When it comes to foreign artists playing in China, we have no shortage of big-budget stadium shows: Beyonce this past winter, Celine Dion in April, and last week’s Chivas/Red Cross Black Eyed Peas earthquake benefit (Planned as a Chivas party, the show had to be revamped as a fundraiser at the last minute in order to secure the proper event licensing. Whilst Chivas and the Peas are each said to have given substantial donations, lots of freebie tickets were given away to the media and government officials; how much the concert itself benefited earthquake victims is anyone’s guess.)
But there is a paucity of foreign performers who actually, you know, play musical instruments (Kenny G being a notable exception). Where are the Blonde Redheads and the White Rabbits? As Michael Chugg pointed out in a discussion of live music at Music Matters Asia, British and American indie acts like The Kooks, The Wombats and Cold War Kids are flying over Asia to play sold-out gigs in Australia and New Zealand. So why aren’t they stopping in our neck of the woods?
Chugg’s question is an apt one, and there are a few different explanations. The first is that there are smaller, more indie-oriented promoters operating in Asia, but few of them were represented on MMA’s live music panel discussion. Split Works is working to bring Dan Deacon and Jose Gonzalez, amongst others, to China in the next few months, and there are other like-minded outfits in China that are cultivating the alternative music scene. The panelists at MMA were from big-name, established promoters Emma Entertainment, Chugg Entertainment and Live Nation, which skewed the conversation away from these types of projects.
Another explanation for Asia’s Kooks-deficit is the short-sighted and mercenary approach of managers and promoters. In the past few years, people have come to expect that featuring an artist in Asia should command the same or perhaps even higher fees than in developed markets with a more mature base of concert-goers. A reason for this was none-too-subtly indicated by Harvey Goldsmith and Michael Chugg during the MMA live music discussion. Both men accused Emma CEO Jon Krane of paying artists way beyond the norm for the Asian market (three times the going rate was the accusation from Mr. Goldsmith), upping the ante for other promoters across Asia. As these expectations inflate and the business model falls over, it’s the gig-goers who get a raw deal, with fewer options and less exposure to new artists.
Too many chefs in the kitchen are also obstructing the growth of live music in Asia. Around every tour there exists a swarm of interest groups (managers, promoters, sponsors, venue owners), each of whom want a piece of the pie. At MMA, there was a conspicuous absence of many Asian promoters on the various panels, perhaps due to the fact that some Asian promoters tend to shun publicity and especially situations that could potentially infringe on the way they do business.
The MMA panelists agreed that a major problem is the huge amounts of hot money in Asia, which leads to people paying serious money for the ego trip of being responsible for a major artist’s tour. If “most-money-in-shortest-time” is the main goal, of course it makes sense to book global megastars rather than a band with a few less bells and whistles. It’s up to promoters to manage the expectations of agents overseas, and work to develop the broader scene. High ticket prices and infrequency of shows do nothing to build a local scene, a mandatory precondition for a sustainable concert market in the region.
Despite these inflationary challenges, mid-sized venues are opening across Asia, perhaps channeling the “if you build it, they will come” spirit of entrepreneurship. There is also increased interest in and attendance of live shows across the region, according to the MTV Music Matters survey But does this translate to a demand for foreign alternative acts? Or will Asia’s appetite for live music be satisfied by small-scale local shows and astronomically-budgeted stadium shows, with nothing in between?