Original by Rhino Entertainment
The music industry has been very lively these two days, and a famous label has been mentioned repeatedly: Rolling Stone Records.
For music fans who have lived through the record era, no one will not remember that little yellow target logo. Even if they miss the records and tapes, they will most likely watch it when singing old songs in KTV. arrive. In the 1990s, Rolling Stone Records accounted for half of the Chinese music market.
Qi Yu, Li Zongsheng, Wa Wa, Pan Yueyun, Zhang Zhenyue, Ren Xianqi, Xu Huaiyu, Muji, Liang Jingru, Liu Ruoying, Wan Fang, Zhao Yonghua, Zhou Huajian, Zhao Chuan, Mok Wenwei, Zhang Hongliang, Mayday... these names are connected in series , is a set of songs that are so brilliant that they cannot be copied, and the legendary stories behind them.
But at the age of 40, Rolling Stone Records seems to be telling a story about romance always being blown away by the rain and the wind. The above-mentioned artists have left one after another, and the record business has plummeted. How should the Rolling Stones measure their value today?
In Rhino Entertainment’s view, perhaps three inflection points can be used to review the process of Rolling Stone Records from its peak to its decline over the past forty years.
The most prosperous turning point: three generations of top producers
Half of the "Rolling Stones" in the Chinese music scene
In 1989, Li Zongsheng created the album "Talking to You" for Chen Shuhua "Listen to You" became the first album in Taiwan to sell over one million copies. This is considered to be a sign that the Chinese music scene has entered the era of the record industry, and it can also be regarded as the first turning point for the Rolling Stones to reach their peak.
From then until 2000, it was an era of unprecedented prosperity for the Rolling Stones.
Zhou Huajian sang in "I'm More Annoyed Lately": "My daughter said that six plus six equals thirteen. I asked Lao Duan what to do, and Lao Duan said basically, this is very difficult." The so-called " "Lao Duan" is Duan Zhongtan. In 1976, he and his brother Duan Zhongyi founded the music magazine "Rolling Stone" in Taiwan. It should be stated that this "Rolling Stone" has nothing to do with the Rolling Stones or the American "Rolling Stone" magazine. It is just a tribute to the latter two.
The Duan Brothers
In 1980, the Duan brothers, who had failed to launch a magazine, made up their mind to found Rolling Stone Audio Publishing House and personally promoted Taiwan's original music. In 1981, Rolling Stone released the first album "Trio" for Pan Yueyun, Wu Chuchu and Li Lifen, which is considered to be Rolling Stone's first shot into the market.
But it was Luo Dayou's "Zhi Hu Zhe Ye" in 1982 that truly achieved phenomenal response in Taiwan.
This is also the first of the so-called three generations of producers. In the context of the popularity of folk songs, Rolling Stone and Luo Dayou expected the sales of this local rock album to be 2,000 copies, but the final sales volume was 140,000. Since then, Luo Dayou has always been promoted by Rolling Stone Records during the most prosperous era of Taiwan's music scene.
The relationship between the newly born Rolling Stones and Luo Dayou is very similar to that of Golden Harvest and Bruce Lee. They both achieve mutual success and share the same philosophy. But Luo Dayou is not an artist under Rolling Stone. He and Sylvia Chang have their own fruit music. The real Rolling Stones employees, or even the executives, were later Li Zongsheng and Xiaochong. The former was once the vice president of Rolling Stones.
According to statistics, Li Zongsheng wrote more than 300 songs in the first twenty years, and one of them became a hit. The most famous story is that while eating beef noodles, he listened to the baby (Jin Zhijuan) telling her story The story of a long-distance relationship, inspired me to write a song on a napkin, which is "Across the Ocean to See You". Chow Huajian once joked, "Many colleagues want to assassinate him."
