Where is the record company now?
"China News Weekly" reporter / Ni Wei
Published in the 1031st issue of "China News Weekly" on February 14, 2022
"Of course Chinese music is improving, why is it going backwards?" Shen Lihui said to China News Weekly, sitting back in a chair on the balcony of the office.
On this afternoon in early 2022, the CEO of Modern Sky and the lead singer of Lucid was busy with various company matters such as finances, budgets, and summaries.
The music kingdom he presides is spinning at high speed.
In this old factory outside Beijing's East Fourth Ring Road, several hundred employees of Modern Sky filled the two-story giant flat. Between recordings of new songs, musicians got out of the recording studio and gathered downstairs to smoke.
Thousands of miles away in Hainan, the last Strawberry Music Festival of the previous year has just ended. After half a month, the annual release of the new year will follow.
In 2022, more than 160 albums are included in the release plan of Modern Sky, with an average of one album every two days, a record high.
Modern Sky will fully deploy the virtual world, and a virtual musician is about to debut.
Following rock, folk, and Hip-Hop, this year will make a big push into the national style sector.
There seem to be two Chinese music circles.
One is on the rivers and lakes, creating a network "divine comedy" with magic sound, mass production, and algorithm distribution; the other is in the palace, following the traditional production process, and industrializing high-quality music.
The two occasionally meet, but in the public opinion field at the end of 2021, a clear tear will be formed.
The pessimistic rhetoric of "Chinese music is over" is rampant again.
The record company in the palace once provided the engine for musical genius to take off, and it also packaged ordinary amateurs into superstars of the era in accordance with the custom-made model.
They make platinum records, produce national hits, and create collective memories.
They used to decide what music people could hear and what genres they liked.
They defined fashion and shaped aesthetics.
Some people wonder, in the era of popular songs on the Internet, as the gatekeeper of the music industry, what are the record companies doing now?
Traffic logic affects the record industry
At the end of 2021, Taihe Music Group's "A18 Our Verse" project will come to an end. This concept, which consists of a series of codes such as English letters, numbers, and Chinese, reveals the music company's positive attitude towards change.
The plan includes 11 songs, each of which comes from the cooperation of two musicians who seem to be irrelevant.
The original intention is to encourage musicians from different systems to break down barriers and seek a balance between word-of-mouth quality and traffic data.
The Internet hit song "Your Answer" was originally sung by A Jun, and the singer-songwriter of "Aries" was Xu Binglong. These musicians with their own traffic works were invited to mix and match with the singer-songwriters of Taihe Music.
Li Yugang collaborated with the cyberpunk rap group "MiniG Mini Machine" in "SWORDSMAN, the Invincible East". Li Yugang's clear voice has formed a wonderful interaction with electronic music.
"There is a certain predicament in Chinese pop music, there are very different users and markets, and it is becoming more and more difficult to understand each other." Hu Yiyou, vice president of Taihe Music Group, told China News Weekly, "The reason lies in technology And media development and vertical consumption ecology have become common practice. Pop music has a responsibility to play a certain role as a communication medium." In his office in Sanlitun, Beijing, he clicked on these songs on the computer, while talking to "China News Weekly" one by one. Explain the idea of each song.
A piece of R&B floated out, and Ding Shiguang and Vicky Xuanxuan cooperated.
Ding Shiguang is recognized as a high-quality singer-songwriter in the industry. He has participated in the works of artists such as Tao Zhe, Tian Fuzhen, Lin Youjia, and Yi Yang Qianxi as a creator and producer. A 15-year-old middle school student with 1.8 million followers.
Ding Shiguang took over the creation and production, and the little girl flew to Beijing to record.
Record companies took the initiative to extend olive branches to popular singer-songwriters and traffic bloggers, and did not hesitate to use top creators to use the production and packaging capabilities of record companies to achieve "fusion".
So, what is the purpose of the fusion of record companies and traffic singers?
It is undeniable that traffic logic is not only sweeping the music industry, but also affecting traditional record companies.
