Category Archives: aeg

International Artist Sellout Shock

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You’ve heard the stories: “Glastonbury sells out in 30 minutes”, “One Direction Tour sells out in minutes”.

Well, finally we have our own happy narrative and despite the corporate metal allegations, our band is way better than One Direction.

According to the grapevine, Metallica tickets went onsale at 10am this morning. At 10.06am, there weren’t any left. The likelihood is that there will be a few more tickets available sometime towards the end of the month, once the venue configuration has been worked out (and you can always become a Metallica International Fan club member, perhaps) but the reality is, we have our own arena show sellout measured in minutes, which is a massive leap forward.

Fans are generally quite slow to buy tickets here in China, due to the rarity of shows actually selling out, and the proliferation of tickets usually available on the night courtesy of the huangniu.

Shows selling out creates buzz, creates excitement, creates a very real reason to buy early. Once people start missing out on shows they actually wanted to see, it will encourage them to buy early. this will keep tickets out of the hands of the scalpers, and enable promoters to accurately gauge demand, and should make the art of selling shows a less haphazard one

All hail Metallica, all hail China’s metal fans

Incoming: Shanghai Sonic, Metallica Tickets On Sale, RV Music Festivals

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Couple of bits and pieces leading into the non-weekend of Dragon Boat Festival:

Shanghai Sonic is looking more and more likely: produced by the promoters behind August’s Summer Sonic Festival in Tokyo and Korea, the names floated around for Shanghai Sonic include Aerosmith, John Legend, MIA, Limp Bizkit (yup), Alt-J and Carly Rae Jepsen. The organizers have been telling local media, off the record, to save the weekend of August 17-18.

According to everyone including Metallica’s official website, tickets for the Shanghai show, scheduled for August 13, go on sale at 10AM local time on June 7. Reported ticket prices are 480, 980, 1280 and 1680 RMB.

For something new and different, our pals at Taihe Media are testing a new concept on the Chinese festival-going public. Taking advantage of a car- and outdoors-loving middle class, the open space in the outskirts of Beijing and gambling on the fascination/nostalgia associated with RVs (recreational vehicles), the Mi RV & Camping Festival is a week-long eclectic lineup of local bands, craft market, BBQ, film fest and even a “MLB-sanctioned” batting cage. Cool.

Metallica in Shanghai, Pet Shop Boys Tour

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Well, it’s official (almost). Douban kids have found Metallica’s MOC permit. August 13 in Shanghai, kiddies. We reproduce it in part below:

Screen shot 2013-05-28 at 10.26.17 AM

94 members in the touring party will keep AEG busy, whereas Live Nation will host the Pet Shop Boys for a two-week tour of Beijing and “other Chinese cities” from August 14 to 28. LIve Nation has been keeping busy, recently inking a deal with international entertainment company Lushington to promote concerts in Hong Kong and Singapore. The JV, Live Nation Lushington, kicks off activities with a Linkin Park show in August.

Some news from around the webs….

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There have been a couple of half decent articles on the Chinese music scene kicking around the wires recently. We thought we’d point you to a couple:

First up, Andrew Chin over at City Weekend does a retrospective of big international shows in China in advance of two in two days (Elton John on Friday in Shanghai and Jennifer Lopez in the same venue the following night).

From Wham, to John Denver, to the Rolling Stones to Sonic Youth to Linkin Park to the present day, the article features interviews from Adam Wilkes, Archie Hamilton, Steve Sybesma and John Cappo, it makes a nice trip down memory lane for nostalgia hunters, while demonstrating how far we’ve come.

You can read that one right over HERE.

Disclaimer, the one of the authors of this blog was interviewed for this article.

At a different end of the spectrum, Morgan Short of Smart Beijing and previously of Shanghai based band Boys Climbing Ropes baits Dan Shapiro of The Fever Machine into telling us what he really thinks about the music scene in China. Both of these brohammers have been here for over 5 years and have spent most of that time immersed in the music scene, so the interview is a good one for those of you interested in being in bands here. You can read that little gem HERE.

The final one for today looks in depth at the present and future of music access in China, pointing to the fact that more and more of the big players are introducing options for the consumers to actually pay for content. The model seems to be that streaming will continue to be free, while downloading would cost. The author makes some pretty broad claims without backing anything up. The Chinese consumer has never paid for content before – it’s going to take a pretty significant breakthrough in simplicity or usability to make it happen

Read this one HERE

 

AEG coming on strong

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It’s been quite a dire time for live music in China recently. September // October // November 2012 plays host to a once-every-12-years transfer of power within the PRC’s ruling party, and rather like the Olympics in 2008 and the Expo in 2010, the powers that be are very cautious about things going wrong during this time. Beijing particularly is looking rather sparse with none of the usual festivals taking place.

