Can't find any good new songs? Expand your Chinese music library from these places

Beixiao and 2 other authors

1 hour ago

On May 16, the 35th Golden Melody Awards announced the nominations. My original plan was to talk about what quality Chinese music was worth listening to last year based on the list, as in previous years. However, considering the various controversies surrounding this year's nominations, I decided to postpone this discussion until after the awards are announced.

In this article, we will take a step back and talk about where you should go if you want to actively look for good music in the Chinese music world, in addition to following the app’s algorithm recommendations.

Awards and rankings

Looking at the current Chinese music scene, there are only a few decent awards left. We always feel that the decline of Chinese music is also affected to a certain extent by the decrease in decent music awards and music programs. With less exposure to the public, people who don’t actively look for music have fewer opportunities to occasionally hear it.

Of course, not all awards are worth watching. At least avoid those that have “hottest” or “popularity” awards. Awards that rely on audience votes in any form and proportion can also be ignored. Although the jury system has some elitist tendencies, letting music industry practitioners do the screening on our behalf is still the best shortcut.

Golden Melody Awards

Awarding time:Late June ~ Early July
Award Features: The only long-lived music award that still exists today, with high popularity and credibility

Although the Golden Melody Awards have a lot of problems, it is indeed one of the few long-running awards that can still have some outstanding projects every year.

As the most respected pop music award in the Chinese-speaking world, the Golden Melody Awards, which adopts the submission + jury system, largely represents the current trend of the Chinese music scene. It is also one of the few pop music awards that also awards performance awards, which can help the audience broaden their listening experience to a certain extent. Also because of the submission system and restrictions on the distribution area, the Golden Melody Awards often have “lost pearls”, and the discussion of the lost pearls every year can put together a playlist. The jury system also brings about the problem of personal votes, and the styles of the winners and nominees will also change with the preferences of the jury members, which is not stable enough.

Compared to the most popular annual albums and the king and queen of singing, I think the most important things to pay attention to at the Golden Melody Awards are its new artist award and awards for Taiwanese, Hakka, aboriginal languages, etc. The Golden Melody Awards' new artist award at least does a good job in leading the trend, and the shortlist is basically composed of new musicians with distinctive features. In recent years, this award has also been particularly favorable to new creators, and you can hear a lot of new things.

The reason for paying attention to the Dialect Music Awards is somewhat special: due to the instability of the jury system mentioned above, Chinese music awards are often too conservative, and it is common for new musicians to fail to be nominated for their styles, but win awards after a few years when their styles are outdated, or even for the albums that win the awards to be worse than the nominated albums in the early years. Dialect music is the opposite, because most singers are in a conservative safety zone, and those who make breakthroughs in style can often be nominated steadily, and basically all the nominations are good.

This also points to another shortcoming of the Golden Melody Awards: language grouping affects album submission. Cantonese albums can only be put into the Chinese group, half-singing and half-instrumental albums are not eligible for both the singing and instrumental groups, and albums in other languages by Chinese singers cannot be submitted. These problems exist almost every year. If you care about this, why not take a look at the following awards.

Freshmusic Awards

Awarding time:End of June
Award features: long list of nominees, rich categories covered

Freshmusic Awards (FMA) originated from an independent music website FreshmusicSG established by several music lovers in Singapore. They were dissatisfied with the suspension of their favorite radio program, so they decided to set up their own website. They do everything from in-depth interviews, sharp music reviews, and daily song recommendations. The four managers have different styles and preferences, and the content of the website is quite diverse. As for the derivatives, every year they invite music practitioners from Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan to select dozens of albums worth listening to with them and then give awards, which is FMA.

Compared to the Golden Melody Awards, the first advantage of the FMA is that it does not require submissions, as it starts with recommendations based on hobbies. Therefore, in the top 50 albums/50 singles each year, you can see some works by independent musicians who are quite niche but have their own unique musical style. Listening to them is like panning for gold.

Secondly, FMA does not limit or differentiate between languages, but instead chooses to focus on Chinese-speaking singers. Because of this, the long list includes some dialect singers/foreign language/half-instrumental and half-singing albums that are rarely seen in other awards, which is quite interesting as a change of pace while listening to songs.

EXVLbovSao43zTxdCGgcTuHKnAd — Image source:FreshmusicSG Music Magazine

Liu Huan Original Music Charity Fund

Awarding time:January 11
Award Features: Young original musicians from the mainland

《The Song of ChinaAfter the show ended, Liu Huan wanted to find a new platform to promote the development of original music in China. The bad news is that the subsequent variety shows focusing on original music have never been able to replicate the popularity of “Sing My Song”; the good news is that Liu Huan waited for “Singer 2019”, and the biggest impetus for him to accept the invitation of the show was that Mango V Foundation and he jointly established a public welfare fund to support young original musicians aged 30 and below in mainland China.