Hu Yiyou frankly admitted that the adaptability of the platform and the potential of online communication have become one of the company's considerations in selecting new recruits.
The traditional logic of dividing pop music into two based on flow and quality is obviously no longer suitable for market requirements.
Taihe Music has signed the hit singer Yang Yang, whose "Shut Down and Shut Down" hit major online platforms last year.
Hu Yiyou explained the reason for choosing him: "He can write high-quality golden songs." Now, in addition to going to the show to find newcomers, the record company will also go to B station, Douyin and other video platforms to find demos sent by these young people. (Song demo), it is no longer a music file, but a selfie video.
When some young singers of record companies write songs, they are also directed by the logic of hot songs consciously or unconsciously.
The so-called hot song logic includes the preposition of the chorus, the shortening of the verse, and the chords also follow a certain routine. The hook (the most fascinating melody in the chorus) is beautiful and memorable.
"Many musicians disdain to do this, but others are very 'smart', they will write according to the routine." Hu Yiyou said.
Speaking, he got up and wrote four words on the whiteboard: talent show, ringtones, streaming media, short video - this is the trend that Chinese music has experienced in the past 20 years.
For more than 20 years, he has witnessed the whole process.
Every wave of trends is impacting and reconstructing the record industry. The general trend is that channels are trying to occupy more discourse power as a challenger.
He emphasized: "The traditional music industry has continued to suffer in the past 20 years because the path of music transmission has undergone tremendous changes."
People listen to new songs through players and short videos, instead of directly buying CDs and cassettes issued by record companies, and there are not many song-recording programs left on TV and radio.
Record companies are encountering difficulties in the marketing path. Even if the new album of a well-known singer is launched, it is often like a small stone thrown into the heart of the lake, unable to stir up water.
The record company's self-iteration of content logic is a reflection of this shock: streaming media and short video platforms have dominated the music distribution path.
"What are the top ten hot songs? That's the user's choice, and what is it for the user? It's your choice." Hu Yiyou said, entering the era of streaming media and short videos, if you just present and cater to the user's choice, it will change. become like this.
Music critic Deng Ke explained that short video music follows the logic of user behavior, not the logic of elite aesthetics.
The hot songs under the logic of user behavior are infinitely close to the real average aesthetic level of this society.
"The audience has always been layered, some like elegant, some like vulgar songs, but in the past, the channel was dominated by relatively elite people, and those who liked vulgar songs had no chance to vote for their taste."
There should be two logics in the music industry. In addition to user choice, music content companies must respond positively.
"What do the practitioners of our generation see, what do they output, what do they want to provide to users and the world, and what do they want to leave behind for this generation? Or even from a commercial perspective, how much content will we have in ten years? Value? Maybe speculators don't need to think, but industry practitioners must always think." Hu Yiyou said seriously.
He said that the immediate cost, income, output value, cost performance and other data are never the whole of pop music.
"We must not only maintain agility and respond positively to market changes, but also uphold the necessary sense of awe, responsibility and mission. To put it bluntly, this matter is not just a one-time, one-buy-one-sell business."
Unknown times without standards
Dou Wei's "Advanced Animals" - a generation's rock memory of the 90s, is now being roared out by a young voice.
The arrangement is more luxurious, and the sound is more powerful. At first glance, the deep voice is somewhat similar to Dou Wei.
The one who sang this song again was the rock band Hu Xiaochun, who had been in the army for three years.
"It's like an extension of Dou Wei's personal style and thoughts, and it can also highlight Hu Xiaochun's own characteristics." Some listeners commented on NetEase Cloud Music.
"If you haven't heard the original, you'll think, this is a new song, right? It's also a new song and an old song." Ye Yunfu analyzed the song in this way.
He is the Deputy General Manager of the Artist Development Department of Rolling Stones (China), the coordinator of the "Rolling Stones 40 Rolling Stones Hit the Band" project, and the driving force behind this song.
From December 2021, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of Rolling Stones Records, the "Rolling Stones Hit Band" series of songs will be released one after another.
