Happy New Year!

@ Bobby Lee: This is a tough one. There really aren’t any examples of grass-roots artists developing any meaningful, long-term fan base here. One way might be to build a bridge with relevant fan groups to each artist genre. Find a fanzine or forum for it and send over key people loads of free goodies and get a dialogue going. The obvious hurdle here being that you need to read Chinese to get the ball rolling. If you find someone who can read Chinese, get them to have a look around http://yue.sina.com.cn as a start point and see if you can connect with any of the thousands of fan-groups on there.

@ Jocelyn: Thanks
Trust is a very difficult concept in China. Truth be told, you WANT your CD to be pirated over here. Even in the long run you will not make money out of your CD. It is better to have it pirated so it gets heard by as wide an audience as possible. In an ideal world you would then monetize any success elsewhere ie. Live, merchandise.

You do yourself no favours by making a bullish remark like “This is rubbish” only to go on and say that your experience is in a completely different country.

Taiwan has a robust and vibrant pop industry compared to the mainland. Some songs may make it across but the majority do not due to the censorship process. Comparisons can not really be made, therefore, between the two places in terms of depth of style and quality.

Actually, I’ve found Chinese pop music is pretty vibrant and different (my experience is mainly in Taiwan – but lots of Taiwan songs and stars transfer to the mainland, the David Tao/Jolin Tsai one being an example).

Sure, they don’t perhaps have the same styles you find in the west, but then this isn’t the west. Instead they have their own chinese influences which appear in their music.

Midi is good fun but totally shambolic. The quality of music varies from unlistenable to pretty good, although it is difficult to find domestic acts who are capable of ‘owning’ a large outdoor stage. The Scandinavians sent over about ten acts this year (supported by their various governments), including The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, who headlined. Western acts tend to be more big stage experienced and it really showed. Its still a learning process over here.

Where do you think the industry will go from here?

Midi Festival sounds fun, how dose it differ from Uk / european festivals?