Universal Music China Appoints Garand Wu for MD

Charming fellow. He could be Khalil Fong’s older brother, no?

Universal Music China has tapped Garand Wu for Managing Director, from a press release by the company in late April.

The appointment, effective immediately, was announced by Sunny Chang, Managing Director, Universal Music Greater China.

In his new role, Mr. Wu will oversee a full range of services and operations including Marketing, Promotion, Sales and Finance. He will co-manage A&R for Universal Music China with Mr. Chang.

Before joining Universal Music, Mr. Wu was Senior Marketing Director of the International Division of EMI Music Taiwan after holding a post as Regional Marketing Director, overseeing International Repertoire for EMI Music Asia. Since 2009, he has operated his own business specializing in strategic marketing and C&C (creative and content), offering services and solutions such as event promotion, production and artist management across South East Asia.

Sunny Chang, Managing Director, Universal Music Greater China, said: “Garand’s comprehensive track record and knowledge of the strategic marketing sector in the region will be an important part of our future growth plans.”

George Ash, President of Universal Music Asia Pacific, added: “Garand is a highly experienced executive whose leadership and expertise in marketing and label management make him an invaluable force for the company in the region.”

 

Incoming: PSY on China TV

If you thought the specter / international dance phenomenon / long international nightmare of ‘Gangnam Style’ was over, we have unfortunate news to report: PSY will be ubiquitous in China once more this Spring Festival (Chunjie) season. The 34-year old Korean rapper, known to many of his Chinese fans as “Uncle Bird” has already booked appearances at the Jiangsu Song concert in Nanjing (on February 2nd) and an appearance on Shanghai Dragon Television’s Spring Festival Gala.

If you’ve been living on the Siberian taiga for the last 70 years, in 2012, Psy shot to global fame with his hit single “Gangnam Style.”  The music video has already exceeded 1 billion views on YouTube and PSY himself has over 4 million followers on China’s Twitter-esque Sina Weibo, netting him the designation of No. 1 celebrity for 2012. “Gangnam Style” (or “江南style” even has its one animated emoticon on the service.

江南STYLE!

Edit 2/1/2013: Correction, that should be Dragon TV (东方卫视) not Phoenix TV (凤凰卫视).

Music Matters 2011, our review.

There is also a great review by Fernando Gros HERE, and you can see our tweets from the event in a previous post HERE.

China Music Radar recently attended the Music Matters 2011 as a media partner. This review comes to you courtesy of our Thai beach resort – we are good to you :-)

It was the fifth time for the Radar to attend but the first for this writer, who found it engaging and invigorating to have so many people (several hundred attendees) from the same industry in the same place at the same time. Everyone focused on an issue very dear to us: the music industry in Asia and how it is developing, how it should develop and how we can all work together to make things happen.

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LiveNation appoint a new executive in Asia

Livenation are a big company. Publicly listed with offices all over the world, they are set to retest their mettle in China with the first really big name that they’ve been responsible for since the KK debacle in November 2008. The Eagles will be here in just over 2 weeks.

A small point that we hadn’t noted. Livenation have appointed a new face to their Hong Kong operation. We can’t tell exactly what, apart from 1840′s trading routes between Canton and Portugal, he will be in charge of, for his title is the quaintly outmoded “President, Far East”. C’mon Livenation – you are a global company now…

Music Matters moves

Announced to us yesterday, the Asian music conference Music Matters is moving, rebranding, expanding all at once.

Key points:

  • after 5 years in HK, the conference will move to Singapore
  • the program will expand from 2-4 days, and into areas like film, video gaming, TV and advertising

Music Matters moves to Singapore, rebrands

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Music Matters, 2010

Hong Kong based music industry conference Music Matters is hitting us left right and centre with press releases about their upcoming event (May 26/27).

You can check out everything that’s happening at their website, but in summary, here are a few of the best bits and pieces:

  • Daniel Ek from Spotify: Spotify has been the most talked about development in the music industry these last 12 months, but there has been plenty of controversy about whether or not the streaming music service will actually be good for artists or not. Despite big plans, Spotify still hasn’t laid out clear timelines for both the US and more intriguingly, China.
  • Bill Silva, the legendary promoter and manager will be coming with his charge Jason Mraz, who will be engaging in a performance/ interview at the end of the last day of the conference
  • A new multi venue music festival, in conjunction with the Lan Kwai Fong bar strip of Hong Kong.

CNN x Handsome Furs x Asia

In September 2009, China based promoter Split Works organized an 8 city Asian tour through China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore.  The tour was picked up by CNN, who gave Dan and Lex a pair of Flip Cameras to record their exploits.

Handsome Furs, Indie Asia

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Music Matters 2010

Music Matters, the HK based Asian music conference, is back.  Dates are confirmed (26-27 May 2010), the first keynote speaker is confirmed (Daniel Ek from Spotify) and they have a pretty spiffing free research report that you can download from their website.

Their latest press release reads as follows (after the jump)

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Asia’s Neglected Music Consumers

This article first appeared on the MIDEMNET blog, HERE.

In this in-depth guest post, MIDEM 2010 speaker Mathew Daniel, vice president of China-based digital music distributor R2G and online music store wawawa highlights the plight of Asian music consumers who are not only unable to conveniently access legal music but also cannot comprehend the music industry’s seemingly complex reasons for this ‘music apartheid’.

Music Apartheid
As we move into a new decade and leave the last one behind, we see yet another year of unfulfilled opportunities gone by the Asian market (references to Asia in this article will generally exclude Japan, Korea and Australia). For far too long, Asian music consumers have been neglected and not been given fair access to music. Instead, discussions on music consumption in Asia are usually in the context of piracy and Asian music consumers are often arbitrarily labeled as the stewards of said piracy.

William Morris China to close doors?

According to a snippet in an article HERE, mega agency William Morris Endeavour (nee William Morris) may be closing its China operation as a result of the current shakeup [for those that don’t know, WMA was merged with Endeavor Entertainment earlier this year.  Check HERE for more on that…

We’ve never been completely sure what China MD Grace Chen actually does, but it seems like whatever that is, it looks like it won’t be for William Morris Endeavour in the future.  We have tried to contact Grace for comment, but with no luck.  This remains a rumour for the moment.