A total of 40 songs were remade by 40 cross-strait bands on the Rolling Stones classic.
PK14 dedicated the dark temperament "Rolling Red Dust", Elephant Gymnastics sang "Is there a song that reminds you of me", and second-hand roses used a suona to play "Love Song 1980" - from the first rock-breaking Rolling Stones The album "Anyone".
Talking about the original intention of the project, Ye Yunfu said that the chronology of Chinese music seems to be too urgent. Ten years or even five years is a generation. Rolling Stone hopes that everyone will not forget the old songs and bring them to life through remakes.
He also admitted that he hopes to attract a new generation of listeners through a new generation of bands.
The last time the Rolling Stones made a big battle was the "Rolling Stones 30th Anniversary" large-scale concert ten years ago.
More than 80 Rolling Stones musicians scattered all over the world, in Taipei Arena and Beijing Bird's Nest, to miss the glorious era of a record company.
Zhao Chuan, who became popular in the Chinese world with "I Am a Little Bird", said sadly, "I thought I would die of old age in the Rolling Stones, but..." Duan Zhongyi, Chairman of the Rolling Stones, responded with tears: "I'm sorry I didn't let you all in the Rolling Stones. Getting old and letting everyone leave their hometowns to make a living. I'm really sorry for not taking care of everyone!"
It's a very family scene.
In the Chinese music scene, Rolling Stone is indeed the company with the most "big parent" temperament.
In the era of the record industry, record companies have nurtured generations of music stars in the attitude of big parents.
It all started with the Rolling Stones.
In 1980, two brothers, Duan Zhongyi and Duan Zhongtan, founded the Rolling Stone Records Company (formerly known as Rolling Stone Audio Publishing House) in Taipei.
Two years later, the Rolling Stones released an album for a radiologist named Luo Dayou. At that time, Taiwan was still in the period of martial law. This piece of "Zhihu Zhe", which has a bleak and gloomy historical feeling, hit people's hearts. 140,000 copies sold.
The era of modern pop music in Taiwan began. The Rolling Stones and musical talents achieved mutual success and dominated the music scene in the 1980s and 1990s.
Producers such as Luo Dayou, Li Zongsheng, and Xiao Woo took charge and found out about half of the Chinese music scene such as Zhou Huajian, Qi Qin, Chen Shuhua, Wu Bai, Zhang Xinzhe, Ren Xianqi, Liu Ruoying, and Mayday.
Rolling Stone's territory quickly spread to the entire Chinese-speaking world, signing superstars such as Beyond, Leslie Cheung, and Lin Yilian in Hong Kong.
Zhang Peiren, who was born in the Rolling Stones, went to Beijing to set up Magic Rock Culture, excavated mainland rock music, and released the far-reaching album "China Fire".
In the spring of 1994, Dou Wei, Zhang Chu and He Yong released their solo albums at the same time, and held a concert at the Hung Hom Stadium in Hong Kong in the same year. The "Three Heroes of Magic Rock" has since become the embodiment of the spirit of rock and roll.
The following year, Magic Rock Culture became a subsidiary of Rolling Stones.
Rolling Stones poster once proudly wrote a sentence: In Taiwan, every record company listens to Rolling Stones music late at night.
In addition to commercial success, the significance of the Rolling Stones may be more importantly, raising the spiritual level of popular music with a humanistic standpoint and realistic criticism.
Luo Dayou expressed his rebellion against Taiwanese folk songs of Feng Hua Xue Yue in "The People Who Are You": "The Feng Hua Xue Yue Zhi, Hu La La Hu, is that the case with the so-called folk singers?" Some commentators once said that the Rolling Stones made pop music have a relationship with movies and movies. Literature stands shoulder to shoulder with cultural heights.
Looking back, the golden age of the Chinese-language record industry was only a short ten years ago.
In the 1980s and 1990s, before the five major international record companies (Warner, Universal, BGM, EMI, and Sony Music) landed in the Chinese market, local record companies grew like weeds.
