Oh, it started from that time.
The “Great Creator” is a business person column dedicated to finding activists who promote the process of new business civilization, telling about all the adventures and evolution behind innovation.
This time, we interviewed Rock Star, the founder and CEO of Modern Sky, who entered the business world. Since the launch of “Hip-Hop in China” in 2017, independent music has become the scent of variety, and Shen Lihui has also taken a new stage, as the owner of the largest independent music record company in China.
After 22 years of entrepreneurship, he used the rigorous business logic and destructive innovation to complete the transition from artist to entrepreneur. “It is rock and roll that can break and innovate. So we follow rock, not rock and roll. .”
At the end of the year, the “2019 Innovator” list was opened, trying to identify the industry leaders who are constantly testing the boundaries of the industry and tapping into real value in the field.
Innovators are at the forefront of the field, opening up new opportunities in risk, and they will focus on transformative, forward-looking, influential, and resilience. The list will be announced in November 2019.
文 | 巴芮
Edit | Zhang Wei
Video Director | Lu Fang
It’s still a musician, just don’t do it
Shen Lihui is a person who can quickly grasp the essence of things.
So he never valued the kind of communication that only brought short-term traffic bursts to independent music. Whether it’s a summer of the band’s summer in his ear, or “Hip-Hop in China” that brought hip-hop to the mainstream table two years ago, others say that he is behind the scenes, the modern sky – domestic The boss of the largest-scale new music independent record company is just paying a smile.
On October 30th, at the Modern Sky Music Plus conference, Shen Lihui, who was in black, stood in front of the huge shiny screen, and the logo of the Beatles’ haircut never changed since he played the band. Just a little lazy, wide black on the head of a 51-year-old man.The framed glasses cover half of the face that has been rebellious against the young but forcibly suppressed by mature entrepreneurs. “In terms of variety, this year is the original music year,” said Shen Lihui. “But it’s not that the variety has changed us. It’s that we changed the variety.” He bowed his head to the stage and said, “Today’s come.” It is the COO of Fang Miwei Media produced by the music variety “Summer of the Band”. “But the most important thing in this era is integration. Variety is a manifestation of integrated development.” Shen Lihui took a sentence.
Two years ago, five singers from the modern sky’s hip-hop label M_DSK accounted for one-third of the top nine in China’s hip-hop, including the PG One. Hip-hop rises from the underground to the countertop. With the safari group of PG One, the safflower group will become famous, and soon it will make a dispute with the modern sky. In the summer of 2019, which was picked up by the band, the group was completely disbanded.
The sudden drop of fame and fortune has smashed the future of the hip-hop boy who is not stable. Shen Lihui didn’t feel surprised at all. Human nature. When the first music festival was made, the whole company followed him to expand, as if there was nothing that he couldn’t do. However, the life of the safflower will change too fast, and the expansion speed is not an order of magnitude.
It’s another music season. Among the 31 bands recorded in The Summer of the Band, 5 spent from the modern sky and eventually won the championship. Out of the foresight, the modern sky public relations team has even prepared for the sensation, but this time there is nothing unexpected, and no one has asked for strange cooperation requirements – as the debut of the music band for more than 20 years. This highly sought-after scene of new pants and pains has long been eccentric.
Shen Lihui didn’t watch the show during the broadcast, but he knew that the new pants won the championship. After a meeting, he mentioned “The Summer of the Band”. Shen Lihui asked Peng Lei, the new trouser singer, “Is it inflated?” No, a look of seeing through the thoughts from the mouth and eyes of Shen Lihui’s upturned mouth, “I think it is impossible not to expand”, victory and recognition will eventually make people’s self-perception a little bigger.
Invitation of media interviews, magazine covers, and commercials came one after another. This summer, new pants members wore different trousers and different Pose appeared in various positions in the mass media until they consumed the last trace of heat. As the autumn cools down.
Shen Lihui can’t look at these things. “It’s all about melons and jujubes. They can make a few dollars for the broken advertisement.”The equipment slipped out of the mouth, and the owner of the new trousers quickly found a sentence, “This may be cut off.” It’s not the pursuit of Shen Lihui because of the popularity of a few advertisements or the short-term popularity of the media. It’s understandable to make some quick money in the short-term, but it’s useless for long-term value.