This fund will take out 1 million yuan every year and give it to a singer who has released an original album on the day when “Singer 2019” was broadcast. It has been the fifth session so far. Since there are no more than 9 professionals involved in the recommendation, there are actually only about 20 people on the pre-selected list. Liu Huan will select one of the top three based on future development potential. Since repeated nominations are allowed, there are currently only 14 singers who have been nominated. It won't take much time to listen to all of them. The 14 nominees have their own characteristics, and each of their works has great potential for popularity. Several of them have already made better albums with funding and successfully reached the public.

ScHmbUFrqoNsnwxAbrycDYRmnvd — Image source:Mango V Fund

Top Ten Chinese Golden Songs Awards Concert

Award time: usually in mid-January (This year on June 23）
Award Features: The longest-running Chinese pop music awards event, with gold, silver and bronze awards

The Top Ten Chinese Golden Melody Awards, founded by Hong Kong Radio DJ Zhang Wenxin and hosted by Hong Kong Radio, is the oldest Chinese music award event. It has been held since 1979 to promote and encourage music creation in Hong Kong and has witnessed the rise and fall of the Hong Kong music scene. The “Golden Needle Award” it awards is a symbol and testimony of the superstar status of Hong Kong music workers. The award is recognized by peers as the highest honor in the Hong Kong music scene. However, due to the huge number of awards, many artists who are not singers have also won some awards.

The “Jingge Jinqu” Awards (organized by TVB), which are more familiar to mainland audiences, merged with the Top Ten Chinese Golden Songs Awards in 2022 and became the “Hong Kong Golden Songs Awards Ceremony”. This was a short-term merger during the pandemic, and it will continue to be presented to the Hong Kong public as the “Top Ten Chinese Golden Songs Awards”. At this point, the “Jingge Jinqu” has left the stage.

As the oldest Chinese pop music award ceremony, unlike other award ceremonies that only have two awards, nomination and winning, many awards have three awards, gold, silver and bronze. Many works of the gold award are well-known to everyone, but the silver and bronze awards are not well known to the audience. There are also many good works here. You can look for them among these songs, and you may find a few that are very suitable for your taste.

Of course, the Top Ten Chinese Golden Songs also have drawbacks, especially the Best Singer category. Because the voting is open to the public, there are many unscrupulous singers among the winning singers. As a consequence of commercialization, this is inevitable. Therefore, I would recommend the more artistic CASH Golden Sail Music Award to you.

CASH Golden Sail Music Award

Awarding time:Second half of the year
Award Features: Selected by the Hong Kong Composers and Lyricists Association, with emphasis on creation

The CASH Golden Sail Music Award, which was established in 2001, may not be so well-known among mainland audiences, because it is more about recognizing music from Hong Kong or music released for the first time in Hong Kong, and also hopes to increase the public's understanding of Hong Kong music through this award. The organizer is the Hong Kong Composers and Lyricists Association, which shows that this award is more artistic in nature and has very little commercial elements. The awards are divided into Best Male/Female Singer, Best Band, Best Chorus, Best Song, Best Melody, Best Lyrics and Music Achievement Award.

Compared to the above Top Ten Chinese Golden Melody Awards Concerts, which were also held in Hong Kong, CASH has a stronger academic atmosphere, and most of the winning singers and works are also very strong. Eason Chan won the most Best Male Singer awards, and Kay Tse won the most Best Female Singer awards. Eric Kwok won the most Best Composer awards, and Lin Xi won the most Best Lyricist awards (the second is Wong Wai-man). The above-mentioned people randomly arranged and combined to produce the following songs – “No Man's Land”, “Invitation Street”, “Bitter Melon”, “Zhong Wuyan”, “Always with Me”… CASH's list often has classics worth savoring again and again.

Of course, CASH also has its own flaws – too much artistic elements. Many songs with a lot of artistic elements are not well accepted or understood by the public, which also leads to many excellent musicians not being exposed to the public, such as Chen Huanren, Zhong Yikuang and Zhong Yinuo. If you claim to have extraordinary musical aesthetic ability, why not come and feel the charm of CASH's award-winning works.

Discontinued awards worth checking for omissions

Southern Music Festival (formerly the Chinese Music Media Awards, 2001-2021)
Singing Committee Music Award (2017-2022)

In addition to the awards mentioned above, among the awards that have now been (temporarily) discontinued, the Southern Music Festival and the Singing Workers Committee Music Award are relatively important and worth checking and filling in the gaps along with past lists.