The existence of music has never been more important in people's lives, and it has never been surpassed since.
Rolling Stones, UFO and Poly Gold were the top three record companies at that time. Hong Kong's Poly Gold became popular with Teresa Teng, Xu Guanjie, Alan Tam, Jacky Cheung, Faye Wong and others, while Taiwan UFO Records owned Wang Jie, Jiang Yuheng, Su Rui, and Cai Qin. , Zhang Yusheng and other superstars.
In 1993, PolyGram released Jacky Cheung's album "Kiss Goodbye", setting a sales record of more than 4 million copies.
It wasn't until the age of digital music that streaming stars left him far behind with digital album sales.
In Hong Kong and Taiwan at the time, 50,000 copies were called platinum and 100,000 were double platinum.
In those years, the most popular singers in the world were Michael Jackson and Madonna. Jacky Cheung ranked second in the world in total album sales at that time, second only to Michael Jackson, which shows that the Chinese record market is booming.
In 1993, the superstar Zhou Huajian, the top star of the Rolling Stones, also released the super best-selling album "Flower Heart".
In the year following the popularity of "Kiss Goodbye" and "Flower Heart", a group of fresh singers in the mainland broke out in the name of "94 New Generation", including Chen Hong, Chen Lin, Xie Dong, Sun Yue from Beijing, Yang Yuying and Mao Ning from Guangzhou. , Gan Ping and Li Chunbo, etc.
This is the first generation of star-making achievements in the mainland record industry.
Influenced by Hong Kong and Taiwan, the mainland's record industry accelerated in the early 1990s. Dadi Records, founded in Hong Kong in 1990, moved to Beijing two years later, and released "My 1997" and "Campus Ballad 1", named the campus. Folk style.
The Red Star Production Company, also founded by Hong Kong people, started in a small hotel in Beijing and launched Zheng Jun, Xu Wei, Xiao Ke and others.
Song Ke, a graduate of Tsinghua University who returned from studying in the United States, founded the wheat field music with a strong humanistic atmosphere and signed Pu Shu, Ye Bei and Yin Wu.
When Ye Yunfu entered Rolling Stone Records as a project in 1998, it was the end of the glorious era.
At that time, double platinum sales were just a threshold that determined whether a new singer could release the next album.
At the end of the Rolling Stones, the last trump card, Mayday, was just signed into the company by Li Zongsheng.
In fact, the crisis had already lurked at that time.
In the 1990s, the booming Rolling Stones expanded rapidly overseas and opened 12 branches in Asia. However, the record market shrunk and eventually lost a lot.
Crisis comes from all directions.
In 1995, five major international record companies entered the Chinese-language market. Around 2000, local record companies either closed down or were acquired by the top five. UFO and PolyGram were respectively committed to Warner and Universal. Only Rolling Stone stubbornly remained independent.
In order to get out of the predicament, Rolling Stones tested the waters of the online music market, but encountered piracy rampant, so that they were losing ground, and at the peak, more than 200 artists were reduced to a dozen.
The debt owed at the turn of the century was not paid off until 2012. The founder, Duan Zhongtan, said in an interview that 25 years of glory is not worth 5 years of losses.
In the past ten years, the Rolling Stones have slowly recovered. They landed at the "Central Station" live house in Guangzhou, held several original singer and original band competitions, and established the Rolling Stones electronic music label to keep pace with the times. .
After the outbreak, offline performances dropped sharply, and Ye Yunfu never came to the mainland again. He was interviewed by China News Weekly in Taipei.
Ye Yunfu felt that after 2015, the Rolling Stones walked out of the cold winter, and the entire music market also entered an "unknown era".
In the past, how to make an album, what the title song looks like, did not change much, and the record company provided content according to market demand.
In the era when online platforms dominate the volume, there is no standard model, and the market is elusive.
The way of pushing singers and pushing new songs is changing rapidly, and the Rolling Stones are also adapting to the unknown.