The only criterion for checking traffic is the box office. “It’s impossible to vote with money. This is more important than anything else.” Shen Lihui feels that this is a measure of the artist (Modern Sky will sign the artist) For the artist, the most intuitive and core of the value, the other can only be regarded as added value. But this standard came into effect after 2007, because the band was rarely able to get paid from the organizers of the music festival before that.
When the traffic bubble brought by Variety is dissipated by time, it is still really good music and content that still produces these values.
Shen Lihui is willing to pay for premium content, like he has called the Prodigy, which is called the electronic rock legend at the festival. The other party has a 200-page performance including a separate sound system. He needs all the same satisfaction.
At the beginning of 2018, the world’s largest top-level digital analog mixer AMS NEVE 88RS was first registered in China and was placed in the studio of the modern sky. “Wow! NEVE mixer, what a joke, it is the most classic and the biggest band will be used.” Modern Sky signing band re-modeling the right of the statue singer East China remember, the 20 million studio has not yet When they were built, Shen Lihui called them all and pointed to an empty counter. “The NEVE console is here. Next time you can record it here.” The happyness of Shen Lihui reminded Huadong that he was a lot when he was a child. Money finally got the feeling of an Optimus Prime.
Please ask the prodigy band to prove to the people in the industry the scale and height of the festival, to do something “China has never happened”; spend big money to buy the top mixer is to consolidate the core of the record industry part.
Since the 12th album “Glory of Tomorrow” was released 12 years ago, the identity of Shen Lihui as the lead singer of the band ended. The outside world commented on him from “a lead singer of a company” to ” A businessman playing a band,” but in the eyes of the awake band drummer Guo Yihuan, ShenLi Hui is still a musician. “Just don’t do it.” He is playing music in a unique business model.
Make money just to play music
When I first started writing songs, Shen Lihui didn’t even understand the guitar chords. Intuitively, which sound is pressed out and listened to, so there are many strange chords in the early songs of the awake band. This situation was alleviated until the addition of Guo Yihuan, a drummer from the class in 1994. However, Shen Lihui does not care, there is no rule constraint and technical processing, but can express the most primitive feelings of the heart.
The band was formed in 1988. In that year, Shen Lihui was 20 years old and studied in the third year of Beijing Arts and Crafts School. The desire to be a star since childhood has pushed him to the most prosperous circle on campus, such as football teams that are all seniors, fashionable youths who danced at black lanterns, and a band that plays rock. . Putting these behaviors on adolescent males can help them achieve one of their most immediate goals – picking up girls.
Inspired by the desire of the group, it is a few young men who have the big hair of the new wave in the 1980s. They are wearing the same trendy big robes to rehearse Sting’s songs in school. Shen Lihui thinks this So handsome. The standard of his team is not skillful, but handsome. So he got in the clothing professional Yu Kai. “I said you can play the guitar? He said no, but I want to play. I said yes, then we will form a band.”
A high-ranking person in the class of Yu Kai found that Shen Lihui wanted to join the band. “I said that you will play drums? No, I will learn.” At that time, Shen Lihui was just thinking about playing a little guitar. Although his father was a famous composer of the last age, he was also a child who grew up in the Academy of Music, but Shen Lihui never received professional music training.
The band composed of several people whose technology is “not very good” is called π, and the level is so bad that it can’t hold any song of a mature band. Shen Lihui can only write it himself, using the simplest melody.
The life goal that Shen Lihui set for himself was a rock star. The drummer Guo Yihuan, who later joined, was inconsistent with his goal. He wanted to be a master. He played the best in China and was degraded by Shen Lihui. “You are still a drummer for a lifetime. What is the use?” Guo Yihuan thought, as soon as he became famous, he gradually turned into a producer. He is now a modern sky music producer.
A year later, the π band with seven or eight original songs isThe class classroom opened a concert and was particularly successful. A lot of people, in the corridor are people who step on the table where they didn’t know where to move, and look around through the glass window on the high wall. Shen Lihui crowded out the crowd and put on his prepared costume – a pair of ripped jeans, and squeezed back from the crowd. Too excited, the first song sang the wrong tone, “return it again,” Shen Lihui shouted.