The Southern Music Festival is one of the few awards in China that is judged by music genre. It has the momentum to create the Chinese Grammy Awards. It may be more friendly to fans of a certain style, but this long-lived award suddenly changed its path after 2021 and became a music festival that few people care about. The Singing Workers' Committee Music Award is an award sponsored by the Recording Work Committee of the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association. The award setting is basically the same as the Golden Melody Awards. The works selected are basically of high quality and can be used as a supplementary music library for mainland music at the level of the Golden Melody Awards. Unfortunately, after the biennial award was awarded in 2022, there was no follow-up. I don’t know if there will be a chance to see it resurrected.

Video Radio

Even in the field where drivers fill the silence, radio programs have been lonely for a long time. As listeners turn to podcasts and music streaming, the time-sensitive radio song promotion columns are gradually out of sight – fortunately, there are always people to do such work. The video format gives music recommenders more room to show their talents, and also makes song recommendation programs more special. Watch an episode when you have time, search for good songs, change your mood, and refresh your ears for a week.

HOPICO

platform:Bilibili
Features: Professional radio host job transfer, detailed music background introduction

HOPICO should be regarded as the benchmark of domestic video radio programs. If you happen not to be one of his more than 1.7 million followers, you might as well take this opportunity to listen to it. The channel manager Zhou Yang was previously a professional radio DJ. He has first-class video copywriting skills and knows all kinds of music. His huge listening volume has allowed him to carve out a path for video radio in the music area. The channel has many columns with different directions, but the quality is excellent.

If you want to listen to new songs, the irregularly updated “HOPICO LINE” column is the best choice. Although the recommendations are not limited to Chinese music, the musicians he recommends always have refreshing highlights. As for Chinese music, you can pay attention to his self-funded song column “Hit it! 打歌”, in which a musician he personally likes will perform his representative songs live in each issue. The update time is not fixed, and there are only ten issues at present. In addition, he has a channel award HMA every year (originally a hobby but now it is getting bigger and bigger), which is jointly selected with Mingtang Records Manager 2G3 and many musicians. It has been held for three sessions. Although it is essentially the personal preference of the jury, the list of selected albums in each session is worth listening to from beginning to end, and you can always discover new worlds.

Developed Thursday

platform:Bilibili / YouTube
Features: All-Cantonese channel, unique way of promoting songs

FaDa Thursday is not a purely music channel. Its fixed themes are actually only in “Cantonese”. But for viewers who don't understand Cantonese, it is actually quite interesting to watch the host and friends chatting and joking about the current theme in the channel (with subtitles).

Fadai Thursday has two fixed music columns, neither of which is limited to Chinese content. One is “Old Songs and Golden Songs”, which mainly reviews and recommends past albums, and the other is “Cut Songs and Golden Songs”, which are shorter, faster and more spicy. If the host likes it, he will listen to it. If it doesn't sound good, he will just click the button to change the song. There are often guests who work in the music industry, and the program effect is very good. Regardless of whether you have the same musical aesthetic direction as the host, you can hear a lot of good works here. In addition, the channel will randomly update some music content outside the column.

Kojima is so good / Irregularly updated radio station

platform:Bilibili
Features: Updated from time to time

I don't know if there are any STN fans among the readers. If there are, they should be very familiar with “Irregularly Updated Radio”. This is a program made by then STN member Kojima on STN (he really looks a bit like Hideo Kojima). The program mainly recommends some unpopular songs or unpopular music styles. The program is not limited to Chinese songs, but the selection of materials is really good, and many of the contents are very nice. Later, Kojima resigned and set up his own channel, and “Irregularly Updated Radio” also followed Kojima to his own account.

One of the main features of the show is that it is updated irregularly. The updates are quite casual, with no fixed schedule (in a sense, it also inherits the “Redefine Thursday” theme). I will do an episode when I think of it, or if there is something good to hear, I will update another episode three days after the previous one.

Kojima's style is like a young artist recommending something to you. It requires the audience or listeners to align with his radio waves. If the radio waves align, they will like it very much. If they don't align, they will think he is just complaining without reason.

Music Variety Show

In recent years, music variety shows have become another major way for the public to get new songs. However, with fewer programs that focus on originality, music variety shows have begun to lean more towards covers of classic old songs. Whether it is pure new songs or gold rushing old songs, the proportion is not too high. So I still tend to look for variety shows that are aimed at original musicians.

Homegrown

platform:Bilibili / YouTube
Features: Singing in the bedroom

It is difficult to consider Homegrown as a complete online music variety show. Each episode is only a few minutes long, and basically the musicians set up the environment in their bedrooms, record a song, and then accept a short interview in the second part. The format is very similar to the popular THE FIRST TAKEbut it is more focused on the Chinese music circle and original musicians, occasionally interspersed with foreign artists who come to tour the country. The familiar and soft overall atmosphere of the bedroom is also more relaxed, without the tense feeling of TFT as if facing a powerful enemy.

If you have any other channels for finding good music, feel free to share with everyone in the comment section, help each other, and resolve your song shortage.

Can't find any good new songs? Expand your Chinese music library from these places