Disclaimer: I first came to China in 2007. Since then I´ve been involved in the music scene here. So, as the title of this article suggests: When I write about what happened in 2007 and beyond I´m not a passive and objective analyst of history (who is anyway?) but an acting part in it. Therefore I´d like to stress the word “personal” in the title once again.

“I only have music, nothing to eat,

I´ve become so hungry, no clothes on my back

I´ve become so poor,

I only have music, I only have music”

—Underbaby “I only have music” —

Why start an article about the history of electronic music in China by quoting a song of one of China´s earliest punk bands? Well, one: The early days of China´s punk scene coincided with the first real dance clubs opening in Beijing and Shanghai. Two: It´s a nod toward David O Dell´s great account of those days. Third: It shows you how times have changed in China´s music scene: Then you had music, and nothing to eat. Now you have Investors, and hopefully some music to attract them.

If friends from the Private Equity world are asking you about the numbers and attendance of electronic music festivals in China you know something is cooking. And cooking there is a lot in China. Spicy sichuan cuisine for example in really hot pots (literally), or extremely bland numbers spiced up.

Those well cooked numbers we have seen in other industries before in China (Read: “Series A bullshit: why China’s startups are peddling lies”) now, finally, they reached the music industry. But while one needs to be careful with the numbers in China, there is a general consensus in the scene, that electronic music is spreading. If it is spreading at the same pace investors think it does is another question.

So, to understand where electronic music´s place in China is now, it might helpful to go back to where it started. Not an entirely easy task, since most of the accounts are long faded memories from contemporaries and as one of them put it bluntly they are bad: “..because of the booze, the drugs and the general youthfulness during that time”

But luckily Rock’n’Roll saved us.



It it precisely through the (relatively) well documented history of Chinese Yaogun (Rock´s mandarin name), how we can better understand the Middle Kingdoms humble electronic beginnings. And it was the Rockers who were the ones throwing the first “parties”. Although these “parties” were not necessarily “western” in nature: “Parties were the main forum in which rock fans gathered to listen to live and recorded music. Bars and clubs certainly existed in the 80s across the country, but there were rarely venues for performances of original music until into the 90s” writes Jonathan Campbell in his book “Red Rock”.

If live music was relatively rare, the second best option was to listen to tapes (or later dakou), often times brought into the country by foreigners. Rockers sometimes even would attend to listening parties in the dark, and the range of music was as wide as the style of foreign bands visiting China in the 80s (Jean Michel Jarre in 1981, The Chieftains in 1984, WHAM in 1985, or BAP in 1987 among others). “We called them ‘Secret Sounds’. We would turn off the lights. There would maybe some wine, a bit of rock music, some Teresa Teng. We´d smoke some cigarettes and just kind of revel in the freedom” remembers Zhang Fan, who later would found the Midi Music School and Festival. Despite Cui Jian´s daring “Nothing to my name” performed first in 1986, and later becoming an anthem for the student protestors of Tiananmen in 1989, rock started, at least sonically, relatively tame in the People´s Republic.

WHAM at the Great Wall 1985. Their manager Simon Napier Bell´s book “I´m coming to take you to lunch”, detailing how he brought WHAM to China was one of the inspirations that brought me to China in 2007.

After Tiananmen the 90s carried on pretty much how the 80s ended: Mostly underground. Apart from some big events like e.g. the 1990 Concert of Modern Music (北京现代音乐演唱会）or Cui Jian´s first national rock tour in support of the Asian Games, rock concerts were still limited to “parties” mostly held in foreign hotels, private bars and the like. The earliest ones would go as far back as 1984 like e.g the Sheraton in Shanghai. “In Beijing, there was the Cosmos Club at the Great Wall Sheraton, Juliana´s at the Lido Holiday Inn, the Xanadu at the Shangri-La, and the Glasshouse at the Kunlun Hotel which ran ads proclaiming,: ‘Latest Sounds, Latest Lighting, Disco Night Fever!’ Canton, Xiamen, Chongqing, Xi’an, Tianjin, Nanjing, and Wuhan all had new hotels with discos. With Ramada Inns, Hyatt Hotels, Sheraton Inns, and Holiday Inns proliferating in China, the discoization of the People´s Republic was proceeding apace. “ writes China scholar Orville Schell already in 1988 pointing to the importance of hotels in those early days.