Even though Li Zongsheng calls himself "Little Lee", Taiwanese singers call him Big Brother, because in the era of Rolling Stones, Li Zongsheng's significance is more than just music. , and the Rolling Stones discovered and created a large number of top musicians. The "Five Fans" will be familiar with it. The earliest demo that Mayday sent to the Rolling Stones was Li Zongsheng who picked it out of the trash can and became famous in one fell swoop.
Xiaochong became famous in the 1990s, creating classic albums such as Anita Mui's "Intimate Lover" and Ren Xianqi's "Heart Is Too Soft". Three generations of producers, Luo Dayou is profound, Li Zongsheng has experienced vicissitudes, and Xiao Chong is lingering, but they all found a stage in Rolling Stone.
Someone once asked Duan Zhongtan how many singers Rolling Stone has trained. He said three to four hundred singers, large and small, but specific statistics are difficult because there are many branches, so it is impossible to verify. Sparing no effort in cultivating original music allows Rolling Stone to tolerate musicians of all types and values, and everyone has the color of Rolling Stone's dedication to music.
Mainland friends may be more familiar with Magic Rock Records, a subsidiary company established by Rolling Stone deputy manager Zhang Peiren. It discovered legendary domestic rock bands such as Tang Dynasty and Black Panther, and even promoted Dou Wei and Zhang Chu in 1994. He and He Yong ascended Hung Hom in Hong Kong, the so-called "Three Heroes of Magic Rock".
At that time, Rolling Stone Records was a creative paradise and a warm music home for musicians. In 1995, Leslie Cheung, who had returned to the music scene, chose to renew his contract with Rolling Stone Records. Rolling Stone gave him a blank check and asked him to fill in the numbers as he pleased. Leslie Cheung said nothing and only wrote two words on the check: "Friendship".
In the same year, the world's five major record stores entered Taiwan and occupied the market through acquisitions. Rolling Stone became the largest independent record label in the country, and staged a drama of "five major groups" besieging Guangmingding.
At this time, the rolling stones are boiling in the fire, and the flowers are blooming.
Turning Point of Decline: The Rolling Stones’ Loneliness in the New Era
On December 31, 2000, Li Zongsheng’s 17-year cooperation with the Rolling Stones came to an end, and he went north to the mainland and settled in Shanghai. Around this time, artists left one after another, and the Rolling Stones' new century began in a very gloomy way.
Regarding the decline of the Rolling Stones, the common view is that the rise of the Internet and the prevalence of piracy at the end of the 20th century were part of the impact of the decline in global physical record sales. There is nothing wrong with this statement, but the Stones' response in the process really made the situation uncontrollable.
In a later interview, Li Zongsheng once said that he could not keep up with the pace of commercial development of Rolling Stone: previous development was to discover a new person and make him popular as long as possible, but commercial record companies have to Newcomers should become popular as soon as possible, but they don't want them to be popular for too long, so as to attract new people and stimulate record sales.
After 1995, the Rolling Stones, which single-handedly fought against the Big Five, told the market a touching story, but it also faced heavy profit pressure. They introduced Korean and Southeast Asian music to allow artists to monetize their covers quickly. As a result, artists who debuted during this period generally had unclear images, such as Du Dewei, Xin Xiaoqi, Su Huilun, etc. This is completely contrary to Rolling Stone's previous business strategy.
Li Zongsheng wrote in his article "My Three Homes", "In the last two years of the Rolling Stones, I seemed out of place in the organization. I was not notified to participate in some important meetings in order to To prevent the production case from being dismissed for restructuring because of my persistence, when the entire music industry was being pushed up by the Internet bubble, veterans like me who came from a production background seemed to be ignorant of current affairs and were destined to be submerged by the tide of the times. ”
The abandonment of veterans he said was also the Rolling Stones' helpless move to monetize fans under the Internet trend. This directly led to the departure of a large number of musicians at the turn of the century in 2000, such as Chen Qizhen, Yang Naiwen, Wu Bai, Zhang Zhenyue, Hot Dog, etc. , and as we know, these artists later developed quite well. In 2002, Rolling Stone's revenue hit rock bottom.