A few songs passed, the performance ended, the words on the blackboard were smashed by the crowd, and Yu Kai ran home and said to his mother, “We have succeeded!” Shen Lihui felt that it was the culmination of his playing team. It’s not counted in the future. It’s not a big prize for the album. It’s not the band with the highest radio frequency. It’s not a stage for people’s attention. “The excitement is no substitute, that’s the first. The feeling of being recognized once,” said Shen Lihui. They became the stars in the school, and the little papers that girls loved were handed over to them in succession.
This is the most complete piece of memory in Shen Lihui’s mind. When he opens his head, he can be pushed down by the passion of his youth, making people feel full. Like his smooth, freeway to Anana, the first black Mercedes-Benz SUV that appeared in the company’s parking lot. He is going to see a performance by the artist Mr. Hai turtle, which is different from the previous one.
In 1991, the π band changed its name to awake. In the 1990s, the golden age of rock, the band’s depression. The main income of the musicians came from the performance, but at that time there was neither a live house nor a music festival. They were in the underground or the ground party. At that time, the performance of the face was at most one week, with the boss. The sub-ticket account, a person with a high income of one hundred yuan, and pains only tens of dollars.
I can’t expect to play music to support myself. After graduating from the US school, Shen Lihui was arranged by his father into Chinese audio and video recordings to be responsible for the cover design. Shen Lihui, who was good at buying and selling, discovered that it was a profit-making business, so he found someone to get a printing press and pulled on the self-employed friends at the Drum Tower.
The “earnings of earning money” was lost in the first three years. “The machine is special, and no work can be printed.” Shen Lihui dismantled the east wall and made up the Western Wall, and finally lost more than 200,000. In 1993, when the per capita monthly salary was only 300, Shen Lihui felt that he had reached the end of the world. “I have to back my life debts, my dreams can’t be realized, I have to let my band out of the album,” so he took the tens of thousands of dollars left in his account and found stones, powder fog, Yi, crown and DD. The rhythm recorded a compilation of “Rock ’94”, which was later called the rock collection template. At that time, there was never a recording experience in waking, and only two songs, “Stone Heart” and “Needs” were included.
To some extent, “Rock” 94 satisfies Shen Lihui’s desire to express and publish from childhood. At that time, doing radio and publishing magazines, including TV movies and music, were recorded on Shen Lihui’s wish list. Only printing does not.
After the printing company was on the right track, Shen Lihui ran around the business, often dressed in a suit to rehearse, with a bag under his arm, not rock at all, but this is a necessary condition for him and his band to continue. “I have never loved the printing industry. I believe no one will love the printing industry. My purpose is to make money. To make money is to play music.” There are more than 100 kilometers left to Anaya, and the handlebar is on the steering wheel. Shang, Shen Lihui said, “I have a strong belief.”
From the field to the regular army
In 1997, the awake band that had been established for nearly ten years was mature, and Shen Lihui felt that it was time to release the album. But the industry doesn’t think they are still depressed. “At that time, the industry was very sluggish, and everyone didn’t have much money.” Shen Lihui remembered that the production budget for the Red Star Production Company, which had been recorded for the old rock cannons such as Xu Wei and Zheng Zheng, was 100,000. . Too low, it is impossible to realize the idea of Shen Lihui filming MV with film.
At that time, it was in the transition phase of analog to digital, and most MVs were unclear. Shen Lihui felt that “it is not good at all.” Their album must be good, “This is the basis of one’s work.” Another reason is that these young people simply don’t know how difficult the industry is at the time. “There is actually no output.”
Fortunately, the printing company has already improved, and the annual turnover has reached seven or eight million. Shen Lihui has become the “big bang” in Peng Lei’s eyes, so he is ready to pay for his own record. Shen Lihui once mentioned in his public speech, “I set up my own company to make myself a self-funded singer look good, pretending to be a company signing a band.” But the company can’t just sign a band, so he looks for it again. New pants and supermarkets are coming, they are the schoolchildren of his school. “(I don’t know other people except them), others don’t believe me.” A joke-like opening, let some in the circle People “feel a bit funny and want to see it.”