But those parties had little to do with DJ culture or electronic music in the modern sense. Asked about the first electronic music party she attended, Rainbow Gao, who moved from Tianjin to Beijing in 1988 and now runs club MANSION at her Shanghai, well, mansion, remembers Beijing Glasshouse in 1994 as her first experience with what she calls “dancing music”. This was just before she opened a club herself, RED RIVER, where Faye Wong and other celebrities of the time would go in and out. “ She even made a music video with my ‘Fuck U’ car. We drove to inner Mongolia” Rainbow remembers fondly.

However, the first vivid memories of something like a real electronic party emerge mostly around 1996/1997.

Contemporaries mention places like NASA and DDs in Beijing (and from 1999 the legendary The Vogue/88 club — China´s version of Studio 54) or DDs, YYs, PARK 97, Rojam JJs, DKD, and later MUSE in Shanghai as the first places for proper clubbing.

“There was this club called NASA next to the Beijing Film Academy. It was just, well, super NASA looking. Completely retro throwback” remembers Leo de Boisgisson who studied in Beijing at that time. “The club´s balconies were stacked with frantic dancers. International journalists, busy covering the new China, snapped pictures of the crowd: Western businessmen in suits, students with backpacks, club kids and policemen with batons.” describes author & actress Rachel de Woskin the scene in her China memoirs “Foreign Babes”.

In Guangzhou there was Face Bar, which later would turn into Babyface, a more commercial brand which subsequently would open outlets in numerous cities in China. Sanlitun Bar Street in Beijing, today Beijing´s glitziest and most westernised part of town had its origins around that time, too.

DJs like Laurent Garnier (1996), Derrick May + Technasia (1998) and Paul Oakenfold (1999) as one of the first, if not the first, superstar DJ would arrive in China. 1998 saw also the first rave at the Great Wall in Simatai initiated by the swiss collective CHEESE. While foreigners such as swiss Michael Vonplon (Cheese), Will Yorke from England or US citizen Christian Viraant (FM3) had quite an influence in creating the scene, and were also involved in the first party at the Great Wall in 2008, on the chinese side names like Weng Weng, Zhang Youdai, Yang Bing, Ben Huang (who brought Derrick May and Laurent Garnier), Gao Hu, Ni Bing and little later Mickey Zhang pop up as China´s first generation of electronic music DJs, some of them, like Youdai playing tapes in between the rock bands, before he even knew what DJing was. “I had no idea what that meant! I´d never heard that word before” he is quoted in “Red Rock” after being adressed as “Hey Mr. DJ” by Kenny Bloom in 1990 at one of the weekly university-sanctioned dance events held in the cafeteria. “Richard-Clayderman-with-a-disco-beat would often end the evenings.” Campbell writes. Bloom, apart from having a hand in Cui Jians´s early career, also introduced American Music on China Central Radio via a show called “Foreign Music Hour”. Bloom recruited Youdai in 1991 but the show already ended in 1992 and Youdai moved on to start another show called Jazz Train.

The first rave at The Great Wall of China in 1998.

