Taiwan Today

This year began with an enormous, and at times frenetic, outpouring of pop music passion in Taiwan. On the first workday of January, hundreds of thousands of people attempted to purchase tickets for 16 farewell concerts by diva Chiang Huei (江蕙), overwhelming her promoter’s online sales system and ticketing machines at convenience stores nationwide, and leading to huge lines at sales offices. To cater to the countless disappointed fans, the pop star agreed to put on nine additional live performances, with Taiwanese computer giant Acer Inc. called in to manage the online sale of tickets for the extra events. Demand for these shows proved similarly staggering, and while the promoter was widely criticized for the initial ticket sales debacle, few events in recent memory have better exemplified the nation’s fervor for pop music.

The music industry, both in Taiwan and across the world, is in the midst of a massive structural shift, with live shows and online services replacing album sales as the primary sources of revenue. In order to ensure the continued success of the country’s celebrated pop music sector, in 2010 the Republic of China (ROC) government launched a five-year industry development program, which was subsequently extended for a further five years, that includes funding for academic courses, promotional campaigns, research and development projects, and talent cultivation initiatives. According to the Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development (BAMID) under the Ministry of Culture, approximately NT$800 million (US$25.8 million) in funding was awarded to 61 companies and 138 musicians and bands during the first five years of the program. Meanwhile, ROC government-financed pop music centers, which will include state-of-the-art performance venues, are currently being constructed in Taipei and Kaohsiung.

Many of the initiatives under the development plan focus on boosting the growth of the concert industry. “In the face of falling album sales, live performances have become one of the primary sources of profits for the country’s music sector,” notes Robin Lee (李瑞斌), chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Foundation in Taiwan, a member of the Switzerland-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Concerts by marquee performers have proven exceptionally popular in recent years. For instance, the 150,000 tickets for Taiwanese rock group Mayday’s three shows in the southern city of Kaohsiung toward the end of 2014 were snapped up in less than two hours, with the ticket sales bringing in more than NT$200 million (US$6.5 million). Meanwhile, sales for Chiang’s final live performances, which will be held from July through September, totaled almost NT$1 billion (US$32.3 million). The diva, best known for singing pop ballads in Holo, commonly called Taiwanese and the language of Taiwan’s largest ethnic group, has been an immensely popular figure throughout her more than three-decade career, and the announcement of her impending retirement led to phenomenal demand for tickets.

The growth in concert revenue is helping offset the decline in record sales, which have fallen dramatically since the 1990s. During that decade, albums by major Taiwanese pop stars sometimes sold more than 1 million units. “Nowadays, labels are pleased when a record sells 50,000 copies,” Lee says.

“Taiwan’s music sector is moving away from the old album-centric business model and toward the adoption of online services,” notes Tseng Chin-man (曾金滿), the head of the Music Division at the BAMID. Tseng points out that according to an industry survey conducted by the bureau, revenue from Taiwan’s digital music sector reached NT$2.34 billion (US$75.5 million) in 2013, marking an increase of 31.76 percent from the previous year. Local and international streaming services, such as iNDIEVOX, KKBOX and Spotify, accounted for more than 60 percent of the total revenue for the digital sector in 2013, the survey shows.

The adoption of online platforms is helping rejuvenate Taiwan’s music sector. According to BAMID statistics, industry revenue totaled NT$13.2 billion (US$425.8 million) in 2013, rising from NT$10.3 billion (US$332.3 million) in 2011. The BAMID forecasts that this figure will reach NT$20 billion (US$645.2 million) by the end of the development program.

For decades, pop music has been the most dynamic sector in the nation’s entertainment industry. “More than 80 percent of the Mandarin pop songs in mainland China and other Mandarin-speaking societies around the world come from Taiwan,” Lee says. The island’s pop music industry emerged during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945), when imported Japanese songs and locally created Holo music dominated the sector. Following Taiwan’s return to the ROC, Mandarin pop tunes rose to prominence, before folk songs sung in Holo grew in popularity in the early 1980s. Today, Taiwan’s mainstream music sector features a diverse mix of languages and styles. “Taiwanese audiences have always been receptive to different genres,” Lee says. “The country’s music scene provides a great platform for musicians and performers to explore their creative potential.”

At present, this passion for experimentation and innovation is perhaps best embodied by the blossoming indie music sector. Jamie Lee (李文豪), a music critic and magazine columnist, says that the line between independent music and mainstream pop has become blurred in recent years. For instance, he notes, the title track for the 2014 album Faces of Paranoia—Only the Paranoid Survive by aboriginal pop diva Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), better known as A-mei, features indie hip-hop artist Tu Cheng-hsi (杜振熙), whose stage name is Soft Lipa. Similarly, the title song for Singaporean pop star Stefanie Sun’s (孫燕姿) 2014 album Kepler was written by indie musician Hush Chen (陳家偉), who performs as Hush.

“While it’s not uncommon for pop records to include lyrics or melodies written by indie stars, it’s quite pioneering for such works to be featured as the title tracks on albums,” Jamie Lee says. “The current level of cooperation between the mainstream and alternative music scenes proves that the latter, if offered a proper stage, can boost the overall growth of the industry.”

In recent years, the BAMID has been playing a significant role in efforts to foster the development of the indie music sector. Besides subsidizing album production costs for independent artists, the bureau also organizes the annual Golden Indie Music Awards to “recognize new creative forces in Asia,” Tseng notes. The awards, which were established in 2010, honor the best overall indie artists who have released records in Taiwan in addition to presenting genre-specific accolades in six categories—electronic/techno, folk, hip-hop, jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock. At the 2014 edition of the awards, Soft Lipa won the prizes for Best Hip-hop Song and Best Hip-hop Album, while Hush was shortlisted for the best overall songwriting accolade. These prizes were established to complement the nation’s mainstream music honors, the Golden Melody Awards, which were launched in 1990.

The bureau also works to enhance the international exposure of emerging artists by providing funding for them to go on overseas tours or appear at foreign music festivals. Since 2010, it has helped around 160 musicians or bands take part in dozens of events in such countries as Canada, Germany, Singapore and the United States. Similarly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promotes international awareness of local acts through its Listening to Taiwan program. For instance, it arranged for rock band Mixer to perform in Japan and South Korea last September.

Meanwhile, Robin Lee notes that new venues are needed to boost the growth of the domestic live music industry. “Many of the facilities currently used for concerts, like arenas and convention centers, are not really suitable for live performances,” he says. “And it’s more expensive to stage shows at these locations.”

To address these concerns, the ROC government is funding the construction of the Taipei Pop Music Center and the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural and Popular Music Center in northern and southern Taiwan, respectively. Both of these sites will include small and medium-sized concert venues with capacities ranging from 200 to 5,000 people. In a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for the nine-hectare Taipei Pop Music Center in June 2013, ROC President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) noted that the project and its counterpart in Kaohsiung will function like two engines on an aircraft, helping Taiwan’s pop music industry soar to greater heights.

To ensure a constant supply of gifted musicians to fill these venues, the BAMID is providing subsidies for talent cultivation programs in the tertiary education system. Due in part to these efforts, a digital and pop music program was set up in 2014 at Chung Yuan Christian University in northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City. And National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei unveiled a Graduate Institute of Popular Music under its prestigious College of Music at the beginning of this year. “Nurturing the next generation of musicians and behind-the-scenes production specialists,” Jamie Lee notes, “holds the key to ensuring the continued success of Taiwan’s pop music industry.”

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw