Around 7:30 on a weeknight, a group of outwardly shy, unassuming students enters a small, suite-type room where a sophisticated, computerized system allows them to choose from a huge repertoire of instrumental versions of popular songs. A tune is selected, the music starts and a video with a romantic theme appears on a large screen. One of the students picks up a microphone and when the first line of lyrics appears near the bottom of the screen, begins belting out a version of her favorite song that would make the original singer proud. Welcome to a karaoke television (KTV) parlor, home of one of Taiwan’s most popular nighttime forms of entertainment.
The early evening hours during weekdays and later on Friday and Saturday nights are far and away the most popular times for singing at a KTV, a pattern that parlor operators take full advantage of. Prices vary according to the size of the room and luxuriousness of its facilities, but the main factor influencing the rate is the time of day. During weekday mornings at a Partyworld KTV parlor in Taipei’s popular Ximending area, for example, hourly fees range from NT$350 (US$12) for a seven-person room to NT$1,540 (US$51) for a large room that has a capacity of up to 40 persons. The charges rise to NT$630 (US$21) for a small room and NT$2,772 (US$92) for a large one on a weeknight, while on Friday and Saturday nights the costs go to NT$700 (US$23) and NT$3,080 (US$103).
Wang Tsen, an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Communication Design at National Taiwan University of Arts in New Taipei City, is one of the growing number of academics studying Taiwan’s entertainment culture. Singing at KTV parlors is one of the most popular, distinctive entertainment choices in Taiwan, Wang says. Statistics back his assertion, as according to a nationwide survey released in 2010 by Trendgo, a market research firm based in Taipei, 28.2 percent of the people surveyed visited a KTV parlor at least once in 2009. Singing at KTVs was most popular among those from 21 to 30 years old, as more than half of those in the age group who were surveyed said they had been to a KTV in 2009. The survey concluded that KTVs are most popular among students and younger, unmarried workers, noting that for such young singles, KTV parlors are “an entertainment paradise.”
KTV traces its roots to karaoke, a Japanese word that combines kara, which means “empty,” and oke, which means “orchestra.” Karaoke machines offering recorded songs stripped of lead vocals started to appear in Taiwan in the mid-1970s at local Japanese-style bars and eateries. At this point, karaoke machines were nothing more than a couple of loudspeakers, a microphone and a combination tape player and amplifier.
Would-be pop stars sing on an open stage at a karaoke parlor. Singing in such large rooms was common until the late 1980s, when club operators began setting up more intimate suites for small groups of friends. (Photo Courtesy of Wang Tsen)
In the early 1980s, karaoke sets combined with video monitors, usually set up on a small stage at cafés or restaurants, gave rise to karaoke clubs that featured singing as the major attraction. “In contrast to its former supporting role at restaurants and bars, karaoke became a mainstream form of entertainment,” Wang says.
Although video was being added to the karaoke experience, “performances” in the early 1980s were still very much public events. Anyone could wander into the cafés and restaurants, with the result that singers were not always assured of a sympathetic audience. Adding to the pressure, disputes also sometimes arose among different groups of customers about the selection and order of songs.
Meanwhile, another form of entertainment business was rapidly becoming popular in the mid-1980s: that of MTVs, or movie television establishments offering small, individual rooms in which customers could watch videotapes of hit films. The operators supplied a library of videotapes and made money by renting the rooms. Cash Box Corp., now a big name in the KTV business in Taiwan, got started in 1985 as a videotape rental business, then began providing rooms for customers to watch the movies in. A problem arose for such MTVs in the late 1980s, however, when the government began more strictly enforcing a ban on pirated videotapes, which many of the businesses supplied to customers.
It is difficult to say with certainty which of the video parlor operators, whether Cash Box or a competitor, first struck upon the idea of outfitting their small rooms with KTV equipment. The solution was an inspired one, however, as it allowed the businesses to repurpose their facilities in a way that did not run afoul of the videotape ban, while the intimate rooms also encouraged those who were too shy to sing in public to pick up the microphone. In 1989, Cash Box opened its first dedicated KTV parlor in downtown Taipei, an event the company points to as a creative milestone in its development.
Singing at KTVs is most popular among students and younger, unmarried workers. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Taiwan’s KTV business was developing rapidly as the 1990s got underway, with some operators running their small suites 24 hours a day. Concerns arose, however, about KTV parlors’ potentially negative impact on society, as their ’round-the-clock business hours and closed, private rooms were thought likely to lead to activities involving drugs, prostitution and other illicit behavior. Such concerns led to KTVs being placed on the list of “special businesses” that required stricter regulation. Among other regulations then imposed, KTV parlors were not permitted to operate after 3 a.m. and could not admit customers under the age of 18. The most notable effect of the regulations was the closure of many smaller, unlicensed parlors. Wang says that the impact of the regulations was mostly limited, however, because they were difficult to enforce and came at a time of increasing concern over government intervention in citizens’ private lives.
Start of a Trend
The closure of the unlicensed parlors was the start of a trend that led to the consolidation and maturation of the KTV industry in Taiwan. Larger chains began to appear that offered more professional management and more upscale venues with improved safety facilities, thus transforming the act of singing with a group of friends in a small room into a mainstream social activity.