In the beginning of the Naughts brands like Heineken or Chivas would jump on the electronic music bandwagon and helped to commercialize electronic music in the Middle Kingdom. Chivas possibly can be credited to start China´s love affair with DJ Top Ten Lists in bringing exactly those DJs over to commercial clubs like MIX, VIC`s, BABYFACE, COCO BANANA or CARGO to name just a few, starting with DJ SASHA in 2004. At that time they had help from ANDREW BULL, an englishman who got his start as a resident DJ in Hong Kongs Peninsula Hotel before moving over to a club called “Disco Disco” as early as 1978, the first one in the city´s now notorious Lan Kwai Fong nightlife district. Also in 2004, Oakenfold came back and Heineken brought over Tiesto to a stadium in Chengdu. “He said the kids had no idea about electronic music or what to do and they all just sat there and waving glo-sticks” remembers Nathaniel Davis of promoter SPLIT Works who was Tiesto´s tourmanager on his subsequent 2005 China tour. As the Hotel Discos of their time, some commercial super clubs already had opened in second tier cities by then.

After the demise of Henry Lee´s legendary VOGUE Club aka 88 in Beijing, a place where even Quentin Tarantino had some fun during a break in his 2002 KILL BILL shoot, and where Australia to Beijing transplant Chozie and Usami organized their first party under the Yumchacha name, a new era began in Beijing.

Youdai, who by now was a famous Radio DJ, opened CLOUD 9 in Beijing where mostly him and CHINA PUMP FACTORY (CPF) played, a collective whose members included at various times Will Yorke, Fu Yan, Yang Bing and Weng Weng. Here a new wave of electronic music enthusiasts like locals Miao Wong, Zhiqi, Ou Yang or foreigners like Blackie or swede Thomas Gaestadius got their start.

China Pump Factory @ Loft. This flyer is from 2000.

Gaestadius would move on to start basement techno club WHITE RABBIT with Fu Yan and Yang Bing in 2007. White Rabbit was another of those places where people really got sucked into the electronic music world — sometimes crossing over from the live scene as SHAO (aka Dead J) remembers: “The first time I played in Beijing was in the summer of 2004. I played a lot of gigs during that summer, but they were all not in a club but in places like 无名高地，新豪云 and some bars in Wudaokou (the university area) where I would play with a lot of bands. Although I played electronic music — some breakcore and abstract hip hop stuff — I was more part of the underground rock scene or avant garde. I didn´t know anything about club culture in Beijing until this very interesting club, White Rabbit, opened in 2007” (For more info on the chinese experimental / avantgarde scene check out this interview with Josh Feola or this interview Josh did with Yan Jun, one of his earliest members and read Yan Jun´s excellent article in The Wire)

Other people from the “CLOUD 9 generation” would go on and start their own projects: Miao Wong together with Weng Weng, Huang Weiwei, Gao Hu, Terry Tu, Xiao Lin Feng (XLF), Pancake Lee & Elvis T would form the minimal techno ACUPUNCTURE collective and Zhiqi soon was part of BAICAI with Gaestadius and frenchman Maxime Bureau. The latter would later start the M AGENCY and brought acts like BOYZ NOIZE or PAUL & FRITZ KALKBRENNER, while Zhiqi would form SHADOW PLAY. Blackie would become part of the SYNDICATE, China´s first DrumNBass collective, which was started back in 2003 by Skott Taylor and a few others.

2007 is also the year this author arrived on the scene from Cologne via San Diego and Berlin. Cologne as well as Beijing´s electronic music scenes by then were firmly dominated by a minimalistic sound that was ironically mostly associated with Cologne based label KOMPAKT (well documented in Minimal China). White Rabbit and the first LANTERN, then run by Acupuncture, were the underground clubs to go in Beijing playing minimal techno with international DJs to match. Of course, more commercial clubs like MIX, VICS and a whole plethora of others had sprung up next to the Workers Stadium with a simple recipe: Have foreigners on the dance floor and VIP tables in the back for the moneyed chinese clientele to look at them while drinking out of magnum champagne bottles, playing dice and the newest Top 40 hits blasting out of the speakers. Still today this winning combination guarantees a full house pretty much every night of the week.

A scene from White Rabbit in 2007 after the lights went on around 7 am in the morning

But between the extreme poles of commercial glitz and the underground basements of dark techno caves, there was little middle ground and the whole electronic scene still minuscule for a 20 million city like Beijing or Shanghai.