There is a rather large exception to that particular rule. It’s been 2.5 years since we started talking about AEG as venue owners (the Wukesong problem and subsequent Mercedes Benz Arena triumph) and about 18 months since they announced that they were serious about the touring side of their business when they took on ex China West, ex Ticketmaster executive and millenial man Adam Wilkes.

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The Rumour Mill

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As March swings in, so does the warmer weather (allegedly) and lots and lots of music. Alongside the aforementioned JUE Festival, you would have to be blind to walk around Shanghai and not see that Usher will be here next week (12/3). There are several Usher pre-parties around the town this weekend (apparently every single club is having one) and it’s no surprise that Shanghai is showing her penchant for blinged up R&B (did anyone else read that Usher has invented a genre for himself – Rev Pop?). Tickets are racing out the various doors, so gorge people, gorge.

Three days before (9/3), the Eagles will swoop in carrying their own sound and lights on their shoulders, so we can expect the acoustic strains of Hotel California to sound better than they have ever done at PartyWorld. Apparently tickets are also flying out of reputable outlets, so it looks like we might have a couple of pretty well attended big shows on our hands this month.

More importantly, what’s coming up? You may have seen more Bob Dylan rumours circling these shores. After the debacle of last year, it seems that the government have confirmed the permit just today (although it has since been deleted from the official website). You can see that royal goodness HERE. Does Bob have the ability to pull in arena capacities in Beijing and Shanghai. We have only 6 weeks to wait people.

(update: kungfuology got to this rumour before us we’ve just discovered).

And the last rumour – well, that deserves a post of its own.

Usher vs the Eagles

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We’re back. Sort of. We are still traveling so posting will be sparse, but it’s the Year of the Rabbit. We feel this is going to be another big step forward for China’s Music Industry.

To start with, we have a battle of two big ticket events, just 3 days apart, in Shanghai in March. Back at the beginning of our existence, we blogged about the proliferation of big bands coming to China. March 2008 saw Bjork, Maroon 5, Harry Connick Jr, Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys come to play. Bjork obviously queered the pitch, and the Great Financial Crisis put paid to big Western companies throwing money at the China market. The last couple of years has been relatively quiet for big international artists.

the Eagles in Shanghai

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Adam Wilkes (re)joins AEG

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Ten years is a long time in the music industry. A decade is almost unimaginable as a foreigner in China’s forbidding musical landscape. Adam Wilkes can point to being one of the only, if not the only Westerner to have done this kind of time here in China’s live music arena, and he has an impressive CV.

From hip-hop impresario pushing forward the talents of Andrew Ballen at Club Pegasus, to senior VP of AEG Live responsible for Asia, where he will be in charge of creating a viable Asian touring circuit for AEG’s roster of live entertainment, Adam has been intimately involved with almost every big company this site has admired from afar: a founding partner in China West (James Brown, Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce), Emma Entertainment (Linkin Park), Ticketmaster (Linkin Park #2, Celine Dion) and most recently 8th Round (the recent NBA game, Usher) he brings the maximum amount of big live event experience to AEG Live, who in our humble opinion are lucky to have him.

Wukesong Update

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Wukesong Arena in Beijing has had a troubled first year. Initially taking over a year to open its doors and then getting rid of AEG pretty sharply after they did actually open, the venue has been doing pretty reasonably business over the last 12 months. A string of corporate gigs, the big Usher concert last July, the big NBA game in October and various other bits and bobs have all been nice, but running an international calibre venue in China is a tough business without other revenue streams.

Which is why, in the age of an increasingly brand supported music industry, naming rights for venues like these are not just a nice to have, but vital to profitability. Despite being terminated as building management, AEG China were retained to focus on naming rights, and at the back end of last week, they came up trumps, pulling in Mastercard on a long term deal. Similar to the Shanghai MB Arena whose deal with Mercedes stipulates a set number of shows per year, there will be a show minimum at Wukesong, so we can expect more big name international stars coming through China over the next 5 years.

Mastercard takes Wukesong Naming rights

An update on AEG and the Mercedes Benz arena

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Shanghai’s Expo is nearly over. Despite a certain amount of pessimism pre-event, the Expo has actually received a majority of positive feedback, certainly from the local population and most of the people involved. Shanghai has been the recipient of much governmental largesse as artists are flown in from all over the world at great expense, play to (rather too frequently) sparse crowds, but then descend on Shanghai and give a free show or two to people in the know. The huge crowds that have populated the even huger site have been exposed to all manner of crazy foreign “art” and the artists themselves have more often than not played to huge crowds of incredulous but appreciative Chinese at the various outdoor stages around the site.

That’s not to say that any kind of value for money quotient has been achieved. The huge missed opportunity to actually promote the majority of these artists properly in China has been nothing short of a tragedy, with bands, performance artists and the like in China for a single performance with no onwards Chinese or Asian touring and absolutely zero PR in local press. And the carbon footprint…

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