Another interesting article from Rock In China. As with last time, this doesn’t represent my opinion. Here’s the original post (keep an eye on it for updates).
Why the scene has to get international – and China-only is a deadlock
As Martin Atkins told Tookoo after his Midi School speach, it is imminent that bands do appeal to an international audience for success outside of their home country, preferably by singing in English. If the Chinese underground music scene is not getting more international they will be caught in a deadlock! The world’s most successful artists have always been English-languages ones and even those non-English singing artists that do appear in front of sold out venues in Europe do so by a huge effort spent on making their music more accessibles for people able to speak English.
I do not speak about the style of music or the language bands should sing in, but about the surrounding factors:
- The booklet of a CD
- The MySpace pages
- The leaflets send around
- The stickers posted in big cities
- The blog posts
- And the maturity of English in interviews with the band
The export market as an element of survival- until the domestic market is ripe?
Like it or not, the domestic music market is not able to enable a band to survive purely by making music. There is just not enough money in the making to let a couple of young guys get around doing what they feel they are summoned for: making music, developing their own style and succeeding in perfecting it. As Andy Best pointed out in a recent blog post or podcast, there are just not enough options given for a band to go on without giving up too much, without giving up the fair chance of a stable life after the music. The money in the business is not worth comparing to a regular job, the recognition in society is still marginal (with the exception of those in the scene) and what about your parents? Can you ensure to support them in their old age by making music? At present stage, a Chinese artist in the underground just has no chance of survival by music alone with the domestic scene… hence, the foreign market might be an option of survival? Let’s take a look at the best:
Maybe Mars! Which is focussing a particular part of their efforts in enabling an international success story for their artists, in comparison to the efforts undertaken to make a breakthrough in a larger scale in China: Their recent showcast in the USA went through more cities than their showcast in the domestic market. They spent considerable time on telling the foreign press and foreign fans about their artists, show them around, most propably sent our mp3 promos to numerous interested persons and as can been seen by the recent articles woven around their bands, they do succeed! Yes, learn from the best!
Other bands that went on the international path before the Maybe Mars crew are e.g. Subs with their YGTWO supported Nordic Europe Tour, Hanggai that are even promoted by Chinese embassies world-wide and FM3 with their festival appearances all over Europe.
So what to do? What are the steps to follow?
There are a number of things every band should do, as part of the DIY idea:
- Spread news about your band
- Enable your fans to find out more about you
- Create a fixed unique place to give this information
- Give lots of music, videos, info to your fans
- Be present, so you do appear in the things others talk
As logical as the above sounds, they are not being followed by many bands in the market and even worse, most labels active in China do not follow these easy steps! Look at Mort Production and you will see no band promotion, no concerts, just a distribution channel. Look at Scream Records and still the promotion is mostly limited to Beijing. Look at Modern Sky at you do see the first glimpse of promo, but still not as far reaching as what some bands have done for themselves, e.g. AK-47 with their extensive tours or Brainfailure.
Now I am talking about getting the scene international and I do want to split that part:
- The band itself getting international!
- The scene as a whole moving towards an international level!
So what does it mean for a band to get international?
- Get an English MySpace account!
- Make sure there are English translations for your Chinese lyrics available in the booklet / website!
- Be able to speak a minimum level of English for others to understand and for you to answer questions!
- Put up your music in the English part of the web, and yes, do more videos on Youtube!
Why should a band do that? In particular for the following reasons:
The easier it is for foreign fans to access the music of a Chinese band, the easier this music is spreading, hence the easier it will be for a band to find supporters for a tour overseas. Take a look at Joyside, who got involved with the Beijing Bubbles project, convinced the people behind Fly Fast Records and went to Europe for a couple of weeks touring. As a band you not only get 2-3 weeks of the “beaten track” for yourself, but you do get the chance to grow on the experience, to win over more fans and to make contact with other music industry people!
With overseas contacts, even with good domestic ones, you have the chance to make your music available overseas. Whether it be in the form of distributed EPs or CDs or plainly in mp3 format (such as Modern Sky and Maybe Mars are doing at iTunes and Amazon), the pure fact that fans can buy your music at the locations known to them will give you another source of income that is missing in the domestic market! It cannot and it will not be your primary source of income, but think of it as a supplement, an addition until the domestic music market is ripe enough to fully support independent artists…
A statement of clarification
I do not say “to hell with Chinese and write your lyrics in English”, but I do say “include English into your natural communication as well”. Even in Germany, the world’s third largest music market only a handful of bands really achieved it to break through on a global level and only one of the bands I mention actually does sing in German: Scorpions, Blind Guardian, Rammstein and Fool’s Garden!
