KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing?

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KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba



KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

"Singing K" was once the romance of a generation of Chinese. / The movie "The piano of steel"


will one day, when you see the combination of the three letters of KTV, you can't help but fall into the memory of some past events.

It wasn't until a younger child pushed you who was distracted, and asked: "What is KTV?" You only remembered that for many years, you haven't called your friends, and you have sat in and clicked a song.

this day is not far away.

Text/Cao Xunnan


In the common memory of Chinese people, the first experience of some life things can often become a node marking an era in the end.

For example, the first time I put on flared pants, the first time I found sunglasses in a clothing store, the first time I tasted the taste of Coke, the first time I was hesitant to stand in front of the only KFC McDonald's store in the city, and the first time I sat in an Internet cafe. Logging into an online game, for example, sitting on the soft sofa of a KTV for the first time, tapping a favorite song, and receiving the microphone.

The implicit ordinary Chinese have always been ashamed to sing in the public. Therefore, can provide a singing space outside the KTV wall and blooming inside the wall. The Chinese seem to prefer to be in the dark private room than the Japanese who invented it. Show singing voice.

But perhaps no one can tell, when did the KTV that used to be all over the streets fade out of the life of the Chinese.



KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

How long have you been to KTV?


On November 5, 2018, the China Audiovisual Copyright Collective Management Association recently issued a "Announcement on Stopping the Use of Some Songs Involved in Lawsuits" which was exposed on Weibo and caused heated discussions. The announcement requires VOD (video on demand) manufacturers and KTV operators to withdraw more than 6,600 classic KTV songs before October 31st, including many popular golden songs that are indispensable as long as you are on KTV, Eason Chan's "Ten Years" "King of K Songs", "Today Next Year", Zhang Huimei's "Listening to the Sea", Deng Ziqi's "Bubbles", Shin Orchestra's "Love When I Die", Joey Yung "Girl Waving Wings", etc.

And the sentence "Do not re-use without my written notice" also means that the next time we become the "King of Karaoke", we may really need to wait until "ten years" later. Regarding this batch of removals caused by copyright disputes, a high praise message said, "It seems that I can only sing a cappella when I go to KTV in the future."

Actually, if you can’t wait for the little masters to be lucky, for the Chinese KTV industry that has long been dying in the hall, the tide of removal is just another layer of frost on the white snow.


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

More and more people go to concerts and music festivals, and the update speed of popular songs on the Internet is getting faster and faster, but fewer and fewer people go into KTV. / upsplash


01

People need Karaoke


KTV originated in Japan at the end of the 1960s. Karaoke means nothingness and nothingness in Japanese. OK refers to unaccompanied bands. The original form of Karaoke was just an accompaniment tape for professional musicians to use in a tour without an accompaniment band.

At that time, Japan was still in the era of post-war capitalism, and the expansive material desires and dull society made the life of Western hippies quickly become popular among young Japanese. When rock music meets Karaoke, young Japanese hippies yelled with accompaniment in the concert hall to convey the confusion of survival and parting ways with tradition.

In Taiwan in the 1980s, a hawker named Zhou Ying set up CD-ROMs on the street. After completing the first round of capital accumulation, he opened a CD-ROM store. Since it is difficult for customers to have an intuitive feeling about the goods by simply selling CDs, Zhou Ying also set up a simple package in her store.The room is for free trial listening and audition, which is convenient for guests to surround the empowerment and blessing 360 degrees and sing the life. Unexpectedly, not many CDs were sold, but more and more guests came to audition. Boss Zhou simply transformed and started a "selling" business. This was the first KTV in China, and its later name was Qian Gui.


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

Early karaoke player. / Wiki


In just a few years, Qiangui has become a chain KTV with dozens of branches in Taiwan. In mainland China at that time, there were also some song and dance halls in , poking their heads out of the gaps of the times like weeds, and occasionally one or two soft notes leaked out of the open door of the song hall, which would make you tired of listening. The young man who had left Jiang Dawei and Mao Amin was intoxicated.

Wang Shuo once wrote in "I See Popular Culture" how he felt when he first listened to Teresa Teng’s songs: “ heard Teresa Teng’s song, and it is no exaggeration to say that the human side is awakening, a kind of crusting. The things are softened and dissolved. "" accompanied by the drizzle of "supplement", these young people walked into the new era with one foot and one foot, and there was a swaying crossing the river by touching the stones. Akira's world.

In 1994, the money cabinet swam across the Taiwan Strait and chose Shanghai as its landing point. Having been a prosperous place for smoke and willows for nearly a hundred years, Shanghai is always happy with new things. The cash drawer quickly took Shanghai as its base and spread across all major cities in mainland China.

For a time, various local cottage KTVs with gold cabinets and silver cabinets also appeared. KTV replaced karaoke halls, dance halls and discos and became the new favorite of young people. It is said that was at the Beijing Chaowai store in the cash drawer at that time. When you were lucky, you could meet stars like Zhao Wei and Faye Wong in the VIP box. There were as many as 32 hot and cold drinks served for free.


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

KTV must have grown in cities. Taipei and Hong Kong have been used as springboards for karaoke to the mainland. / Banglu Cheng


KTV is a cultural landscape at the turn of the century, behind which is the voice of individualism and materialism. People quietly exit from the grand and solemn ideology and escape into the dark and noisy KTV box.

is here, they no longer need to sing for the grand theme, but for themselves, for the broken love, the cherished friendship, and the new century who don’t know how to sing well all the time. KTV constituted an important public sphere of Chinese society in that special era. Under the cover of feasting, an individualized civil society grew in it.