When I met HELEN FENG 冯海宁, in May 2008, touring with german MUTE signing MEDIENGRUPPE TELEKOMMANDER (you can read an interview with DANIEL MILLER, who discovered DEPECHE MODE, signed MOBY and founded the MUTE label here), she just finnished one of her first ever DJ Sets at the shortlived SONG Club. Her last song was Yeah Yeah Yeah off the first LCD SOUNDSYSTEM album. Nobody was dancing, but it was the first time in Beijing I listened to music I actually loved. Needless to say we hit it off splendidly. Soon later she was telling me about her band ZIYO, how she had played KILLING IN THE NAME OF on chinese radiowaves during her job as the host of THE ROCKSHOW at local radio station HIT FM and about the scene in general.

Helen at Song Club September 2008

After that very first tour I ever organized myself, ironically starting out in China, another Berlin institution would email me: “Hey Philipp, we got your contact from Mediengruppe. We got invited to China by the Goethe Institute. Would you like to organize a tour for us? Best, Jeans Team”. I asked Helen to help, Helen asked US to Shanghai transplant Abe Deyo and soon JEANS TEAM was playing all around the country, even landing a record deal with chinese 8-bit pioneer SULUMI´s Shanshui Records.

Just a year before PET CONSPIRACY, a new musical project which would become China´s first electropunk band, saw the day of light founded by seasoned electronic musician Huzi and Helen, and joined by italian drummer Edo de Bastiani the band would go on their first European tour in October 2008. Ni Bing had booked them shows in Budapest and Barcelona and myself in Cologne (Subway) and Berlin (White Trash & Festsaal Kreuzberg). The video which came out of it made jaws drop in China, such a reaction from a European audience to a Chinese band, along with PCs crazy performance was pretty much unheard of in China. It also was the first step to PCs subsequent success.

While in Berlin the band met with musician and inventor Johannes Marx of the electronic duo PITCHTUNER and Helen was tinkering with Marx in the studio. During my frequent trips to Berlin I had crashed in Marx studio a thousand times. It was situated in the only non-renovated house in Prenzlauer Berg´s rapidly gentrifying Saarbrücker Straße, with one of those fabulously cheap rents Berlin was famous for at that time. In 2009 Marx would go on tour with his better half, Miki Yoshimura to Japan and it was time to return the favor, so we brought him to China where PITCHTUNER played in March 2009 at China´s premier live house YUGONG YISHAN (first established in 2005 across the Workers Stadium and since its demolition in 2007 housed at its current location — At Owner Gouzi´s first bar LOUPE CHANTE 路尚咖啡馆 long term scene girl DJ BB DENG got her start in 2003)

Foto from inside the old Yugong Yishan, April 2007

This first party under the Fake banner was an accidental success with 500 people attending, subconsciously capitalising on exactly that missing middle ground between underground techno clubs, mainstream discos and the live indie scene mentioned before. The fact that math rockers BATTLES played a few streets up at MAO Livehouse and had an equally succesful concert also spoke for the fact, that there was finally enough ticket buying audience for these kind of shows.

The first FAKE show in 2009 still with the old logo. I took the foto in Hong Kong.

PITCHTUNER was playing a live set with Marx on a self built midi controlled guitar catering to the more established scene of live music enthusiasts while also attracting electronic music lovers. Although their style was much more quirky and poppy than the usual techno beats, with Marx jumping up and down the stage like a wildman and even stagediving, it was precisely why it was easier to digest for Chinese audiences at the time.

The fact that PET CONSPIRACY, by now rising stars at the Chinese band firmament opened, helped as well.