A couple of things on how to actually do this will be stated later on …
So what does it mean for the scene to get international?
A scene is the multitude of bands, fans, venues, labels and others involved with the music of a particular genre or location or period of time. For China, the location is fixed with numerous genres and differences in generations (Tang Dynasty versus Birdstriking), but it can broken down towards a common “pot” of music: the China scene, the bands coming from China, making music by their own within the cultural and social constraints! At present, the scene is mostly a domestic one, with limited access from the outside world. Limited by the available English information and the limited connections towards the scene (students, friends, a couple of tours in the foreign world, a couple of articles here and there). As such the survivability of the scene, i.e. the ability of the participants and especially the bands to survive financially is limited to the financial capabilities of the domestic scene! Don’t get me wrong; that plainly means that bands such as Ritual Day or Raging Mob do need a full-time job to support what they are doing in their free time. That happens in the foreign world as well, yet the proportion in China for rock bands to do so is by far higher than e.g. in Germany.
As such, I declare that it would be in the best of the Chinese underground music scene (call it rock, call it punk) to be international. To be talked about. To be the focus of attention. Why?
- Because when people hear about the Chinese scene as something cool, they check out bands
- Because when people check out bands, they would like to have their music
- Because when people like to have the music, distributors and promoters get involved
- Because when music is distributed and promoted, CDs/MP3s are sold and tours are booked
- Because bands do get something back for what they are doing!
It’s a pull-effect!
An example? Just think what would happen if Suffocated would open the next US tour for Metallica?
How can a scene get international?
As mentioned above a scene is not an individum or a band per se. It is the collective of many. And as such only the multitude of actions can bring a scene towards that goal:
- Write about the scene! If you are in a band publish a diary, talking about the life of a punk in Beijing
- Enable the foreign press to write about something (tell them that you speak English), contact them and send them an article
- If you are in a band, do all the above (see previous chapter) and those things mentioned below
- If you are a fan, tell others about the concerts, post an introduction to your favorite band, make a statement towards your friends, make them listen to the music
- Tag the songs you listen to at Last.fm!
The things lacking right now – The things to be done:
Make it international:
- Get MySpace (the English one)
- Get Facebook
- Be at Last.fm (yes, there should be one mp3 for download)
- Get an English biography!
- Post about what you do, at best in English
- Update on a regular basis
- If you are with a label:
- Tell them to print your lyrics in two languages (Chinese / English)
- Tell them to send your CD at least to three foreign music review magazines (web/print)
- Tell them to make a newsletter bi-langual
- Tell them to enable iTunes or Amazon
- If you are not with a label
- Get the same shit done as with a label!
- Use Facebook! Get friends! Use MySpace! Get Friends!
- Put up at least one or two MVs at Youtube and link to it!
- Write a good and true biography, add in the spices of your daily life and struggels and yes, do send it to foreign press
- If you have more than 15 foreign friends online, ask them to help you! Some will do!
- Take some time and find some local press, e.g. in Hamburg (Germany) or Berlin (Germany). Write to them, they might print something about you, which gives you a local crowd! Perfect to engage a local promoter for a tour start.
- Once you know a couple of people, get to know some bands. Arrange a tour exchange (they come to China, you go to someplace else)
Make it domestic (as well)
- Use Douban
- Use Xiao Nei
- Use TuDou & Youku, out up the same MVs
- Go on a DIY tour and yes, do also sometimes a more commercial event, just to meet more persons
- Regularly post your news at ALL plattforms you are registered (Democn, Rockyeah, Rockbj, XiaoNei, Douban, etc.)
- Don’t think Beijing, think China!
Conclusion
If the scene stays as domestic as it is, there will be no major surprises in the future! Those that are a little bit more creative find their way to some fame, get on a tour here and there, but will never breakthrough completely, in the way Nirvana or Pantera have done it. If, however, a certain part of the scene is pushing towards the same direction, the combined pull-effects might lead to a push for those talents undiscovered so far! Rustic at the GBOB have given a first glance of what is possible! Let’s see what the whole scene can do!
