The Sound Stage on Radio in China: No EZ Way About It

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Do you remember that NY Times post that went out lamenting about how digital streaming services undermined record collecting and painstaking personal curation? Well we didn’t necessarily agree with the argument, however this article did prompt us to turn our attention toward other things that may be getting sidelined thanks to digital. We thought about the future of good old long-form content, radio, and the importance of curation in China.

If indeed, 430 million people use online music services (77.3% total Internet users in China) and only around 6.9% of online music service users engage with online radio services, what does this say about the future of radio here? Are Chinese listeners happy to just cherry-pick what they want to hear? Do they want an ‘authoritative’ (or dare we say it, ‘authoritarian’) voice guiding them on hour-long sonic excursions, punctuated with toothpaste ads and jingles? *

What better way to get an inside into the state of radio then to interview someone who lives inside the system; someone who has seemingly against all the odds successfully developed a niche program within a state-run station. Someone who has gotten away with legitimately playing music that would, at the very least, jar the tea-sipping serenity of any official that was paying attention to what was hitting the airwaves. We’re talking about Jonathan Alpart, founder of The Sound Stage. In this feature we conduct a deep dive into the state of radio in China and also elicit a response from Jonathan regarding the NY piece. For more on his background, there’s a pretty in-depth piece over at Smart Beijing.

Let’s jump straight in…

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Radar:

Looking at The Sound Stage, you’ve got two components: the video series (Youtube channel) and the EZFM radio program. Would you mind clarifying if these projects are commissioned by, or syndicated to China Radio International (CRI)?

JA:

The Sound Stage is fully commissioned by CRI.  I’m a full-time employee here at the English Service.  I get a salary, I record the show in their studios, shoot and edit on their cameras and computers, etc.

Radar:

Who made the call to feature an indie music show on CRIEnglish? Given CRI is a state-run radio station, it must have been difficult to push through given most stations settle for pretty banal, conservative shows with prescribed playlists.

JA:

It was my idea to do an indie music show.  I had already been very interested in Chinese music for about three years at that point, and really wanted to make some kind of contribution to what was happening. I delivered a presentation to a small group of members of Chinese management that I had good relations with and whom I considered more open-minded.  The focus of the presentation was two-fold, one was as China is in the middle of a soft power push, that we should learn from the West (specifically America which dominates music/film) and two, I tethered this concept to the booming indie music scene here.  I also emphasised how foreigners would especially be interested in this kind of program.

One thing that is very interesting about China (and often surprising to people who haven’t been here) is how capricious it can be.  I truly believe had I not pitched the show that week, it may not have existed today.  At the time, our department was going through “reforms” and I think that management was desperate to get on board with something fresh and edgy. These are people long dependent on the “iron rice bowl,” whose career advancement is based more upon showing up and not rocking the boat.

I remember the meetings very distinctly.  One manager literally looked me in the eye and said “your show is killed” as she proceeded to explain to me how all these bands are political and rant about the government in each performance.  She basically thought that radical politics and indie music were virtually inseparable.  Even though I followed up with “that’s absurd; these bands play in public every night” she wouldn’t listen to me because her mind had already been made up a long time ago.  Fortunately, the other manager (my supporter) stepped in. As long as you do follow the blatant rules (avoiding the three “T’s”) you can actually get away with a lot (especially as we broadcast in English).


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Radar:

Do you pretty much have creative control over the programming or is there a set agenda / list of sanctioned acts you can pick from? Is it difficult getting the approval of censors or those who call the shots at CRI?

JA:

Yes, I enjoy 100% creative control on all the content I produce. The basic process is that first I’ll go out and shoot my video interview with zero oversight.  No one even really knows what I am doing until the video is finished.  Then, a manager will watch it and look for any sign of subversive content that jumps out at them.  Barring this, they “approve” the video and then it is uploaded to the internet.  That’s it!! It’s funny because none of the management even know the first thing about music so they probably couldn’t tell me who or who not to interview even if they wanted to.  As long as I don’t do anything very much in the realm of BAD, I play whatever and interview whomever I want…

After I’d been doing the video show for a year or so, word got around that an hour in the weekly radio programming schedule was open, and that now was a good time to pitch some new ideas and make a demo.  I was thrilled when I found out I was selected, and even more so when I was told the spot was for Saturday night at 6pm – prime time.  So there are certainly people behind the scenes here who understand the importance of this kind of programming. I was, however, asked soon after to play music that was more appropriate for EZFM – i.e. the same kind of music that everyone else played. Instead of fighting I acquiesced after realizing that adding in some softer tunes in my playlist would be like adding sugar to the medicine so to speak.

