For their latest album 再生 Recyclable, duo Yu Quan decided to release their album on flashdrives instead of in CD form for their 15th anniversary.
“The market for CD albums have degenerated to its limit, and we can’t just sit here and wait. Very few people buy CD’s to listen to now, and everyone’s listening to songs online, but the quality of digital music online is too low. As musicians, since we’ve spent so much time and energy at the studio, we want to spread higher-qualitied digital music,” Quan said to Sina. The music, along with lyrics and photos, fill up 3 GB of the data.
Interestingly enough, attending their press conference were the heads of China’s two biggest Internet entertainment sources and probably violators of intellectual property – Tudou and Youku. While digital release has been done before, with Li Yuchun releasing her last album digitally, this is the first time a major Chinese artist chose to put the digital release in a more physical form. What do you think, is this going to be the start of a new trend?
The album is available legally for preview on Xiami. Also watch the pair with Deng Chao and Liu Yifei on Happy Camp this week here.
This is such an interesting idea!
I want.
Yu Quan is the only artist/band that I’ve ever bought a real set of CDs for, and I already had the songs downloaded. How do musicians in China earn money, when almost everything can be streamed online…?
Commercial performances, that’s why a lot of competition artists manage to survive without ever releasing more than a few songs .
It’s similar in the US, too, where concert revenue is growing while sales are down. A pretty good breakdown of money-making in music:
http://www.bearshare.com/economic-of-music.html