I remember searching for experimental music from China a long time ago and miserably failing to even find any useful sources. This is very exciting, please keep it up! Once one created a lot of knowledge and contacts about china it is easy to forget how hard it still is to get even a basic grasp of the culture when you start with google search.
I noticed that the amazing Elephant Sitting Still is available on QQ Music but not NetEase (which i'm locked in to....) Anyway, it got me thinking, is there a wider rationale behind alternative bands not releasing their stuff on both of China's mainstream platforms? Just curious. Anyway, thanks a lot, great recs. Looking forward to more
Hi Will, thanks for reading and for the interesting comment.
I find those exclusivity arrangements frustrating and I suppose individual bands will have their own rationales for this, but I imagine they're often done at the behest of the platform, so it's a case of which one offers the best deal (and these are often negotiated through the labels). There are a few bands who go it completely alone and opt for putting their music on as many platforms as possible, but most artists releasing an album still do so via a label in some form, and most of the labels releasing alternative bands will have a link or relationship with NetEase or the Tencent Empire. I thought Tencent was forced to end all of its exclusivity arrangements last year (them and NetEase seem to sue each other fairly regularly about this stuff as well) but I'm not sure.
Some of those exclusivity agreements seem timed, so they expire after the first few weeks and then the release appears elsewhere, which seems like a more reasonable compromise, but in the case of older records I'm not entirely sure what the deal is to be honest. In the case of a soundtrack, I assume there are other rights holders and issues as well.
This is already quite a long reply that doesn't really answer the question, but an interesting (to me) tangent here is that the streaming platforms have started to care a bit more about this kind of music in recent years I feel. Both NetEase and Tencent have done a few exclusive series where they ask various alternative bands to create new tracks around a certain theme for their platforms (e.g. NetEase's pairing of bands such as Wang Wen and FAZI with photographers: https://music.163.com/#/playlist?id=7533809685) and Maybe Mars just launched a fancy-looking label hub on QQ this week. The platforms paying more attention to this kind of music and its fans likely has a bearing on all of this as well of course.
At least the Elephant soundtrack is available on Bandcamp....
I remember searching for experimental music from China a long time ago and miserably failing to even find any useful sources. This is very exciting, please keep it up! Once one created a lot of knowledge and contacts about china it is easy to forget how hard it still is to get even a basic grasp of the culture when you start with google search.
I noticed that the amazing Elephant Sitting Still is available on QQ Music but not NetEase (which i'm locked in to....) Anyway, it got me thinking, is there a wider rationale behind alternative bands not releasing their stuff on both of China's mainstream platforms? Just curious. Anyway, thanks a lot, great recs. Looking forward to more
Hi Will, thanks for reading and for the interesting comment.
I find those exclusivity arrangements frustrating and I suppose individual bands will have their own rationales for this, but I imagine they're often done at the behest of the platform, so it's a case of which one offers the best deal (and these are often negotiated through the labels). There are a few bands who go it completely alone and opt for putting their music on as many platforms as possible, but most artists releasing an album still do so via a label in some form, and most of the labels releasing alternative bands will have a link or relationship with NetEase or the Tencent Empire. I thought Tencent was forced to end all of its exclusivity arrangements last year (them and NetEase seem to sue each other fairly regularly about this stuff as well) but I'm not sure.
Some of those exclusivity agreements seem timed, so they expire after the first few weeks and then the release appears elsewhere, which seems like a more reasonable compromise, but in the case of older records I'm not entirely sure what the deal is to be honest. In the case of a soundtrack, I assume there are other rights holders and issues as well.
This is already quite a long reply that doesn't really answer the question, but an interesting (to me) tangent here is that the streaming platforms have started to care a bit more about this kind of music in recent years I feel. Both NetEase and Tencent have done a few exclusive series where they ask various alternative bands to create new tracks around a certain theme for their platforms (e.g. NetEase's pairing of bands such as Wang Wen and FAZI with photographers: https://music.163.com/#/playlist?id=7533809685) and Maybe Mars just launched a fancy-looking label hub on QQ this week. The platforms paying more attention to this kind of music and its fans likely has a bearing on all of this as well of course.
At least the Elephant soundtrack is available on Bandcamp....