Wraping up MEGAPORT festival / Will online concert cease after Covid? - Issue #9

Hello every of our subscribers, it is our honor to announce we will be launching our second newsletter, which you will be receiving from the address taiwanbeatsforfan@gmail.com.

While the first newsletter focuses on Taiwan’s music industry insight, the second newsletter will be providing album picks, scene reports and our music playlists.

On March 26th 27th, the biggest annual music event in Taiwan, MEGAPORT, splashed its glory at pier 2 of Kaohsiung port. 

With over 120 bands, 10 stages and more than 20,000 participants, has become an iconic music fest that represents Taiwanese music scenes. The exciting crowds were all masked up through the entire event while watching their favorite bands perform their favorite songs under the sunny blue sky.

This year, starting from the very beginning of the announcement, there are more disturbances than ever before. The tickets were sold out within a second, so music lovers that are eager to attend are questioning whether the curator will deal with scalper issues. Later, as a public relations crisis occurred here and there, people questioned if MEGAPORT is not the same as before.

Once the timetable was out, some discontent voices are saying that they are having difficulties choosing on the bands they want to see. This type of the gaps between music fest newbies and seniors are due to the 2-year pandemic period. During the pandemic with an agile and effective response to the pandemic, Taiwan has largely held concerts and events as normal. A lot of fest new experiencers that are not familiar with gigantic scale music fests such as Coachella, Fuji Rock or Summer Sonic so they panic with multiple stages and complicate timetable. All the above made MEGAPORT this year a bumpy ride.

Still, once the event started, people realized it is still the amazing music fiesta like it used to be. Unique featuring between artists from different genres or even generations has always been a MEGAPORT highlight, alongside veteran musicians and talk show hosts making their comeback at the festival. As the hip hop talent show, The Rappers had made its wave in 2021, more hip hop acts are shown on the line-up, giving out the image of inclusiveness and diversity of Taiwanese music scenes.

Mandopop history and indie ongoing trends mingle perfectly during this musical weekend. To all gen Z audiences and all senior attendees, MEGAPORT is still MEGAPORT, your good old friend filled with music and love.

As most of the COVID restrictions in the UK and the States are lifted now, live gigs are gradually back on track. According to a new report published by the UK’s Performance Rights Organization PRS for Music, live music revenue fell by almost 30% in 2021. The industry is trying every effort to return to “the usual“ after the two year hiatus, especially on live music.

For most of the event organizers, they are now aware that offline gigs and online gigs are two totally different things. Since physical gigs are back, as a result, there aren’t many discussions about online gigs anymore. 

As for Taiwan, it wasn’t until mid-2021 that we faced our first lockdown. There are just a few artists who devote themselves to online events before then. Due to the delay, in the indie scene, it was only Enno Cheng the famous singer songwriter that put out her online concert last summer. She did the pre-record in her apartment and all frames and music were presented in a neat and minimal way.

Earlier this year, the rock trio Sorry Youth also released their online concert Déjà vu. Other than these two artists, Taiwanese bands are not paying that much attention to online events, as most of the offline gigs can still take place.

Still, there are some online gigs held recently for different reasons. An event curator called 才調Tsâi-Tiāu put out a series of online gigs under the name 3.5 millimeter universe. The name came from the size of a headphone plug, which is usually 3.5mm. They tried to sell offline tickets for fans that want to see the show in person and online tickets for those who want to give the online concert a try. 

Also we have Big Romantic Records, a label that focuses especially on the connections between the Taiwanese and Japanese scenes putting out a series of shows called Romantic Sync. Each night they bring together a Taiwanese artist and a Japanese artist, such as Leo Wang with Wednesday Campanella on April 27th. Audiences can grab online tickets to watch the show at home, or they can choose to go to the venues in Taiwan or Japan and watch half of the show live and the other online.

It is challenging for music events as waves of pandemic go on and off. Different levels of restriction will have all curators and musicians try every possible way to make it. Hope we are about to see the light around the end of this everlasting tunnel.