The last two contracts Li Zongsheng signed as production director were for Leung Jingru and Mayday.
Understandably, Rolling Stone Records was heavily in debt at this time. In 2005, Duan Zhongtan admitted in an exclusive interview that the Rolling Stones had fallen into a serious financial crisis after 2000, and then shifted their focus from the music production business to more profitable industries, such as establishing Rolling Stones Mobile to provide SMS services and ringtone downloads. In 2007, Zhao Chuan He once went to court with Rolling Stone over copyright differences in this area.
The Rolling Stones' huge loss is approximately 150 million yuan, mainly due to business failures, including its entry into the Internet and overseas markets. For example, the Rolling Stones established the website "Rolling Stone Cola" to provide music purchase and paid MP3 downloads, but it was completely wiped out by piracy. In the late 1990s, overseas companies suffered widespread losses and had to shrink their business. Losses in both areas reached tens of millions of dollars each.
At the beginning of 2005 when Duan Zhongtan was interviewed, Wan Fang, Ren Xianqi, Xiao Chong, Huang Pinyuan, Guang Liang, etc. left, leaving only Mayday and Liang Jingru as the company's first-line artists.
The following year, the company's general manager Chen Yongzhi and producer Xie Zhifang, together with Mayday, Liang Jingru, and Pinguan Chuan, established Believe Music. The Rolling Stones, which once had so many talents, now have less than 10% of its employees left after resignations and layoffs.
The turning point of survival: no longer as brave as before
The third turning point of the Rolling Stones may be helpless. In 2012, the Stones paid off their debt.
The Duan brothers, who were not so prominent in the previous article, demonstrated their skills as top marketing experts during this period. Throughout the development of Rolling Stone Records, the Duan brothers have built the label into a musical Eden, giving countless music fans a sense of belonging. As for singers, the old club of Rolling Stone also has a lot to miss.
There were two major events around the time the Stones turned 30. The first is that the two-year vertical group contract has expired: Luo Dayou, Li Zongsheng, Zhou Huajian, and Zhang Chenyue, who have gone their separate ways, will return to tour for two years and create two albums to tide over the difficulties for their old club.
Second, the Rolling Stones 30th Anniversary Concert, with more than 80 Rolling Stones singers returning to support the show, was held at the Bird's Nest in Beijing and the Taipei Arena, and the tickets were all sold out in seconds.
This is certainly touching, and it is also the reward for the Rolling Stones' efforts in the golden era. To put it another way, this is also the Rolling Stones' success in selling emotions through the advantage of the label, and finally achieving the company's financial health.
But after that, the Rolling Stones failed to regain their former glory. From the perspective of a music label, after experiencing a talent gap among the entire production team and singers, the Rolling Stones' musical heritage has not been retained, and newcomers cannot be protected by their predecessors' works and popularity as in the past. The singers trained during this period may have received good reviews for their works, but they have never gained cross-circle influence.
From the perspective of the entire industry, the entire market is no longer an industry ecosystem dominated by record companies. The Rolling Stones' current business is mainly offline venue performances and copyright operations. But a common sense of copyright is that if there is no new content, the value of the copyright library will always be in a state of depreciation, and "resting on one's laurels" is not a long-term solution.
For music platforms, selling sentiments and operating classic music libraries are still good businesses. The absence of new generation musicians’ creations is also slowing down the decline in the value of copyright libraries. At least for the moment, the Stones' value allows them to still have time to react.
Returning to the attitude of letting content speak for itself, Rolling Stone has attracted many new singer-songwriters in recent years. The reputation of the works of Sun Shengxi, Ma Wen, Ju Qi, Chen Lingjiu, Atomic Bonnie, Little Boy Band, etc. mentioned above is very positive within the current communication range. Through comprehensive cooperation with major music platforms, if musicians can get traffic boost, Rolling Stone Records still has room for imagination in its transformation in the new era.
At least among music fans, they don’t want the glory of Rolling Stone Records to remain in their memories.