For the next few years FAKE, soon to be renamed into FakeMusicMedia to avoid confustion with Ai Wei Wei´s company of the same name, would be dedicated to bridge the gap between the already well established (indie-)rock scene and the electronic music community. Bands like LCD SOUNDSYSTEM or CHROMATICS were serving as inspiration as well as labels like DFA, Mike Simonetti & Johnny Jewels ITALIANS DO IT BETTER or Munk & Telonius´ GOMMA. The sound of those labels as well as the (nu-)disco scene didn´t have a place in China yet, especially not in dusty Beijing, dominated by a darker, more industrial vibe.

Possibly Beijing´s first (Nu-)Disco Party with a foreign DJ and the birth of DANCE DANGEREUX & METRO TOKYO. The flyer actually never made it. But the file of the one who did is lost. The foto was taken in Beijing.

So in 2010 Fake organised Beijing´s first disco party with an international DJ: DFA´s HOLY GHOST as headliner (in their video Wait & See you can see the original DD poster at 1:43) , and Pet Conspiracy opening. It was in a place called LAN Club designed by Philipp Starck. The over the top decor, oversized bathroom including velvet sofas (sic)!, and golden chandeliers not only served the usually much more minimalist Starck to ridicule the Chinese Nouveau Riche but was also the perfect backdrop for our first hedonistic disco party. DANCE DANGEREUX turned out to be a lot of fun and so we did it again with Gomma head honcho MUNK just two months later. The faux french name mirrored the equally badly “grammared” fake german name of the MEIN DISKO parties VINCENT VEGA was throwing in Paris at the time.

How little disco was played in those days is illustrated by the fact, that we couldn´t find a single disco DJ to open, so we had to do it ourselves. That´s how METRO TOKYO was born. And a little later, in Istanbul December 2010 during a chance encounter with italian producer RODION also NOVA HEART, which started with (pretty dark) disco influences and then developed a bit of a more psychedelic band sound.

Nova Heart by Ren Hang

While LAN Club provided a good platform to start the party series it was the establishment of a spanish restaurant in Sanlitun´s Nali Patio which really got DANCE DANGEREUX (DD) and something like a disco scene going DD became the second ever party at there after the aptly named FUNK FEVER, and would establish a certain balearic vibe after the restaurant kicked out the chairs and installed the sound system. With the opening of their rooftop in 2011 MIGAS hit the jackpot. That summer will forever go down in history as the “Summer of Migas”. It was as if Beijing had turned into a better version of Miami or Barcelona. The rooftop was world class, the sunrises spectacular, the suits white, the music epic and the smog forgotten. Happy times. Even a shortlived collective by the name of THE THREE DISCOTEERS (Tobias Patrick, Metro Tokyo and Boflex who got his Beijing start as a DJ back then) would come out of it. Later Tobias and Boflex moved onto Dim Sum Disco. When Tobias moved to Shanghai he became part of Discosmic Adventures, an adventurous night put together since 2012 by Nik Hilp, Velvet Robot (aka Vivi Song), (Christian) Lindberg and YX (Yuxian Fang)

BYE BYE DISCO was another disco night started in 2010. As the shop with the same name, itself titled after a song my NEW PANTS one of indie-label Modern Skies early signings, the whole thing had a decidedly retro (sometimes chinese) 80s touch to it.

Who are those guys with the glasses?

One day METRO TOKYO would buy three blue 80s chinese jumpsuit there who then ended up in Paris for a music video by Mexican artist WAKAL whose main character, a chicken, stole a vinyl in Hong Kong record shop WHITE NOISE just to be chased around the world. The making of the video PACAS is an interesting story in itself, but the fact, that we shot in Rome, Paris, Hong Kong and Cologne with pretty much zero budget still makes me proud. Also it was an early attempt to combine Latin American Narco stories with my newly found love of Asia.