The company founded by Shen Lihui is called Modern Sky. It was still under the printing company. So the new pants Peng Lei told people that they signed a printing company.
There was a total of modern people in the sky – Shen Lihui, Guo Tao and Guo Yihuan. In addition to Shen, the other two are dissatisfied with the new pants. “The small sample is very rough, the sound is not stable, and the strings are not allowed.” Guo Yihuan felt that “it is definitely not a play, and it will not come out.” But Shen Lihui insisted that Guo Yihuan later knew that < Strong> His aesthetic is not about music technology. “He listens to it, it’s really true, pure, rock and roll is not about it.”
In 1997, the awake band’s first album, “Great!” ? “published, spent 700,000, can beAt that time, Beijing bought the price of several suites. The short hair and suit on the cover are different from the long hair and jacket of the rock musician. Li Shuai, a pupil at that time, had an “illusion” and felt that Modern is the coolest music company in China. “You can have money, the quality of life is very high, and they think they are all stars.” He remembers the MV on MTV. “I think these people are particularly powerful.” Now, he is the head of MVM, the visual label of Modern Sky.
“Great! ? “Soon quickly sold 200,000, and the awake band became the best band of the year, winning all the rankings. A year later, the new pants were released and sold hundreds of thousands.
Shen Lihui inevitably swells. “I feel that I can do anything.” At the end of the cassette, I am heading for business, running magazines, opening Live House, and distributing the albums of my favorite foreign bands.
The pursuit of rock stars ended after the album was released. In such a traditional era, I saw all the audio-visual shops with posters printed on their faces. Shen Lihui felt a bit boring. “Who is this person? It doesn’t seem to matter to me.” The rhythm of the band slowed down.
Because of the hatred of printing, Shen Lihui abandoned all previous business experience when running the modern sky, “I want to enter a completely creative field of freedom”, no punches, no rules. Like the original band, “I feel cool, just a bunch of people rushing to do this.” For example, when making a magazine, a very creative advertisement is generated, and the whole team is all in one and a half months; this The situation even continued to the first Modern Sky Music Festival, where a group of people tossed for two weeks in a light box.
Li Shuai felt the kind of “chaos.” In 2010, Li Shuai, who was still in the media, had a cooperation with Modern Sky, but it was difficult for him to adapt to the rhythm of the company. “Specially concentrated outbreaks, one thing and a bunch of people all over, the temperament is particularly wild, very fierce.” He always sees the yelling person as soon as he enters the door. The people who squatted on the table and shouted “I want to be free”, that made him a blank when he entered, and then did not pick up the phone of Shen Lihui in a few years.
After the CD era, the cost of piracy has dropped. “When I feel that I am still pretty good, the sales of the album suddenly drops, and the magazine has a lot of problems.” Around 2000, the modern sky that opened for three years lost 3 million yuan, and Shen Lihui began to re-examine his own practice.
“I suddenly realized that this is no different from printing,” said Shen Lihui. When I was a printing company in the early days, I received more than a dozen orders each month. These orders were from negotiation to design proofing, to processing and delivery. For a rock youthHigh repetitive work is simply self-harming, but later Shen Lihui found this to be a good training. This complicated procedure honed his execution and rigor. “Because you made a mistake, you can’t get the money.” This made Shen Lihui become pragmatic. In the era of ring tones four years later, he relied on this ability to take orders to make the modern sky survive under the impact of the Internet – to make music for big companies such as Motorola and Nokia. Related Services.
In the middle of the loss in the middle of the year, Shen Lihui sold four suites in Beijing to maintain it, but most of the time he hid in the basement of the Garden Bridge and wrote songs and songs. “Every time we voted for one The record is the feeling of the last record of modern.” Shen Lihui remembered that a year ago, he gave the company the last tens of thousands of dollars to an artist as a production fee. At that time, Ding Taisheng, who was still in the modern sky, hated that. The artist, “Say you know, you took the money we spent on the holidays,” recalls Shen Lihui.
