog (in English and Chinese), set list with lyrics and live show footage on DVD and the whole process tends to take 30 days. Nathaniel Davis from Spli-t Works says of the whole permitting nightmare that ‘foreign band shows promoted by the smaller, “underground” clubs are typically overlooked by the authorities. For bands performing at licensed live venues or government-owned performance venues, however, performance permits are a must. Once performance permits are received, the local foreign affairs bureau will issue a visa letter for the bands to take to their country’s respective China embassy to apply for official Z class work visas.’

So there you have it. You need a friend on the inside – ie. be invited to perform in China – if you want to be legit. In truth though, most small bands turn up here on tourist visas without too many problems.

© Ed Peto 2007

NOTE: This is an extract from ‘Access China’ report commissioned by UK Trade and Industry Department and British Underground.

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The majors are all here doing their stuff, struggling away, but like all foreign companies they have had to enter into joint ventures to operate in China, slashing their already slender profits. They own the lion’s share of domestic pop music but with regards to international repertoire, they stick very much to frontline releases and global priorities with the occasional catalogue title. Universal Music China, for example, are doing a reggae push throughout the year to see what sort of audience there is for the genre. Danny Sim, International Marketing Manager at Universal Music China, is optimistic about growth in western music sales. They will release 40% more international titles this year – bringing it to roughly 100 albums – and expect to see a 10-15% growth in revenue. Sim puts his optimism down to ‘a) More people getting a better education, and therefore more people with English as a second language, b) More western music spread through the internet, and c) More media channels will become western music friendly’.Truth be told, the returns (and therefore the marketing budgets) are really not there for majors to ‘break’ niche foreign artists. They have to rely mainly on larger artists’ spill-over publicity from the west, so for the emerging independent, there is very little fun to be had with regards to major licenses.

There is a gaping hole where the independent record label scene should be. You can count the number of truly viable independent labels on a pair of chopsticks.

Modern Sky has just celebrated its 10th year in existence and, much like it’s rabbit-warren of an office in West Beijing, it’s business model is a convoluted arrangement of media company, record label, artist management and design house; a model that has allowed it to survive in this hostile environment. It has amassed a significant percentage of the Chinese rock catalogue in the process. Physical releases are practically a loss leader for Modern Sky with digital revenue also remaining a minor consideration.

Label Manager Meng Jinhui explains that they normally take over management, allowing them to promote the hell out of the artist rather than the album. Resultant brand co-operations with these artists and the label itself generate the bulk of Modern Sky’s income, alongside consultancy for mobile content and a wide range of video production and design projects. You have to be versatile to survive for ten years in China.

This business model means that Modern Sky gain very little from licensing foreign albums and only really do so occasionally, as with their release of Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’. They are very open to approach on the subject of licensing but prefer to look down the route of collaborative work between their artists and the west – to create something new. In general, if you’re looking to license an independent album over here, be prepared for a luke-warm response. Modern Sky have been trying to release Mogwai’s ‘Mr Beast’ for over a year now but still have not been cleared by the censors at the Ministry Of Culture. Even when it eventually is released they only really expect to shift 2,000-3,000 albums. These guys are in it for the love. As you can imagine, advances are very difficult to come by.

© Ed Peto 2007

NOTE: This is an extract from the ‘Access China’ report commissioned by UK Trade and Industry Department and British Underground.

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