A chicken & three chinese retro jumpsuits in Paris. From left to right: Eli Cohen aka. Len Bias, Vincent Vega, Metro Tokyo

In 2014 we started a new, more eclectic, electronic party series in Beijing and Shanghai. ELECTRIC CITY电市 would present everything from tropical bass via indie dance to house, straight up techno or some weirder stuff (EC will celebrate the 2nd Anniversary on December 16, 2016 by bringing SOULCLAP to Migas). In between we had the pleasure to tour artists like Nick Zinner (YeahYeahYeahs), Andy Rourke (The Smiths), Brandt Brauer Frick, Daniel Wang, Jahcoozi or Bonaparte to name just a few.

As before with rock or even broader “guitar music”, by now pretty much every musical genre had found its way into the chinese electronic scene. DrumNBass collective SYNDICATE kept the DnB flag high up in Beijing (and DJ Siesta with her PHREAKTION crew down in Shanghai), while “Psytrance Pete” aka Atoned Splendor lived up to his name and nurtured this particular genre already established by a group called MAGIC GARDEN (read the story of psytrance in China here). White Rabbit I & II (2007–2010) Lantern (2009 — now) and later HAZE (2012–2014) and REC (opened 2016) as well as places like the first LOLA (2010–2015) in Shanghai or the recently opened ELEVATOR (April 2016), REEL TO REEL or CELIA kept the deeper and more techno side going and MIGAS (2010-now) the somewhat funkier vibes. All kinds of bass music found a home in Shanghai´s SHELTER Club opened in 2008 (and about to close end of this year — here is part of the story) as well as the Beijing version of Dada from 2012 (the Shanghai one got its start in 2009) with STREET KIDS and other promoters, throwing regular bass parties. A very special place was also pansexual bar 390 in Shanghai which hosted its share of memorable nights under the watch of vinyl mini-moguls Sacco and Sophia but had to close due to the man in 2014.

ARKHAM , opened in Shanghai by party collective S.T.D. (around since 2008 and also the promoter of PITCHTUNER´s and JEANS TEAM´s first Shanghai show at legendary dive bar LOGO), is the place for the trendy kids and Paris import LE BARON (open since 2014) settled for a Parisian style door policy. Inside you find a lot of hiphop, velvet rouge, champagne and anything else which some consider Paris chic. (The hip hop story deserves its own article, although a few protagonists like DMC Champions DJ WORDY + VNUTZ or MC LITTLE TIGER and pioneering club PEGASUS In Shanghai should be shortly mentioned here). For a short while Beijing might even have sported the world´s biggest SKWEEE scene thanks to VERKTYGET & fløøød of 87非87.

Pure electronic music festivals however were nearly non-existent. Other than sporadic gatherings like a few, often times quite commercialized, Great Wall Parties, a massive electronic music festival close to Kunming, co-organised by Youdai and Cheese in 2001, or the YEN parties (established in 2004) there wasn´t a single proper electronic music festival. That changed when INTRO was founded by Acupuncture in 2009.

While starting out really promising with about 5000 people attending at Beijing´s 798 Art District and continuing to be an important event for the scene till today, it didn’t really grew into something bigger. On the contrary: Due to the ever stricter licensing issues in Beijing, among other factors, it had problems year on year leading to shifting of venues and even a cancellation in 2014. In May 2016 it only reported an attendance of 1500 people, although a new start in Shanghai on October 29th 2016 will see how the journey continues (update: The organizer reported about 7000 people at Intro Shanghai)

Another dedicated electronic festival is MIDI Electronic Music Festival which was first set up the MIDI School of Music (who held their first Rock Festival back in 1997) first with the help of Rainbow Gao and her Mansion crew in 2012. Other than those examples, electronic music at festivals was — with few exceptions — usually treated like an ugly stepchild, relegated to a poorly designed and executed stage at some hidden corner of a rock festival with quite limited audiences.