"For example, Modern Sky has to deal with such things as the Internet Comprehensiveness, how to intervene without letting the original fans object." He said with a smile, "It's a common problem for everyone."
music business
"Content-scene-user." On January 19, at the Modern Sky 2022 release party, Shen Lihui pointed to the three circles on the big screen and said that Modern Sky had already realized the closed loop of these three elements.
Then, the three circles project a symmetrical mirror image, and the word "virtual" emerges.
"Virtual content, virtual scenes, and users in virtual scenes will also form a closed loop in the future." He announced that Modern Sky will fully expand the virtual world.
During an interview in the office, Shen Lihui took out his mobile phone to demonstrate to China News Weekly that this year's offline Strawberry Music Festival will also increase the AR (augmented reality) experience, and the App can scan out virtual maps, interactive games and consumption tips.
This means that even if you go to a music festival for a rave, you can't get rid of your phone.
Modern Sky's music business is booming, and it has become another rolling stone in the era of Focus Music and Divine Comedy.
Eagerly capturing trends and embracing the times, it's all like an internet company.
"Folk, rap, bands, and several original music trends in China in the last six or seven years were all led by Modern." Shen Lihui recalled in a calm tone, "But in the first ten years, we were a strange and marginal label in the industry. "Modern Sky was established in Beijing in 1997. At that time, Yu Wei, the four kings of heaven, still existed. The golden song of the year was "Best of Love". low tide.
And Modern has gathered a group of younger rock bands in Beijing's underground, who are more fashionable, relaxed and indifferent than the previous generation.
Modern Sky's transition from fringe to mainstream occurred in 2007, with the launch of the Modern Sky Music Festival, followed by the Strawberry Music Festival two years later.
At the beginning of this century, the culture of domestic outdoor music festivals started from the Beijing Midi Music Festival. It spread through the Strawberry Music Festival and went to the suburbs to go to a music party on holidays, which has become an increasingly fashionable way of life.
On the other hand, from a dirty muddy place to a picturesque scenic spot, the music festival has also transformed from an idealistic utopia to a social scene of enjoying the moment and showing taste.
It is difficult to say whether the current situation created the modern sky, or the modern sky created the current situation.
When it held its first music festival, Modern Sky broke into all its belongings, and later, the company turned a profit.
For more than ten years, the music festival has been integrated into the urban youth culture, and the band culture has become popular among the general public. The literary and artistic youths who were nourished by underground music in those years have the right to speak and consume.
The era of independent music has arrived, and the once-popular sweet singers also hope to dress up as independent and individualistic clothes, so as to be eligible to participate in music festivals.
Modern Sky stepped out of the dim live house and gradually became mainstream. The Strawberry Music Festival was even included in the content section of the official background of the Beijing International Music Industry Conference.
The record market is becoming more and more sluggish, and music festivals have become a new growth point.
Statistics show that there are about 300 music festivals held every year in China in recent years, and only 60 or 70 music festivals were held ten years ago.
Modern Sky is both a promoter and a beneficiary.
The Strawberry Music Festival is popular all over the world due to its strong pull on consumption.
Shen Lihui said that last year, the Hainan Lingshui Strawberry Music Festival attracted 45,000 spectators in two days, eating, lodging, traveling, and visiting duty-free shops in Hainan, directly driving more than 400 million consumption.
The income structure of a general music company is divided into half by copyright and artist brokerage, while Modern Sky also has a live performance section, which was once the main source of income.
Modern Sky has a complete set of business thinking. In each segment, it must open up the chain from music content to scenes and consumption, and finally connect it to youth culture and lifestyle.
At the beginning of the epidemic, there were short video platforms to cooperate with online concerts and purchase Modern Sky's works.
As soon as he heard that the concert was going to be released for free, even if the purchase fee was paid, he rejected it.
"We don't agree with this very much, and we think how can it be free? Users should pay for what you work hard for." He told China News Weekly.
Later, Modern Sky made its own online performance of "Strawberry Nebula" for half a year, and its new trousers, Universal Youth Hotel, Wutiaoren, Tongyang and other bands were launched in turn, with a ticket price of 40 yuan.