Hey, it’s also from that time. “It’s especially difficult. I know that I pay you this money. I also know that I can’t make it back. I have to set various conditions. For example, if you say that this album can make a music video, you can’t, it’s all negative,” said Shen Lihui. .
After that, Shen Lihui began to take every budget seriously. For example, Peng Lei said in the “Summer of the Band” that he did not even ask for a string. When I saw the budget approval, Shen Lihui questioned. “Isn’t this money should be a program group? They said that the program group budget has given 20,000. I said that 20,000 can ask for anything, why do you want it? I have to do extra money to do this?” Shen Lihui said that this is a budget system. “It doesn’t matter if I am good to you. Every budget must have a source.” Although it has evolved, Shen Lihui feels that the company’s financial process is still not tight enough. “These should be gone to finance, and should not be here.” Shen Lihui has long abandoned the artist’s thinking that couldn’t grasp the key points. Now these strict processes are more important. “This will guarantee you.” Survival.”
Shen Lihui also gave up part of the self, which is the part of the rock star. When others say that he is a band lead singer, the implication is that this person can’t do business at all, or that he was used by the band as a “cash machine” in the early days. These things that once stung him have become less and less powerful. “I can accept now.” Any one role.”
When Li Shuai entered the modern sky in 2016Obviously, the change of this enterprise has been felt. Although the people on the table still exist, it seems to be more orderly. Now, in the modern sky, new and new people who want to be free are shouted.
The best thing is “destruction”
But the establishment of the system does not mean that the modern sky will go to the professional paradigm, in order to cope with the efficient operation of the company after expansion. The modern sky is no longer the studio with only a single-digit employee. More than 200 staff members and more than 160 groups of contract artists make it more like a huge music empire.
“Professionalism is boring.” After all, what Sun Lihui is most happy with and what he is best at is “destruction.” The albums of early waking and new trousers, from music style to cover design, are different from the same model at the same time. New things are a kind of “destruction”. There is also inward self-destruction, such as the modern sky that started as a rock and roll. In 2016, the M_DSK hip-hop label was established.
“I want to say that this is rock, rock music is a kind of music, rock is a spirit that makes you break and break.” Shen Lihui said, “No matter what you do, no matter what form you use, I think this What can break the innovation is rock. So we follow rock, not rock.”
Shen Lihui did a special rock thing–in 2007, when the company had only one million books, he had to hold a music festival. It is said that there is one propaganda supervisor among the staff of less than ten people. Immediately resigned.
Shen Lihui was inspired by a large rock festival held in the virgin forest in Hurtsfred, Sweden in 2002. He wants to do such a music festival, like a big party, and It is not a domestically popular “trash can of bitterness and hatred.” “No matter whether it makes money or not, we have to tell you that the festival should be like this.”
No one has ever had this experience, and there were 4 music festivals nationwide. When he was pulled to be the main stage director of the scene, Guo Yihuan, “What do I say as a live director? He said that you go to inquire about the Internet and check it out. He dares to do this. Shengheng. This is a me, there are countless “I” so many people, just do it.” Guo Yihuan feels that Shen Lihui is really daring. The scene is undoubtedly chaotic, and the chaos to Shen Lihui is directly shut down.His awkward walkie-talkie, hiding in the corner of the background, more than an hour later, cheering outside. They have succeeded.
Shen Wei, the vice president of Modern Sky, who is in charge of business and market, was a member of the festival. He and Shen Lihui had a feeling that “this thing can definitely be done.” Shen Lihui said that he would look back at the previous interview and felt that it was full of sensation and sensation. I don’t know what kind of capital and courage to say this.
Shen Yi remembers that the plan for the Modern Sky Music Festival was particularly large, there were many stages, the venue was full, and each stage style was different. “At the time, I felt that it was necessary to do this big?” He saw Shen Lihui’s ambition and imagination. “It used the venue before Midi, but the content was several times that of Midi.” But these “contents” also burned out more than one million on the books.
After that, the domestic music festival has blossomed everywhere, with more than two hundred peaks a year. The Modern Sky Music Festival and the Strawberry Music Festival are absolute heads. Guo Cheng, the owner of the solo record, said: “Since the modern music festival held in 2007, 80% of the bands in China should thank Shen Lihui. The band that has come through should be clear, he made everyone more objective. Revenue.”