There have been some issues with lyrical content.  As a state media veteran, I knew better than to try and play any songs that openly implicate the government, but sometimes things slip by you.  I played a hip-hop track that an intern told me she had vetted, but apparently it contained a line to the effect of “I want to get out of this communist prison,” and it actually went on the air before it was discovered.  Whoops.  After that, I was told to submit for review the lyrics of every single song before they aired.  That soon turned into “lyrics of songs that may be questionable”… and now…I can’t even remember the last time I did even that.

That’s not to say that it’s been easy here.  It may seem on the outside that CRI loves my show and does a lot to promote it.  After all, we just had The Sound Stage Music Awards, but in actuality the amount of support I get is comparatively very small. Other shows get much heavier promotion.

The Sound Stage

Radar:

Could you tell us anything about your audience? Are they savvy young musos or older expat listeners? Are they a pretty active community of followers, or more passive listeners who dip in and out depending on the artist, for example?

JA:

A funny thing about state media in general is how the nature of it being state-owned means that they fall short of putting into practice many of the market-oriented procedures that we in the west take verily for granted.  I’ve been told directly and without any dressing up that we have no idea how many listeners we have.  And that’s not just for my show, but for all radio shows.  If you can believe it, a manager here even admitted – unabashed – that we have no idea the size of our audience to a group of university students who had come to the station for a Q&A.  The funniest part was that I’m sure that the students asking these questions were just asking what they considered to be the easiest questions possible to answer in order to avoid any awkwardness.  But, no…

On iTunes and Lizhi it is much better – on iTunes the podcast has on more than one occasion floated to the #1 of all podcasts in iTunes China, and consistently beats out all other CRI programming. On Lizhi we’ve enjoyed close to 80,000 downloads since we launched the podcast on that platform at the end of August.

I’d say the vast majority of my audience is Chinese, but the program seems to have a strong following amongst the expat community as well (if only because they speak English well and aren’t afraid to contact me).  I think the Chinese fans are pretty active, as well.  The music scene in China is very fragmented into different scenes and genres, but one thing I’ve always tried to do is to incorporate all styles into one big “independent China” umbrella, and try to unify everyone and also turn people on to all kinds of different styles outside of their circle.  After all, a metalhead and an indie kid do have one major thing in common – they actually care about music.  I think most of the Chinese audience are kids born in the 90s who are digital natives with stuff like Weibo and WeChat – that’s how I stay in touch with a lot of the fanbase and musician base.  Many of the new generation are the same kids who have normalied going out to see live rock music as a weekend pastime.  Listening to music, dressing up, taking a selfie with your favourite band at the livehouse, I believe these things go hand in hand with the emergent modern culture in this country.

Radar:

We’ve previously heard from the likes of Youdai Zhang (有待), founder/DJ of New Music Mag and All That Jazz, that people have lost trust in traditional media (particularly radio) because the prime directive -now more than ever- is to make profit. Quality programming has been suffocated by the need to sell lucrative ads, which implies keeping things pretty samey to make sure listeners don’t migrate. What are your thoughts on these points? What’s your personal impression of radio in China?

JA:

Regarding advertising and the like, I’ve heard from management that they aren’t quite sure who would put ads on my show to make it profitable, but I think that speaks more to how out of touch many Chinese are with regards to the market and desires of consumers.  They’ve always gotten by on playing it safe and with sameness, but I’m sure if they took their head out of the sand and looked around, they’d find plenty of companies that would love to jump on this.

Radar:

How important do you think it is to have a trusted voice? Someone who is prepared to scour the web for quality tunes and take listeners on a journey, rather than just hit play on a prescribed playlist?

JA:

I believe the role of the DJ combing the fields of MP3s for choice tracks is becoming increasingly important. Certainly my radio program could not exist without the Internet.  First I find almost all of my music there.  I can start with one band on Xiami or Douban, and then I can click through related artists.  I can download the music instantly and drop it into the playlist.  A lot of times bands don’t even know who I am or that I’m playing their music until the show is recorded and I’m telling them through social media when to tune in.  I also use the Internet of course to promote the show, to communicate with fans, and to receive submissions.  I can’t stress enough how the Internet has enabled the existence of this program.  I’ve never had enough actual ground support at CRI to have done it any other way.