10 Comments
So what is your take on the issue, Luke?
firstly i have to say i really appreciate u guys holding the passions to devote to Chinese rock music while local (so called) music critics just keep their eyes on albums from the western…
but i have my own opinions.
yes to be international is important for local bands, and its obviously cool, awesome!just ask the band mumbers, if theres a western meida wanna get touch with them, who wont say no? but, to be international is the first important thing we local bands have to deal? i dont think so.
first think how many people r there in China? we all know..then how many people in China listen to rock music? we dont know..as every business man admits today, there is still an extremly huge potential market here. and then, talk about the language. we may say Air from France sings English songs because it can make them accepted easily and wider, but as i know, Chinese bands who prefer to sing in English mostly because they learned rock n roll by listening to English songs day by day and they just dont know how to make rock n roll in their own language! for me, its sad, its shame..what i really want to say is that, if we do not rock China, our own country
(i mean we dont make more people here get to know what is rock n roll and then, love our own rock music) at first, we cannot find what we really need even what we r, then how can we rock the world? we will keep on copying ,imitating, losing ourselves in the culture we even dont
really understand,at last we cannot get our voice in the western music scene. we cannot be truely international.
to be international, its really cool, but dont u think medias, music critics can do better than the musicians? dont u think they have more responsiblity to handle this matter? musicians, pls pls, do ur music with ur hearts, first find ur voice in ur heart, and how people say about u, medias say about u? find it at the very last!
Australia (my place of origin) is in a similar boat to China. We’re kind of disconnected from the rest of the world, and thus there is similar talk about bands trying to become famous, ‘break the US’, etc.
The problem is that 50% of the bands that make it are, unfortunately, crap. Takes some recent examples from Australia; The Vines, Jet, Wolfmother, The Temper Trap. Most Australian fans would agree that these bands do not represent the cream of the crop of Australian music.
Some decent bands do make it big. To use Australia as an example again look at; The Avalanches, Cut Copy, Empire Of The Sun are three bands I can think of that are decent and well-known, but all three are artists that deliver something completely unlike their contemporaries. However if you were to ask an Australian music fan their favourite acts, there’s a good chance you might never have heard of the names before. Bands like The Drones, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Love Of Diagrams, The Grates, Dappled Cities, Sarah Blasko, The Herd or I Heart Hiroshima will be name-dropped (like I just did
), but how many of them have you heard of?
Now Australia is a hell of a lot smaller than China (although the current audience size is likely similar), yet bands seem to get by in their own little eco-systems. Eventually they’ll get to a point where they have an international audience, but very rarely without first paying their dues on the Australian scene.
I guess the question is can Chinese bands sustain themselves with the local audience alone?
@Luke And also, there’s the problem that most Australian bands don’t sing with their natural accents so most people outside Australia wouldn’t know unless they looked it up. The underinformed punters in America don’t even know AC/DC was an Australian band.
With that, it makes it easy for me to see teardroppy’s point about the need to create a local vibe without imitating America all the time. It’s a subtle difference with the accent thing, but when bands are cutting out an entire language because they find it difficult to make a Western sound meet with the Chinese language, it’s a glaring loss.
But to go back to the article in general: Writing songs in English might help in the long run, but I think that right now Chinese bands should, as teardroppy said, focus on the Chinese market. There’s a tendency to run before you can walk in China, and I think if you skip the steps of finding a local audience you’re missing out. But to be financially successful it’s almost a necessity. It’s a bit of a catch-22, really. The audiences aren’t mature enough here, but reaching for the West means you might lose the burgeoning audience you did have here.
Has anyone thought of Asia at large? There’s a lot of cross-cultural love and sharing in the pop culture spheres; I don’t see why there couldn’t be in the underground. That said, bands that play every night in (expensive to hire) livehouses in Japan have to hold down day jobs, too.
And so do bands that might play three nights a weekend in Australia, or America, or anywhere. The number of bands that actually make it to a point where they’re financially stable enough just from releasing music is pretty tiny, and with a scene that’s not mature enough to finance even the larger underground band, it seems a little naive to think that getting the word out in English is going to help.
Not that I don’t think we should do it – my (unpaid) life is getting the English word out there about Chinese bands – but it’s just going to take time, and will happen naturally by itself. As long as we stick around and keep loving and supporting the scene, then when the country’s ready, when the people are ready, the rock scene will be there waiting for them. Maybe then the bigger rock, punk, folk, and metal groups will make enough cash to focus on their art.
If bands want to ‘make it’ or reach large audiences of locals they have to face the elephant in the room. The reasons for there not being a decent industry or network for popular music is purely government policy. It stems from their draconian attitude to cultural and media control – this leads to many symptoms, from the inability of a conventional music industry to form, to erratic behaviour from more local branches of power holding back city wide efforts.
As long as it’s an accepted idea that political leaders can control the arts as they see fit, the music scene will struggle on in the same way as it does now.
Everyone knows this.