The festival created an output channel for independent musicians, completing the final step in the music industry system, making it a closed loop. More importantly, Shen Lihui made it clear that this was a commercial act. He paid for the market value brought by the performance band and ended the previous “free” performance of the band at the festival. Now the band can also negotiate on the market.
The festival has overturned many traditions – such as the right to reinvent the statue of a new domestic band that has just released an album; abandoned the tradition of calling the old classic band, and chose a new and popular Band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Everything is bold and fresh.
As Peng Lei said, Shen Lihui’s worldview is fashionable. “He has always been new, and he has done what he did before.”
In 2017, Modern Sky opened a branch in Liverpool, England, and even exported music festivals abroad. At the press conference on October 30, Shen Lihui said that there were four groups of modern sky artists on the top 50 of the British independent music list.
Anti-boring productivity
Shen Lihui has an anti-boring productivity, and this ability has become a core energy source for promoting independent music.
When the Chinese street in the early days of reform and opening was full of pedestrians wearing blue-gray coarse cloth, the appearance of a pair of jeans lit up Shen Lihui, and the child Shen Lihui thought, “Will one day wear it like this?” He hopesThere is a scene where everyone has their own ideas, wearing clothes that are very temperamental, rather than becoming a boring “blue ant.”
The reinventing band that created “strange” music is “the man in jeans”; hip-hop is also the “wearing jeans” for rock and roll; the modern visual brand MVM is that the hotels they participate in are also… later He saw the tour caravan of foreign bands, a more fashionable “jeans”, this country does not, Shen Lihui wants to do, amazing attachment, every newcomer, Shen Lihui sent this task to him until the pain of the band The broker made this happen. However, because of the domestic road regulations, the modified bus can only sit four people, install a band, even the driver’s position is not there, have to send a car to follow, only two bands put his ideas into practice, because Inefficient use, this caravan carrying Shen Lihui’s dream was sold last year.
The 22-year-old modern sky has reached a new stage, he can use commercial means to rebuild his interest, but the cost of paying for interest is limited to 20% of company expenditure each year. Less than %. This year, Shen Lihui used this money to invest in Finerac Beijing Animation Week, saying that the volume of independent music can finally help independent animation. When speaking on the stage, the former rock star became ashamed, and the empty left hand rubbed up and down on the side of the body, trying to find a pocket hidden under the long coat.
Shen Lihui thinks that those who do independent animation are very pure, like a white rabbit, and the one who stands on the stage and rubs clothes is a “bad person”. “I have a lot of ideas. How do you make money? This stage How do you achieve your goals, and you know what you know?”
Shen Lihui does not expect these investments to earn money, at least not in the short term, he values cultural values, such as he also gives some folk music. But investors can’t do it. They need to pay back. They need financial reports to look good. They can’t wait for the so-called long-term value of Shen Lihui. “That would have to cut down all our non-profitable projects. The report will look good, but your long-term competitiveness is not enough. Gao.” Shen Lihui is not willing, so whenever a new investor wants to come in, he will ask, “Are you asking us to go public? Say yes, I said that you can’t write this request, he said, then we will not vote. Good.” Shen Lihui feels that when the listing is targeted, corporate behavior will be different. So he made a share repurchase settlement and took 70% of his shares in his ownHands, be your own Lord.
For wealth, Shen Lihui has no desire, and those who represent so-called rich behavior, Shen Lihui are not interested. “What do you buy a car, buy a house, and get a villa? If you open a modern sky, you will prove that you have money, because it costs more money. Is it so unreliable?” I have been able to do this for 20 years. I think this is the most extravagant thing.”
Shen Lihui has a young boy’s heart that can’t be concealed. Most of them flow out from the corner of his mouth that is covered by the decree. Maybe music is something newer, and it always gives him emotional pleasure and fullness, always like a teenager.
Now, the music industry system has run through the modern sky, and it runs smoothly. Shen Lihui enters the post-modern era. He now hopes that the modern sky doesn’t look like a music company. He always gets off the label because Bored, he doesn’t want to be defined by himself and his company. “We always want to make ourselves look weird.”
