This morning I had coffee with honeypie (馬世芳), a well-known rock music critic and radio dj in Taiwan, in a starbucks near my apartment. honeypie is also the CEO of Music543 (音樂五四三), a leading Mandarin indie-music distribution / production company. He has successfully managed to issue a number of great records in the past few years, with very, very limited resources and budget. These records, including some fascinating works by the talented Sandee Chan (陳珊妮), have won him a number of musical awards as well.
For honeypie, the term "Long Tail" has a different meaning. Firstly, indie-artisit, as well as most of the pop artist, they have to stay LONG enough in the business to get a contract from major label, and then get the chance to move into the line of the TAIL. The cost of playing the long tail game (e.g. song becomes a hit), for anyone, could be tremendously high and even heart-breaking. For honeypie, the reality is that he has to hang in there long enough to sell 7,000+ copies of Sandee Chan's record, which is still better than most of the main stream Mandopop record labels. He does not blame it on mp3 or piracy. The whole Mandopop industry is shrinking fast, even faster than its Western counterpart. (note: see Mandopop on Wikipedia)
The digital format of marketing and distribution, however, helps indie artists. Blogs are widely used and exclusive videos are avaiable online. Band members actually spend time reading and replying comments, leaving personal message to cheer fans up. Good examples here are 張懸 and 蘇打綠(sodagreen). This also helps record companies make future sales forecast. However money made on selling records are not sustainble, so small or big gigs, tours, more tours in China, TV appearances become the real sources of revenue.
A good sign is that teens in TW and HK have gradually get used to pay to download songs. On the other hand, iTunes has not landed here yet. Why? One major reason that honeypie pointed out is lack of back catalog in Mandopop. The back catalog is not "deep" enough and unfortunately, the old songs, generally, have not been archived well. The master tapes of many early days recordings (1920~1960) were missing. You do not see Rhino-like record company here to serve the niche of re-issues. In 1960~80, not much works from China--impact of culture revolution, whereas in Taiwan during the same period, the KMT had strict controls over song content and encouraged patriotic songs. Hong Kong (Cantonese Pop) in 1980~90, and the Taiwan after mid-90 has become the center of Music and Entertainment for global Chinese. So basically the Chinese got a 25~30 years collection of Mandopop songs. In iTunes US, it dates back to 1950 with Elvis, and not to mention Beatles, Dylan, Stones...songs has been repeatedly downloaded at the cost of .99 cents, by younger generation.
Young Chinese generation rarely think old Chinese classics are COOL. It's hard to imagine they'd pay for this. The Long Tail effect, as far as we see, may not be that significant in Mandopop. Even there's one, the tail is not long enough, and it's just a fraction of what should have been preserved.
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I did not know how I would react to sleeping while floating.
