Ladies and gentlemen, place your doubts as to the feasibility of breaking EDM in China to the side. A Turkish talent competition named The Remix is being adapted for the market, by none other than IPCN (Got Talent, The Voice).
According to Television Business International, The Remix is a weekly primetime music series in which DJs pair with vocalists to compete for (onerous) music contracts, cash prizes and tears. If EDM DJs weren’t already overblown to the point that their personas totally overshadowed their creations, we’d probably write something along the lines of how the dependence of talent shows on weaving touching tales of hardship and wordly pain to attract audiences could get in the way of the music, just a little bit.
Well, that won’t be necessary.
“Electronic Dance Music [EDM] is experiencing phenomenal growth in many areas of China,” said CEO of IPCN Rebecca Yang. “We think The Remix will cater for that demand”.
If by phenomenal growth Yang means two large-scale electronic music festivals (Storm SH/SZ) alongside a number of smaller incumbents including this Disneyland-esque offering that features “the psytrance tattoo-armed bad boy Ben Nicky”, then she could be right. At the very least, the TV talent show will confuse and annoy countless parents, while perhaps kick-starting a renaissance in China’s national DJ culture. Getting more people behind turntables wouldn’t be a bad thing.