For your reading pleasure…

Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) Weighs In on the Great Streaming Music Debate:

Writing in Pitchfork, Damon Krukowski gives a thoughtful analysis of why he believes “Pandora and Spotify are divorced from music.” In response, blogger Shi Lei wrote a response on his website directly addressing Krukowski’s concerns. Both articles are smart, well-articulated and definitely worth a read, however they use Spotify and Pandora as their only examples (no Chinese equivalents). No matter how many pay-to-play services debut in China, suffice to say any given model (1Ting, 360buy, Wa3) is still far away from the consumer bases of Spotify, Pandora or Xiami.

Beijing Band Residence A Featured on Al-Jazeera

Beijing indie darlings and Radar favorites Residence A are gathering more and more buzz, if that’s even possible, at the end of a very fruitful year that saw them release their debut album, embark on a 30-city domestic tour, and bring down the house at Yuyintang with a rousing show during this year’s JUE | Music + Art festival.

Pairs’ Xiao Zhong Interviewed by SmartBeijing

Congratulations on your official launch, SmartBeijing! May your snark slowly infiltrate even the most earnest of Beijingren. Hot on the heels of last week’s revealing interview with Dan Shapiro of the Fever Machine, SmBj is back on the hunt with another soul-baring and bridge-burning dialogue with Xiao Zhong, drummer of Shanghai shitrock 2-piece Pairs and one of the music industry’s most interesting advocates.

Hangzhou’s The Tree Is One of Two Winners in Converse’s “New Noise” Campaign

Wooozy Sessions alumni The Tree are headed to New York’s Rubber Tracks studio to record after being named one of two winners in Converse China’s latest campaign “Searching for New Noise.” An online competition, Searching for New Noise enlisted young bands from all over the country to submit their music and videos to social networking platform Renren (equivalent to China’s Facebook) for other users to listen to and vote on their favourites. The top 5 finishers would embark on a 6-city Chinese tour, at the end of which 2 winners would be selected for the trip to New York and studio time.

Our Chinese-language music information site and blog Wooozy.cn invited The Tree to play in Shanghai in April of 2012 as part of their Wooozy Sessions, a series of concerts meant to highlight promising young bands from across the country who have not yet had the opportunity to play in Shanghai. With other alumni including Maybe Mars darlings Mr. Graceless, Chengdu pranksters Eat Alien’s Brain and Taipei/Beijing-based shoegaze power trio Skip Skip Ben Ben, the Wooozy Sessions has fast established itself as an early recogniser of domestic talent.

Check out a video of The Tree performing at Mao Live House Shanghai during the Searching for New Noise tour.