MCLC: Music Valley

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Music Valley
***********************************************************

Source: The Guardian (12/25/12):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/25/china-music-valley-cultural-pro
file

Beijing spends a billion to get China rocking
A 'Music Valley' is among plans to boost the music industry. But will
piracy and tight state control hold back progress?
By Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing

From the top of a hillside in Pinggu village, an hour's drive from central
Beijing, the future of China's music industry doesn't look like much –
just a vista of Mao-era farmhouses and parched cabbage fields.

Yet Beijing officials have announced plans to spend more than 10 years and
£1.4bn turning the area into the "China Music Valley", a sprawling
compound that will be home to recording studios, instrument makers, music
schools, five-star hotels and an arena in the shape of a peach.

"Music is such an intangible kind of art," said Zhao Wei, a 30-year-old
official who directed the initiative until last month. "Now with this
project, we want to turn music into something that you can see, something
that you can touch."

China's central government, concerned that progress in the country's film,
music and drama sectors lag behind its economic development, has
designated culture a top national priority and promised billions of pounds
in subsidies for the arts. "Culture is the lifeblood of a nation
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/744884.shtml>," President Hu Jintao
said at the start of the country's once-in-a-decade leadership transition
in November.

While some fields have flourished under state support – its output of
films has quadrupled since 2003 – China's music industry is still
fledgling, perennially constrained by rampant piracy and a stifling
undercurrent of government control. While Gangnam Style cemented Korea's
place on the world pop map, China is still struggling with how to keep
many of its artists paid
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/world/asia/china-at-party-congress-touts
-its-cultural-advances.html>. "The industry is so small that we don't have
enough writers, enough song creators, enough composers, we don't have
enough bands," said Scarlett Li, the founder of music festival promoter
Zebra Media.

Analysts say the music industry's problems are primarily economic. The
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has said that the
country has a piracy rate of "virtually 100%".

Yet many issues can be traced back to the heavy hand of the state.
Television and radio stations are tightly regulated, giving artists little
room to experiment with edgy content like the offbeat satire that
propelled Gangnam Style's singer Psy to international fame.

Rather than investing in talent, local governments frequently take
cultural subsidies as a green light to build opera houses, performance
arenas, and other high-profile property projects. "None of the money goes
to the artists, it goes to middle men," Li said. "But the middle men are
not at the centre of creating content. This makes no sense to me."

Things are improving. Last year, the central government formed a committee
for enforcing intellectual property rights laws headed by the
vice-premier. Baidu Music and Tencent Music, two leading online free music
suppliers, have agreed to begin charging for downloads at the beginning of
2013. China recorded £52m in music sales in 2011
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-06/30/content_15538349.htm>, a
rise of about 23% over 2010.

Over the past few years, there has been a boom in music festivals,
multiple-day affairs rife with Converse footwear, neon-dyed hair and
studded leather bracelets. Li said that despite their rough-edged
aesthetic, many festivals are encouraged or even sponsored by local
governments as a way to boost tourism revenue while increasing their
cultural clout.

The official presence at many festivals is unmistakable. Flocks of
green-coated security guards stand by the stage and goose-step in
formation through the audience. Many ban alcohol.

International music labels are desperate to crack China's potentially
massive market – Warner, Sony and Universal all have offices in Beijing.
Yet for foreign investors in China's domestic media, the barriers to entry
are sky-high.

Take Beijing startup Rock the Web <http://www.rocktheweb.com/>, an online
American Idol-style talent show whose winners will record with A-list
producers in Los Angeles. According to Ilya Agapkin, the company's Russian
co-founder, gaining approval for the show was almost entirely dependent on
his ability to navigate an intricate web of government contacts.

"Of course, this area that we are working in is quite sensitive, because
the media market is closed to foreign investments," he said. "The
regulations are very complicated."

Agapkin's team spent a year acquiring permits. "To be on the internet, you
need a special licence. To be an agency you need a special licence. To be
a culture company you need a special licence," said Xiong Jialin, the
company's music director. Some of these licences require employees to
attend classes and pass written tests at government institutions.

The Chinese government has tried promoting folk heroes, with mixed
results. In 2011, after a migrant worker duo achieved internet fame with a
gruff cover of a Chinese pop song – think grainy mobile phone footage,
empty beer bottles, cigarettes
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZapuT-bxU> – the government invited them
to perform at that year's spring festival gala, one of the world's
most-viewed performances.

But soon after their debut, the group caved in under the pressures of
sudden fame and an unforgiving market.

"People say that I shouldn't be using an iPhone because I'm a migrant
worker," guitarist Liu Gang said last winter. "It drives me crazy." In
September, Chinese media admonished Liu for driving an Audi and verbally
abusing a pedestrian in a traffic dispute.

Despite the odds, some artists have forged their own path. Yan Haisong,
the lead singer of the veteran Beijing rock band P.K.14, said his band
made a decent living performing at festivals and producing records for
up-and-coming artists. Yan added that no one in his professional circle
had much interest in projects such as the China Music Valley.

"Combining music and politics is really strange, because the music you get
out of it just won't be any good," he said. "If they really want to
improve this culture, they need to open up a bit."