ed peto

This article originally appeared in Issue 191 (1st May 2008) of the MusicAlly Report.

China never fully adopted the “traditional” tools of music discovery and consumption: TV, radio and the print press are all heavily monitored by the government and relatively anodyne as a result; CDs never really gained any meaningful traction; live music events are circuses of permits and arbitrary cancellations.

The bleak circumstances of China’s music business have resulted in the Chinese consumer inadvertently leapfrogging into the next generation of music consumption, even before their western counterparts.

In February this year, after a 53% growth rate in 2007, the Chinese Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) finally declared the Chinese internet base to be the largest in the world with 221 million users. At 16% penetration, this still leaves huge room for growth.

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In November last year I got a call from a flustered Chinese magazine editor. ‘Would you be able to do an 800 word album review for our December edition?’ she asked, adding ‘by tomorrow?’.

Normally I would have turned this down as the money tends to be poor and the deadline was a bit abrupt, but the magazine in question was Rolling Stone China - re-named ‘InMusic’ after a disastrous launch left them unable to publish under that name - and the album was Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’.

Ultimately the prestige of the publication and the immediate relevance of the album (I had it on rotation at that point) saw me sitting down the following day to churn it out.

It was only after I got my copy back that I started to wonder why they had approached me, a westerner, to review such an important album. I met for a coffee with my editor Lua Zhou to ask how it came about… Continue Reading »

Ahead of his MidemNet panel appearance, Mathew Daniel, VP of R2G (leading digital distribution company) in Beijing has a few observations and words of advice for labels seeking digital licensing opportunities in China:

As Olympic hosts and country-of-honor at MIDEM, China’s music industry is an increasingly common feature on the western agenda. There is, however, almost a whiff of the ‘Wild East’ in the way companies are approaching licensing in the Middle Kingdom.

It has to be realized that the vast majority of labels at MIDEM are probably currently unscathed by piracy in China and that’s likely because their music is so obscure in the Chinese consciousness that they have not even had the dubious honor of gracing the servers of China’s notorious MP3 search engine, Baidu.

Piracy in China often gets a lot of attention but many forget the other Ps of marketing and these are the basics that labels intending to come into China should first focus on. For dramatic effect, let me first quote Tim O’Reilly when he said that “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy“.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that one is worse than the other as it is a case of horses for courses. I would also add that in China, in true Darwinian fashion, one man’s piracy is another man’s marketing. But as O’Reilly explained, piracy eventually develops in a manner akin to progressive taxation in exchange for greater exposure and appeal: There is always the regretful possibility that one may eventually despair at the crossroads of Robert Johnson. Continue Reading »

Just changing my site hosting around so have not been/will not be posting for a couple of weeks. My original site can be found at edpeto.wordpress.com [Update Jan '08: The old site has now been fully migrated to the one you are on now, so no need to move]. In the meantime I’ll leave you with this phone video of an impromptu, al fresco Peking Opera session in Bei Hai Park, central Beijing.

The Chinese government is acutely aware that TV is the most effective medium for delivering key cultural and political messages. China Central Television (CCTV), the state-run national station, operates a range of channels, which, in the main part, are barefaced propaganda and state trumpet blowing. Their large scale, televised music galas showcase traditional and government approved music forms and are regularly watched by audiences in the hundreds of millions. These are the kind of viewing figures that excite people about China but in reality the shows are impregnable fortresses of glittery, spandex-clad state guff.

When Pop Idol imitator ‘SuperGirl’ hit China in 2004, the final was watched by 400 million people. The rush of mobile votes sent the government into a panic and severe restrictions were implemented, preventing the show ever happening in the same format again - The idea of a democratically decided pop show proving too much for a one-party state.

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This article originally appeared as ‘Music In China : The Inside Story’ on The Register

How To Do Business In China, China CEO, The New Chinese Consumer… my shelves here in Beijing are stacked full of such books, all trying to throw some light on a country and market of seemingly endless allure to the west. A population of 1.3 billion people has marketeers around the world girding up their loins to do business here, each with a How To Do Business In China book tucked under their arm.