02

It’s not that I don’t understand. The world is changing too fast.


In 2014, Qiangui Shanghai Fuxing Park Store announced that it was closed. Han Han missed the time on Weibo and never returned:

"My friend said that the KTV of Fuxing Park was closed. After a few seconds, I bought a book at the Monsoon Bookstore at the South Shaanxi Road Subway Station. I picked up the trendiest Nokia and asked a few friends to go to the cashbox to sing. When I left, I said to the girl I like: text me, and, I use msn. Knowing that everything will change eventually, I didn’t expect it to be so fast and decisive. Whether it’s a cold medium or a hot friendship, in retrospect, I don’t even remember which moment is the final farewell. "


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

Karaoke was also Hong Kong An important part of people's lives, and nowadays, singing K culture in Hong Kong has almost disappeared. / The movie "Zhi Ming and Chun Jiao"


Everyone born in the 1980s and 1990s knew that Internet cafes, KTVs, and bars were scourges in the eyes of their parents. Those urban legends that are spread by word of mouth, or fragrant or passionate, make these places even more mysterious. went to KTV to sing, and it seemed like a young man's treason against his parents. They announced their debut in Chinese history through this rebellious image of "self-willing and depraved".

But like Japanese hippie youths will eventually wear black suits and briefcases like their fathers did, expressionlessly squeeze a place for themselves in the subway of Tokyo, as a KTV that exists as a subcultural space. It is also difficult to escape the double squeeze and consolidation of power and capital.

In 2006, the newly promulgated and implemented "Regulations on the Administration of Entertainment Places" stipulated that from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m., entertainment venues shall not be open for business, and minors are prohibited from entering commercial entertainment venues. The promulgation of this regulation put a slam on the brakes of the originally barbaric Chinese KTV market. The rising rents and song copyright fees, rising staff salaries and welfare costs, not low facility maintenance costs, and price suppression in the past group purchase wars have all made KTV's profit margins continue to be compressed. The more serious problem of

is the source of customers. With the expansion of consumerism, entertainment methods are changing with each passing day, and the growth of individual consciousness also makes young people prefer to play alone. The main consumer is tired of KTV, which is a slightly old fashioned entertainment method.


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

In 2014, two young women were singing in the open-air card on a square in Shenzhen. / Vision China


According to a survey conducted by the media on “Why don’t you like to go to KTV” in 2016, the most voted option is “KTV puts too much social pressure on people. Only if you can sing can you have a sense of existence. Those who sing will find it dull."

The young people who grew up in the age of material prosperity no longer need to hide in the dark and noisy KTV to dispose of the youth who are nowhere to be found. The Internet provides them with the opportunity to gather in the cyberspace at any time. The overly complicated interpersonal connection has obviously become a burden for contemporary young people.

Compared to discussing public issues at a distance in a noisy public space, they are more willing to retreat to the personal level and talk to themselves.


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

There is no mobile phone fun to sing. / Josh Felise


03

Where else can the Chinese sing?


In recent years, news about the occupation of KTV by middle-aged and elderly people has appeared in the media from time to time. The KTV that was left behind by the times met the middle-aged and old people who were also left behind. These old people, who grew up in the turbulent age, ran into the wave of marketization head-on, and when they finally had time to enjoy their retirement, they realized that the times did not leave them too much space.

So, when middle-aged people and young people who are busy with friends gatherings, business negotiations, and love affairs no longer regard KTV as their first choice, the elderly walked into private rooms that are warm in winter and cool in summer. In a classic old song of KTV, they can barely recognize the already blurred youth.


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

In 2017, in Phoenix Park, Jinfeng District, Yinchuan City, an aunt was singing indulgently on an electronic screen hung on a tree, and the park became a KTV for aunts and uncles. The speakers, microphones, and electronic screens for music playback are all available. / Vision China


However, relying only on the marketing of "One Yuan Field K" and powerful air conditioners, no matter how many middle-aged and elderly people with low spending power are recruited, it will not help. Those KTVs with aging large and small equipment and dusty chandeliers, do you still remember the arrogant saying that "bring your own drinks is strictly prohibited" a few years ago?

Of course, KTV is trying to regain the entertainment time of young people by seeking the intervention of Internet technology. Rows of mini KTV appeared at the entrance of movie theaters and shopping malls, waiting for the opening of the movie and the break between shopping, harvesting the last bit of fragmented time for young people. Singing has lost its heterogeneous enlightenment power and has become a lullaby under the envelope of consumerism. As Baudelaire wrote in "The Flower of Evil", ", in order to earn bread to live, you should be like a choir kid, singing the hymn that you never believed in."

For contemporary people in a hurry, sitting in KTV with friends and singing ceremonially for an afternoon has become a remote, extravagant and uninteresting thing. Occasionally humming a few divine songs in the video software is enough, anyway, there will be new songs that will become popular tomorrow. The era of

KTV leading the pioneer trend is gone. Of course, we who bury our heads in our mobile phones are no longer the ones holding the cold microphone and shouting "cut the song" excitedly., Sang until I had a hoarse voice.

After the era without KTV, just like the lyrics in "Golden Songs", you should leave your tears to the sky for comfort.


KTV is about to disappear, are you still singing? - Lujuba

2017, Shenzhen, a karaoke booth at a subway station. / Vision China

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