Chinese Culture

The Effects of Piracy – Musical or Monetary?

2004-12-30 9:46:46 CRIENGLISH.com

Musical piracy in China is something of a global issue, which impacts the entire international music industry. But don't forget the musicians and their point of view concerning a black market that is, ostensibly at least, criticized in the interests of promoting music.

Piracy in China is nothing new, and it's certainly a constant headache for the record industry, with legitimate music sales said to account for only one tenth of actual record sales. But instead of examining the plight of unpopular record labels, In The Spotlight wishes to take a look today a the effect of piracy on musicians and musical quality in China. Our reporter Paul Kendall brings you the details.

Music piracy is routinely condemned by media, governments and record labels. But it's fair to say that the general public routinely ignores the advice of the first two categories, and whether justified or not, record labels' public popularity is on about the same footing as drug dealers. The moral majority therefore supposedly steers away from the pirates looming on the horizons of their high streets because of a concern for struggling musicians and their ability to afford three meals a day.
Yet we only ever seem to ask the opinion of major artists when talking about piracy. No-one bothers to ask the poorer musical majority, and this media bias often results in coverage that completely fails to represent musical society. I thought this needed putting right, and started by asking the opinion of journalist Kaiser Kuo, once the guitarist of cult metal band Tang Dynasty.

Piracy is probably the best thing that's ever happened for Chinese music. As somebody whose works have been pirated very extensively I think I can say this without any hypocrisy. It's provided an unprecedented window for young Chinese people into what's going on in modern popular culture around the world, it's really raised the bar considerably for Chinese musicians. They're no longer judged just against the standards of bands that have emerged in China indigenously, but against international standards. I think it's done terrific things for music here.

It's certainly true that at the moment, record companies are not even giving us the option of buying legitimate albums, with a risible selection of available records. This isn't solely the record companies' fault, as many shops are simply not willing to put off their customers with the higher prices of legal products.
On the other hand, it's easy to see all kinds of live international artists in Beijing, making you wonder why they bother if no-one is going to buy their albums. Francis Acquarone, Director of Club Events Organisers, 010 Productions, gives his opinion.

The piracy allowed a lot of people in Beijing to familiarise themselves with electronic music. If it was not for CDs that were available, I'm not going to mention where, but CDs that were available in Beijing, people would have never heard of electronic music, because it was just not distributed in real stores. Piracy now it's more of a question of the record labels, rather than the artists themselves. I think the artists all want to come here now, because of the circuit, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, are all part of the international circuit for international DJs. And people like playing here because it's exotic, it's always first one to play this kind of music, first international DJ at this new club, and so on. For record labels, this is a problem to produce record labels here, but I think it's more of a publicity stunt for the artists.

And it isn't just well-off inquisitive names who want to play in China. A recent example would be the relatively little known US funk act, Superhoney, whose lead singer, Joan Pimental-Flynn gives her reasons for coming to China, when you might think they would be better off encouraging record sales back home.

Interestingly enough in the US, as you know, there a lot of laws that prohibit piracy, copyright laws, but they usually protect the record labels and the people who market the music, you actually have to have several successful albums before you the musician are making any money on sales. So for us as musicians in China, our goal is to get people to listen to and hear our music, so it's less of a concern to a band like ourselves, than it would be to Rolling Stones or Aerosmith, who have many hit albums, and they themselves make money off sales, but somebody like ourselves would not necessarily make money off album sales.

So big international names will come to China for the thrill, while smaller names come to spread their word, and perhaps make some money from concert revenue. But the effects of piracy on all Chinese artists are certainly greater, as they only have their one domestic industry to rely on. Kaiser Kuo considers the impact of piracy on Chinese artists.

The deleterious effects are when Chinese musicians get pirated – that's really bad. That of course has ruined that as an avenue for income, and musicians have had to rely on live performance if they want to survive. That's not entirely a bad thing either, I think that it keeps them honest, keeps the live show a little more fresh. There's no-one who thinks they're going to make money distributing CDs. You break even at the very best, you try to get the best deal you can with the record company in terms of minimum sales. Everyone expects that when the quarterly sales come in you approach your minimum asymptotically and never reach it.

In addition to Kaiser's comments, it's certainly true that there are a huge number of musicians in Beijing at least, all seemingly undeterred by their zero level earning potential. But there is a problem when you look at album production, and album marketing. A lot of Chinese music is sold at incredibly cheap prices in order to beat the pirates. For example, the independent label Modern Sky frequently sells new CDs at 18 yuan, or about 2 dollars. This is effective against the pirates, but hardly facilitates serious album investment. Huang Feng, the Marketing Director of Warner Music China, tells us about the Chinese artists on Warner's books.

The sales of some of these artists, for example Pushu could be as high as six hundred thousand copies, one of the biggest albums last year. With all these sales it certainly allows the musician to take production into a higher level in everything.

This brings us back as to how necessary it is to consult the whole music industry when inquiring piracy. As we have seen, the difference in impact of piracy on major and minor American artists is the difference between a fat record sales based profit, and simply getting by. In China, the difference is more musical than monetary, as only the most successful are able to have a well produced album, whilst the rest have albums that fail to do them justice, or don't have an album deal at all. China's live music scene is fascinating at the moment, but until piracy is better dealt with, high quality albums will continue to be very hard to come by. Yet of course, if the problem of piracy is solved, the impact of professionalism and profit on music integrity and quality will be yet another matter that requires examination.

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