He saw the different business logics of music companies and platform companies: platforms regard users as the core, while music companies' core is content, so they always stand on the side of musicians.
In fact, Modern Sky has not ignored users. More than 60% of the tickets for the Strawberry Music Festival are sold on their own app, and they are firmly tied to their users.
When explaining Modern Sky's business, Shen Lihui repeatedly mentioned a key point: "scenes".
Modern Sky continues to expand the scene, music festivals, live houses, etc. are all music consumption scenes.
Short video is also a kind of scene. The reason why Modern Sky is not anxious about it is that there are enough scenes developed by itself.
This year, Modern Sky will also transform Wuhan’s century-old public park into a Modern Sky IP complex, bringing together music scene, art space, shopping and consumption and other comprehensive formats.
Shen Lihui said humbly that Modern Sky is more radical than any music company in terms of scene innovation.
"But our judgment on the value of music has never changed. It doesn't mean that we will make 30-second color ringtones as soon as CRBT comes, and we will make 30-second short videos as soon as short videos come." He said that in the era of singles, Modern still used The logic of EPs or albums makes music, and most albums are still releasing physical CDs and vinyl records, and even preparing to ritually "revive" cassettes.
The modern sky that makes money has more freedom to do things that don't make money.
According to Shen Lihui, 80% of Modern Sky's business is not for making money at all. For example, they are exploring non-heritage folk music, and funding the college to do research projects and leave academic materials.
He said that making money was not his pursuit. He founded Modern Sky back then just to release an album for his sober band.
If you can put all the money you earn into things you are interested in, and continue to cycle, "this is very cool."
"Big Parent" Transformation
There is a sentence on Taihe Music's website: "We never regard artists as assets, but as partners." The company can provide "one-stop services" for artists, including artist brokerage, planning promotion, Copyright operation, commercial performance endorsement, fan community, etc.
From a large package to a precise service, the record company has consciously changed its positioning.
Rolling Stone, which created the "big parents" system, also disbanded the production department in 2002, saying goodbye to this model.
Ye Yunfu, Deputy General Manager of the Artist Development Department of Rolling Stones (China), commented when sharing an article titled "What is the Use of Record Companies for Independent Musicians" in a circle of friends, "There are indeed (there are) a lot of problems, and records are still needed. Company, that is, professional ability." He explained to "China News Weekly" that the so-called professional ability mainly does not refer to music.
According to his observations, record companies have had a hard time helping musicians with music.
The ability of record companies today is reflected in knowing where to find good music and musical talent, and then helping them plan what to do next.
"To do a concert, to tour, this is not a small thing, it needs a company or a team to do it." He said.
In the mainland, the record industry has been living fragilely in harsh environments.
In 2011, Song Ke, CEO of Taihe Wheatfield, shouted "the record is dead", and then resigned and sold roast duck for a while, which made this topic hotly debated.
One reason for the decline of the record industry was the rampant piracy, when the genuine rate of audio and video products was only 5% to 10%; another reason was the unfair copyright structure. In 2011, the copyright output value of China's music industry exceeded 30 billion yuan. companies, less than 2%.
This kind of congenital deficiency makes the weak record industry suffer serious internal injuries in every turmoil.
Now, the channel's right to speak is further shifted, and the old record companies need to work hard to adjust their posture.
According to the observation of music critic Deng Ke, record companies have undergone several changes in their identities: some have accumulated a lot of copyrights and can sell them for a living; some have degenerated into pure content providers; some have adapted to the times and changed to "Divine Comedy" ".
And Hu Yiyou, vice president of Taihe Music Group, insists that record companies should focus on another function: fusion.
The A18 project is an attempt to integrate.
Last year, Taihe Music also cooperated with the Palace Museum and Beijing TV on a large-scale documentary "Forbidden City" theme song music album, grafting traditional cultural elements with popular music, and appeared "Bright" and "Dragon Scales of Heaven and Earth", which performed equally well in terms of data. Quality hits.