Today, Cash Box operates 15 Partyworld stores in Taiwan’s larger cities that have a combined total of more than 1,500 rooms. The Holiday chain, Taiwan’s other big KTV player, has a greater presence in smaller communities and targets mostly students. Holiday has around 50 stores and 2,000 rooms in total.
In addition to Cash Box’s Partyworld stores in Taiwan, the company has set up 19 venues with more than 2,400 rooms in eight major cities in mainland China since 1994, when the first Cash Box KTV parlor appeared in Shanghai. Shanghai now has seven Partyworld branches, while Beijing has four. Cash Box has continued to develop more upscale options such as VIP lounges, which can be found at one of its branches in Taipei and in 10 branches in mainland China. The VIP lounges mainly target businesspeople who want to entertain clients.
A computerized system used for selecting songs at a KTV parlor (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
The continued growth and maturation of the KTV industry have led academics such as Wang to take a closer look at the factors behind the enduring popularity of the entertainment form. Wang sees the KTV suite as a type of heterotopia, a concept proposed by French thinker and social theorist Michel Foucault (1926–1984) that posits a fantasy space existing outside time. “It’s not only about singing,” Wang says of the cozy, closed KTV “cells” that provide an escape from everyday reality as well as a “virtual home.” As a result, the rooms provide one of society’s few shared spaces that allow individuals to share their happiness, sorrows and dreams. “Society is moving very fast, which makes a lot of people uneasy,” Wang says. “When people sing together and find solace in the songs of their own generation, that unease is somehow healed.”
Kurt Brereton is an Australian visual and digital media artist and was an adjunct professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, where he served as Wang’s academic supervisor. Brereton also wrote the preface to Wang’s book Virtual Songs, a Mandarin and English text published in 2007 that was drawn from Wang’s doctoral dissertation. When analyzing the attraction of KTVs, Brereton focuses on the digital entertainment aspect, likening the experience to operating a giant computer with “hundreds of entertainment processor chips,” with guests collaborating to create a sensory deluge of images and sound. Brereton is no stranger to the KTV experience, as he has visited the businesses in Taiwan. He has also held several art exhibitions on the island and served as an artist in residence at Chung Yuan University in Taoyuan County, northern Taiwan.
Brereton writes of being particularly impressed with the cultural richness of singing at a KTV parlor in Taiwan. “I’m confronted by four different language songbooks in English, Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese stacked up on the table,” he observes. The songbooks, he points out, are not offered for the convenience of foreign tourists, but rather for the sake of locals, who are usually “multilingual and multicultural to differing degrees.”
Lyrics and Identity
Along with the four languages Brereton lists, KTV songs with Cantonese lyrics are also popular, as television dramas and films from Hong Kong have long found a ready audience in Taiwan. Wang points out that the language of the songs people choose in KTVs is a strong indicator of an individual’s ethnic identity.
Partyworld is taking the KTV business upscale by providing facilities such as buffets. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
The songs chosen in KTV parlors also reflect wider pop culture trends, especially those of Taiwan’s music industry, the most dynamic entertainment sector in Taiwan. For example, Lotus Wang’s album Bo Bee, which means blessing in Holo, or Taiwanese, was released toward the end of 2010 and soon became a surprise best-selling hit. From January to April this year, the album’s title song occupied first or second place on the Partyworld and Holiday charts of most often sung Holo KTV songs. The popularity of Bo Bee has been such that Eric Chen, the album’s producer and CEO of Enjoy Records Inc., says that his company has been struggling to keep up with KTV operators’ demand for videos of Lotus Wang’s songs.
On the other hand, KTVs help promote songs on the pop charts. Wang Tsen believes that the considerable popularity Holo techno music has enjoyed in recent years is largely due to the widespread availability of such songs at KTV parlors. He points out that the combination of electronic music, foreign melodies and colloquial lyrics reflects the local propensity to mix different cultural elements and come up with something distinctively Taiwanese.
Mandarin KTV songs also reflect Taiwan’s cultural diversity. Since the beginning of this year, Andrew Chen’s love song Queen has been one of the hottest entries on the KTV Mandarin charts, as have been hits by other local singers such as Tiger Huang and Ricky Hsiao. Chen comes from Malaysia and has won singing contests in Hong Kong, while Huang has released albums with English and Mandarin songs and also sings in Holo. Hsiao writes and sings in Mandarin and Holo and has won top prizes in both fields at the Golden Melody Awards, which honor Taiwan’s best singers and musicians. A Hsiao hit often sung at KTVs these days is Last Train, which is about unrequited love.
Whether in Mandarin, Holo, English, Japanese or Cantonese, singing at a KTV is a quintessentially Taiwanese form of entertainment. “When foreign guests visit my school to attend events like seminars,” Wang says, “I take them on a typical Taiwanese tour. We go to night markets for a variety of local food and restaurants selling spicy hot pot, then ‘enjoy’ a painfully refreshing foot massage. Last but not least, we go to a KTV, because that’s where they’ll experience a kind of entertainment they can’t find anywhere else.”
Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com