Unfortunately for the western music entrepreneur or artist, these books are helpful in only the most general terms. While there is a slew of practical, detailed advice on how to deal with rubber-ball factories and sales chains, the fledgling music industry here is such a bewildering state of affairs that fully-rounded advice simply isn’t available yet.

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A friend of mine, David Mitchell, has been a regular at his local pool hall in Beijing for going on a year and a half now. It didn’t take him long after his first visit to notice the lack of care put into the music choice in this vast twenty table room. The management had made the effort to get nice pool tables and cues and, in doing so, had earned themselves a loyal crowd of patrons, but they seemed to just stick the same CD of offensively bland wallpaper music on day in and day out.

As a musician and DJ (and regular pool hall patron) David couldn’t take much of this. He politely suggested to the management that he make compilations for them to play. The bosses were thrilled with the idea so the next day David brought back a lovingly compiled CD of vintage funk and soul. The pool hall played it, loved it and asked him to do the same again, which he did, a number of times. Before long, however, David began to suspect how much people were actually paying attention to his finely crafted mixes. His friend Matt suggested that, as a test, he make a CD which featured the same song repeated 18 times on it, the song being ‘What A Fool Believes’ by Michael McDonald/Doobie Brothers:

As normal the management put the CD on loop and, after two hours of playing pool to the same song, David asked the management and some of the regulars what they thought of it… Continue Reading »

The Chinese independent music scene can be a hard nut to crack. Non-Chinese-speaking music fans have to be much more determinedly hands on in their approach than elsewhere in the world. Indecipherable band names, poorly recorded and hard-to-find albums and lack of English media coverage are just some of the barriers-to-entry, testing even the most resilient of music fans.

New podcast ‘Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain’ will be a real godsend to anyone looking at making sense of this exciting little scene. Podcasters Ian Sherman (who also happens to be Music Editor for Beijing Time Out) and Kyle Schaefer’s high-brow, yet somehow low-brow, ramblings will also be a godsend to anyone who enjoys apocrypha, obscure references and general verbosity.

Kyle Schaefer and Ian Sherman

These guys know their stuff. They play good tunes as well. Here are links to the first two gloriously amateurish installments, hosted on the Tagteam Records site:

Sept ‘07

Oct ‘07

I took it upon myself to send a few questions their way - pulling back the curtain on Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain, if you will. They replied in a typically wordy and waggish fashion. Good stuff. Read on… Continue Reading »

Publishing is a tricky concept in China. The typical Chinese approach to intellectual property is that ‘ideas belong to everyone’, so while it is difficult to make money out of something tangible like a record or a download, it is VERY difficult to make anything from the intellectual property contained within it. The Copyright Act was only passed in China in 1991, so it is still early days.

The Mechanical Copyright Society of China (MCSC) was set up in 1992 as the sole administrator for composition but it’s effectiveness is often brought into question by the publishers. In the last few years, the majors have taken it upon themselves to either do their own collection or find independents to take it on for them.

While the MCSC claims that they maintain a good flow of revenue back to the western rights owners, there is no mechanical collection agreement in place between MCSC and, say, the MCPS in the UK. Continue Reading »

There’s nothing worse than hyping things up too early. While Billboard magazine saw fit to call Beijing one of the top 5 cities to watch for music in 2007, regular gig-goers here are slightly less sanguine on the subject. This place has a long, long way to go before it can be compared to even the second tier cities in most other developed countries in terms of originality and depth of talent. As a rule, most bands are highly derivative as well as technically suspect, making the three chord mock-anger and incompetence-drowning feedback of punk music the weapons of choice. That’s not to say that there isn’t a certain buzz in the air though. While there has never been a shortage of fan favourites like Brain Failure, New Pants and the now defunct Hang On The Box, there seems to be a certain knowing assurance in the current rising stars where there was only amateurish exuberance before. Bands like Rebuilding The Rights Of Statues (Re-TROS) and Lonely China Day, both of whom toured the States recently to glowing reviews, are just…well…believable, and that is a very rare quality in this town. Here are the Re-TROS playing ‘If The Monkey Becomes (To Be) The King’ at Beijing’s 2 Kolegas club last night:

There’s no doubt as to who the hot new prospects are though. I put Hedgehog on for a show here in June after being impressed with a few D-22 gigs and they were outstanding.

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