I’ve observed two things – one is that Chinese people seem very impressed when I tell them I am a radio DJ, which is funny to me since I know secretly that the only requirement to be one here is to be a passport-holding citizen of a developed nation. Secondly, Lizhi FM – a website where people can be a DJ and make their own radio shows – has exploded in popularity.  The internet has turned on the new generation of Chinese not only to the enormous canon of music itself, but the idea of music as being a defining factor in who you are as an individual.

Radar:

Do you think there’s still a demand for long-form content?

JA:

I do think there is still a demand for long-form content. Humans still enjoy a good story, no matter how short our attention spans might become.

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Radar:

Vamping along similar lines, a NY Times piece recently went out addressing the thoughts of a disenchanted old-school record collector. He talks through his adolescent experiences, and how the act of carefully curating a personal music collection allowed him to inscribe his own sense of identity, and selectively create a network of friends who were enjoined by their commitment to departing the mainstream. What are your thoughts of his views, as a DJ and passionate follower of independent music?

JA:

I actually found the writer to be quite dyspeptic and elitist. Just today after I got finished reading the article, I went to lunch with some expat colleagues and we were all chatting about music and our favorite bands most of the time.  So using music as a barometer of likeness and friendship potential still very much exists.  The writer of the article seemed more concerned with keeping other people he considered less cool than him *out*, than being able to share and enjoy music with other people.  Quite frankly, I think the Internet has actually made it even better in the latter regard.

If you are exposed to virtually everything at once, than a discerning taste becomes that much more important, and therefore it’s more meaningful to share with others.  In the past, if you weren’t aware of a band like The Slits, that didn’t necessarily mean that you were a person who didn’t have potential to like them, but rather that you hadn’t been exposed to them, which isn’t your fault.  To this question the writer did indeed mention how the bands you like are an indicator of the amount of effort you put into finding music, and therefore the level of passion for music you must have. But again I consider this to be elitist.  For example, there’s no reason today why more western audiences would not discover and enjoy Chinese music, but most of them don’t, and not for a of lack of effort on their part or exposure.  (Interestingly enough, many of those who do discover Chinese music tend to fetishize it, myself possibly included, much like the record collections I suppose of days gone by…).

Since the commodification of music has been abolished by the Web, the responsibility of discovering good music lays solely with the listener.  It is in fact the very lack of effort that goes into discovering music, combined with the absolute overload of choices, that makes the choices one makes individuating.  On Spotify I can just as easily listen to Ke$ha or The Brian Jonestown Massacre, so the fact that I’m listening to one or the other is meaningful.

And that naturally leads into the question of curation. Last night I was watching a TV program with my mom about a whiskey taster who had written a book called The Whiskey Bible. She asked me why anyone would pay for his book when they can just go try whiskies themselves and make their own opinion, to which I answered “he tries them all so you don’t have to.” The same goes for music.  Although the floodgates have opened and there is so much out there, I contend that most people will still consume music as they did in the pre-Internet age – by listening to what they already like, or that which is recommended to them by friends, or the mass media (which is now the presence of major labels on Youtube).  The fourth option, for the more discerning types, was and still is, of course, curating DJs.  

Radar:

Could you comment on or share any thoughts concerning the future for radio in China?

JA:

As far as the future of radio goes, I think that there is a much lower standard here in China for what is considered “good” content because the media is so tightly controlled and there is such little competition.  But I also think that radio will remain an important medium for some time to come because radio is authoritative. This links back to the concept of curation.  In this day and age, virtually anyone can create a podcast or radio show, and some of them might be very good.  But unfortunately, most people are still going to listen to what’s on the actual radio because they assume that it must be a superior show if the radio station chose to give them the platform instead of someone else. If I were just some guy doing a podcast out of my apartment on Chinese indie, I don’t think anyone would care.  But since I am doing it through CRI and on the radio, it matters to people.  This may change in the very near future, but it certainly is the case for now.

Be sure to tune in to future episodes of The Sound Stage, one of the most valuable resources we’ve got for unearthing new Chinese talent. You can also find Jonathan on Facebook via the official Facebook page – why not hit him up with some suggestions?

[UPDATE]

Jonathan’s just released the latest episode of The Sound Stage! It features Chengdu band Stolen 秘密行动 – check it out!

* Sources:

iiMedia Research Group. 2013-14 China Wireless Music Market Annual Report.

Beijing Daily, 2013. 数字音乐企业借力电台探索差异化竞争.
Available at: http://www.sootoo.com/content/439391.shtml.

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