We’ve been a bit quiet on the writing front this week. Things have been crazy at work and we’ve been living off the fumes of our Ayi Jihu story. That went way bigger than we could have imagined. Viral madness…
Anyway, this doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy. This is the best of the on and offline music business in China for this week:
- Shanghai band Duck Fight Goose deliver a new EP named Flow. There is going to be a launch party on December 18. Listen to tracks and find out about the show at their Douban page.
- Split Works launch a redesign of their online music webzine, Wooozy. Check it out and tell us what you think.
- Air & Style is tomorrow in Beijing. It’s unseasonably windy in Beijing, which makes a scary ramp scarier, the stage is too small, the Beijing PSB have been typically co-operative and there is very little marketing around the city which means ticket sales have been slow. We’ll be writing more about this next week. Still, the ramp is freaking ginormous, so you really should go see it if you like your air big and your backside grabs gnarly. If you can find out where to buy tickets, that is…
- The armless piano player Liu Wei, recent winner of the reality show China Got Talent has headed off on a world tour. Creators of the “Got Talent” franchise, UK based Fremantle Media have signed him to a record label deal which includes Sony.
- Speaking of Fremantle, there was an interesting article at AP this week talking about a new phenomenon of licensing international franchises by Chinese Media Companies. Previously happy to plagiarize and produce local rip offs, there has been an encouraging trend towards paying to license, and in the process receiving help and advice from the license holder on how to make the content more sticky.
- Michael Learns to Rock are coming back to China. Often used as a case study for a foreign band that has broken the China market, MLTR made it “big” here in the mid 90’s by covering HK megastar Jacky Cheung. They are playing Shanghai this Sunday night at the 4,000 capacity Changning Gymnasium (as well as Beijing and Guangzhou). The shows are sponsored by Carlsberg.
- An interview with John Cappo of the new MB Arena HERE. Not as good as our one HERE.
- Speaking of the MB Arena (man, some good segues going on here), Hennessy are back with their annual VIP mashup of styles and genres. Drink free flow cognac cocktails tomorrow night with Helen Ness, and see Ciara getting down with Seo in Young, Harlem Yu and Sa Ding Ding. Yeah, we don’t want to go either.
- An artist is making sound from China’s Great Firewall. Read about it HERE and hear it HERE. This is about the most useful the “Golden Shield” actually gets.
- And if you’ve read this far, firstly congratulations, but more importantly, the future of music in China is mobile, but at the moment the creator gets nothing.
the market value for the Chinese mobile digital music is reported at rmb 30billions, which is cool. But unfortunately the operators take 94%, service provider takes 4%-5%, the music provider takes even less than 1%.
Ouchy
Happy weekend everyone…