@Alex, teardroppy: I don’t say they should write lyrics in English only. But they should include an accurate translation of the lyrics in the booklet. That makes their music by far more accessible aborad. Look at Dir En Grey, where one can at least get an idea on what they sing. I prefer Chinese bands to sing in Chinese, as I also prefer German bands to sing in German (their English accent is often enough an accident), but they should enable their message / lyrics to be understandable on a wider basis, i.e. translation of lyrics. That way people can listen to their music, grasp more of it, and get more out of the music. The CD is easier to be reviewed overseas and with today’s online music market on a global scale, I do think that it is possible for bands to do a nice side business and side income with music sold online to a wider audience (also DIY!!!).
There is no doubt that a stable domestic market with good venues, good live show opportunities would help the bands. But as Andy mentioned there are certain restrictions that are not easy to overcome in the present situation, aka The Elephant in the room. As long as that is persistent, many bands can try very hard with less success than if they would follow the DIY someplace else. E.g. in Germany they have the general acceptability of their music on their side: Radio does play rock! TV does show metal (whether its Manowar in the most famous comedy show or Metallica live from Rock am Ring). This acceptability is not given in China right now, but the internet is giving Chinese bands a good chance to at least help them to gather either some financial income or to grow in popularity to such an extend that touring is not impossible. No Name had been offered a slot in Europe by their German label after they had extensively searched for an opportunity and gained some fame in the punk scene (enough to get that opportunity).
What would be great is if there was a lyrics website for the scene equivalent to any old one you can find if you google an English song and the word ‘lyrics.’ I got the majority of my music through iTunes, which doesn’t give you the CD booklet with lyrics, and hate that I can’t understand the lyrics, since I am not a fluent Chinese speaker and can’t just pick them up.
I’m also not sure I agree with the sentiment that bands should focus on the domestic market only before they ‘mature.’ Look at the original punk scene–plenty of bands toured Europe well before they were well-known in any country, and sometimes were even more popular abroad! Alex makes a good point when he mentions Asia as a whole. Japan and Korea are much shorter trips than America.
@zaiguo (first a small sidebar, I’m a girl. Moving on!) Google Music (or top100.cn which powers it) has lyrics for a good chunk of Chinese indie music. It’s not everything, but it’s a lot of the bigger names. They’re only lyrics in Chinese, of course, but it’s a good starting place for anyone interested in looking up lyrics. What I found funny is that on an English-language song of Hedgehog’s, they included the English lyrics as well as a Chinese translation.
And actually, now that I have considered it a little longer, I think that looking to the rest of Asia would be a great way to go. It might not be less expensive, but I think it might be easier to break into those scenes because they wouldn’t necessarily need to translate their lyrics. (I’m taking that assumption from the cross-popularity of pop music, of course, but it could work with underground stuff as well.)
Unfortunately I’m not sure how much money they’d be able to make, as even in wealthier Asian countries like Japan, rock/punk/etc musicians don’t easily make money because the industry and profession is looked down on, and at least specifically in Japan it’s financially difficult to hire out live houses to actually play in. (Taking from a documentary I saw a screening of at D-22 about Japanese punk music.)
@Alex: I don’t find the accent thing that big a deal. A number of great musicians have less than authentic accents while singing. The Rolling Stones, Guided By Voices, The Ramones, Eric Clapton, and Creedence Clearwater Revival all spring to mind. Anyway, half of AC/DC (including Bon Scott and Brian Johnson) were born in Scotland
@Alex, teardroppy: I don’t say they should write lyrics in English only. But they should include an accurate translation of the lyrics in the booklet. That makes their music by far more accessible aborad. Look at Dir En Grey, where one can at least get an idea on what they sing. I prefer Chinese bands to sing in Chinese, as I also prefer German bands to sing in German (their English accent is often enough an accident), but they should enable their message / lyrics to be understandable on a wider basis, i.e. translation of lyrics. That way people can listen to their music, grasp more of it, and get more out of the music. The CD is easier to be reviewed overseas and with today’s online music market on a global scale, I do think that it is possible for bands to do a nice side business and side income with music sold online to a wider audience (also DIY!!!).
There is no doubt that a stable domestic market with good venues, good live show opportunities would help the bands. But as Andy mentioned there are certain restrictions that are not easy to overcome in the present situation, aka The Elephant in the room. As long as that is persistent, many bands can try very hard with less success than if they would follow the DIY someplace else. E.g. in Germany they have the general acceptability of their music on their side: Radio does play rock! TV does show metal (whether its Manowar in the most famous comedy show or Metallica live from Rock am Ring). This acceptability is not given in China right now, but the internet is giving Chinese bands a good chance to at least help them to gather either some financial income or to grow in popularity to such an extend that touring is not impossible. No Name had been offered a slot in Europe by their German label after they had extensively searched for an opportunity and gained some fame in the punk scene (enough to get that opportunity).