Don't forget those new music companies other than the old record companies, integrating into the new era, they are completely free from the burden of thinking and inertia.
Tian Tian, CEO of Niwu Entertainment, which was established in 2018, told China News Weekly that they named themselves an entertainment company, not a music company, in order to fully embrace this world where "everything can be entertained".
Niwu Entertainment owns bands such as Penicillin, Queen Suitcase, Heping and Lang, and they opened short video accounts a few years ago.
The "2021 Tencent Entertainment White Paper Music Chapter" concluded that in the past year, the music industry has fully entered short videos, from mainstream singers to rock bands, from small labels to large companies.
Even middle-aged punk bands like Joyside have begun to direct and perform funny short videos.
Tian Tian could see that these eldest brothers may be "studying it every day", and he appreciates this attitude.
After a while, after being reminded by many friends, Tian Tian discovered that a song by Heping Helang was popular on Douyin and was used more than 800,000 times.
And penicillin with more fans, no song has reached this magnitude.
"We ask ourselves, number one, why are their concerts being used so often? Number two, how can we proactively spread these songs to people who use short videos?"
"Many people think that doing online content is because of the epidemic. That's not the case," he said. "The better you do online, the more popular it is offline. This is the norm for artists now and in the future. He admitted that the biggest pain point for music companies now is publicity, and short video platforms are the most effective publicity channels at the moment.
"Does the platform also need to have face-to-face collisions with music companies on a daily basis? Let's chat, so that we can help artists to do it in a planned way."
Niwu Entertainment intends to take this step more proactively. They plan to cooperate with MCN this year to specially plan and disseminate content, because MCN, which has in-depth cooperation with short video platforms, knows more about the platform needs and the direction of traffic support.
He hopes that all of his musicians can take off their masks and show their true self.
For example, a cold guitarist stepped off the stage, maybe a warm dad, you can make some videos with babies.
Users like this kind of thing. "You can even receive milk powder advertisements in the future."
Possibilities beyond the Red Sea
Beyond the hustle and bustle, someone has a more detached attitude.
Just after New Year's Day, Lu Zhongqiang threw himself in the recording studio for more than a week, producing and recording for Henan Satellite TV and Youku's New Year's Eve "New Folk Music and National Style Night".
With the "Wonderful Tour" series of evening parties with national elements, Henan Satellite TV has harvested traffic for a year. This time they are attracted to folk music and have reached an in-depth cooperation with the "Xin Yuefu" label, which is deeply involved in folk music.
Lu Zhongqiang walked out of the recording studio, wrapped his down jacket tightly, and walked around to the office of Sanyue Culture.
This record industry veteran, former Warner Records producer and owner of March Culture, is over fifty.
Crossing the rivers and lakes of pop and Internet music, he finally settled in the corner of folk music and folk music, just like this recording studio, hidden in the corner of Beijing Bawangfen Bus Station.
Before the Spring Festival, the new music group "Xinminqi" (Xinyuefu Folk Music Atmosphere Group) released a new album, "You can hear trap's flute, nuclear suona, and EDM (electronic dance music) erhu, but the bottom is very old. The bottom line of school's hip-hop." Lu Zhongqiang introduced to "China News Weekly".
The tunes are posted on the web for free and can be used as background music by anyone.
Although he doesn't expect traffic, he doesn't refuse to be popular, "I hope more people will play this music, it may go out of the circle, become a hit, and become popular in short videos, I hope so."
When it comes to the issue of traffic, the record industry veteran is not interested.
Leaning on the sofa, he was silent for a while, and said, "Actually, I was very easy to get angry when I was young, but later I found out that it was useless."
He recalled that in 2009, he took the folk singer Ma Tiao's new album to a chart and recommended it to a chart, because there was no money to hit the chart, the chart did not continue.
He angrily made a play to scold the leaderboard, called "That Night, We Made Music", starring Ma Tiao, who performed nine shows in the theater, and was very popular.
Then he finally accepted: "The market has its own logic, and it doesn't do these things anymore."