The first proper major EDM festival in China (EDM in the commercial sense) didn’t arrive until 2013 when STORM was born in Shanghai. Massively backed by Budweiser it has to be credited for raising the production level for festivals in China and has carved out the leadership position in China´s (commercial) EDM niche. Over the next 2 years STORM Shanghai grew in audience size while expanding also to Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. If EDM is here to stay is everybody´s guess, a guess that ELECTRIC ZOO Fest seems to answer with yes since it will soon (Nov 12, 2016) move into Shanghai, which will also mark the first time ever a major international festival seems to land on the mainland. “Seems” meaning: We don´t 100% believe in it until it happens. Cancellations of bigger scale events, for various reasons, are something we are used to in China.

2015 finally also saw China´s first dedicated electronic music conference coming to the Middle Kingdom. Imported from Ibiza and associated with STORM, International Music Summit (IMS) Shanghai was held for the first time. This years second edition saw 215 delegates and 79 speakers attending according to the organizers. Not massive — but at least a start.

And the story continues. Only during my time in China, the amount of local DJs has likely increased tenfold, a lot more clubs have opened than closed, all kinds of genres are being played and outside of the centers of Beijing and Shanghai underground clubs and scenes have emerged (Chengdu being the prime example). The chinese internet, even if surrounded by the Great Firewall, has helped to spread music of all kinds of places and genres in China and with it also the knowledge in which context this music has been produced in order to give a deeper understanding of electronic music which is necessary to advance in the field.

While there is thousands of indie bands in China and probably around 30 of them have toured internationally (albeit only very few of them even reaching the kind of success of the likes of CAR SICK CARS, NOVA HEART or HANGGAI to name just a few — success being losely defined by regular touring in the west along with a media presence as well as international release) there is still a lack of quality electronic music producers in China. And only a handful of these chinese producers like SHAO (Dead J), HOWIE LEE, ELVIS T., SULUMI, B6, GOOOSE (aka HanHan of DUCK FIGHT GOOSE), FM3 (one half chinese) AM444 (also one half chinese) or new EDM kid on the block CHACE have garnered any kind of international attention. Some noteworthy Shanghai based producers without a chinese passport but some international profile should be mentioned here as well e.g. Techno queen MIIIA, bass king CONRANK or dark-as-f***-techno kingpin TSU TZING, . And lately some more chinese producers, such as HIELEKTROMEN, GUZZ, DJane DIVA LI, IIMUNE have been coming out of the woodworks with some increasingly maturing productions.

SHAO

As the market improves, more festivals and clubs will open up in all corners of China, and with the proliferation of cheaper music making technology (see interview with Daniel Miller here) we can assume that more producers will get into the game as tons of promoters already have and still more labels need to. Some of the promoters, such as e.g. CHINA SOCIAL CLUB, also do their part to bring music from China to international ears — in this case via London web radio NTS. The emphasis here is: “Music from China”, not necessarily “music from chinese artist” — given how international their current homebase Shanghai is, this makes a huge difference. Partly thanks to Shanghai´s colonial past, a lot of what is going on in the cities underground scene is expat-driven, a big difference to the more “chinese” Beijing. While Shanghai is China´s door to the world, the keys to China, as well as about 80% of the artists relevant here are more likely to be found in Beijing.

Another player, which just recently entered the market is Boiler Room with their first ever show on the mainland in Beijng on April 30th followed by Shanghai on May 1st, 2016. While the free parties were certainly packed with a mix of Chinese and expats, their claim that 3 million people watched online is as hard to proof as it is to disproof. The only ones who can know for sure are the technical providers of the stream. But those usually will get clients just the numbers they are pleased with, real or not. What can be said for sure: With the first time appearance of Skrillex on the third Boiler Room in Shanghai this October, both brands landed a massive PR Coup for the western media, not — and here we come full circle — unlike the one Simon Napier Bell once did for the WHAM concert in 1985.

But what does that all mean for my investor friends? Maybe, they don´t get it all wrong. Electronic music — like the music scene in general- IS growing in China. But maybe its a good idea not only invest into the top down but also the bottom up. After all, a tree needs some roots to grow. And the roots for this particular tree are: Good Music!