He chose to leave the Red Sea and turn to open up the Blue Sea.
In fact, he knows the tastes of the public very well, and he is also a winner in the era of CRBT.
In 2004, he collected songs for Dai Jun's new album, including the song "Rice Loves Rice". Dai Jun reprimanded him, thinking it was too vulgar.
Later, he re-arranged and let the author Yang Chengang sing by himself, which became popular on the Internet.
Internet songs brought the era of color ringtones. He established the "Internet Show" company to make color ringtones. A hot song can bring in 300,000 to 500,000 yuan a month, almost making money lying down.
However, he feels that online music is really boring, and writing seven or eight ringtones every day makes him "depressed".
He started a more pure folk song, signed Wan Xiaoli, Ma Tiao, Su Yang, Shanren Band and other musicians, and also signed the "new generation of rock godfather" Xie Tianxiao.
When the era of CRBT came to an end in 2010, the folk songs had already accumulated a lot of listeners. In March, the "Folk Songs on the Road" tour was launched, which recruited the best folk singers to sing and chant hundreds of times in various cities. "Renaissance Movement of Chinese Folk Songs".
民谣的成功让他信心大增——小众市场并不是做不起来。他后来觉得民谣也成了红海，原始感动随着市场扩张在缩减。2014年，他又转向民族音乐，成立“新乐府”厂牌。他从小在戏曲大院长大，音乐启蒙是二胡，“民族音乐在我的血液里，当我看到民乐各种跨界融合之后产生的变化，特别有吸引力。”那时他已经见过马条唱布鲁斯调的西北花儿，山人乐队把云贵民歌玩得“这么high、这么大”，想尝试民族音乐的可能性。
这些年，新乐府与昆曲、粤剧等各种戏曲和民乐班底合作，做了30多张专辑，正好赶上“国潮”的兴起。他们正打算落地国潮剧场，作为专属演出场地，并且与政府深度合作文旅项目，感受到市场的逐步扩大。“我早就认为我应该绕开流量，否则你的创作也颓，面对平台越来越甲方的嘴脸也颓。”卢中强吐着烟圈慢悠悠地说。
出乎意料的是，他想绕开流量，流量却找上了门。
疫情暴发后的2020年3月，一首《早知道在家待这么久》在微博和抖音大火。“早知道在家待这么久，我也不会只买两包红兰州。早知道在家待这么久，我也不会花五百去烫头。”戴着圆墨镜的西北汉子张尕怂，笑呵呵地拨弄着三弦，用轻快的西北小调，抚慰了疫情中的紧张情绪。他前一年与十三月签约，当时有人把他的弹唱视频发给卢中强，卢专程去北京的江湖酒吧看他的演出，三天后就谈定了合约。但对于这场毫无预兆的走红，卢中强坦言：“完全没想到！毫无规律可循。”
张尕怂成了十三月的流量密码。前不久，他还参加了音综《中国潮音》，一路闯入决赛。张尕怂的走红也给了卢中强信心，说明民乐还是被需要的，也证明真要把音乐做好了，将个性化做到极致，在这个时代不会被埋没。
卢中强继续埋头在小而美的世界里自得其乐。“当我脱离个体思考，被裹挟到一个宏大的话题、可能性当中，我就充满了无力感，你改变不了什么。”对于提升大众音乐审美这件事，他说自己从来没有奢望过，因为“可能性是零”。而当他回到录音台，或者坐在冯满天对面，听他缓缓弹起中阮，依然能陷入原始的感动，并且被激励着要去做点什么。
"We are powerless in the face of the Red Sea, but we are optimistic about the future of music." Lu Zhongqiang said that today's top ten hot songs are actually the same as the color ringtones of the year. There will always be people who are worried, and low-level concerts will not work. It erodes aesthetics.
"I think there must be an elite consciousness and a sense of urgency. Do what you want to do seriously, and there will be room for rewards." He said, "At least we are still alive."
"China News Weekly" Issue 5, 2022
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