Category: Music

Categories
Music

钟晓京Jamie

Reading Time: 3 minutes

She is from Beijing. I am guessing she is born in 1980s: aka she would be about 40 now (baidu 钟晓京超女几岁了). I came across her at Bilibili, 钟晓京翻唱苏芮80年代经典歌曲《跟着感觉走》. This is the song that I listened in high school and college. || Update 09-01-2025: Jamie mentioned she was at 3rd grade in year 1993. Assuming she was 8 then, she was born in 1985.

Some background

(Sina Blog) 代表北京的传奇超女－钟晓京 (2006-07-04 22:09:20). Also Baidu pages (generated by AI). Please note Jamie is a music industry executive and she also graduated from 北外 Beijing Foreign Studies University which is considered the best college for English majors at my time.

Platforms we can find here

Apple Music – 钟晓京

Bilibili – 钟晓京Jamie: you will notice her English songs got most playbacks. This is understandable because that’s also her strength: she graduate from Beijing Foreign Studies University 北京外国语学院 and passed 英语专业八级。

YT – 钟晓京Jamie: right now she listed all English song she sang (as cover 翻唱）。Personally I think she can put up her Mandarin and Cantonese songs there too.

Douyin 抖音: 钟晓京Jamie：北京歌手，毕业于人大附中、北京外国语大学英语系，英语专业8级。曾就职于国际唱片公司。直播内容：中英粤及其他语种经典歌曲，流行、摇滚、爵士等多种风格。This is the platform that she is most active (I believe). Probably for many short video creators Douyin is also most lucrative too – we got to eat and and sometimes bring bacon home. She probably started her solo/creator career about 5 to 10 years ago, and this again confirms this old saying: many roads lead to Rome.

Facebook: Jamie Zhong

Instagram: jamiezxj

WeChat: 钟晓京Jamie (she does go live 直播 on WeChat sometimes, at least once a month). She mentioned the WeChat audience is slightly older than the audience at the other platform (Douyin).

(Update 07-7-2025) During this morning’s WeChat live, Jamie made an interesting observation, that is over the time, people change the way they consume the pop music, and also due to that, they change their preferences of the type of pop music they listen to as well. Nowadays people tend to listen to music that’s easy, vs. say Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you”. Because a lot of times people listen to the music as a background (noise). I will put more precise words from her if possible.

Btw, the price to ask her to sing a song is about 500 Yuan (what they called “520” stands for I love you in Chinese), or $70. It’s not too expensive, but it’s not too cheap. I imagine Tencent (WeChat owner takes a cut, probably at least 30%?). Also, Apple is probably not taking a cut here.

Btw, I did google search on this too – did people change the habit of listening to pop music

(Update 07-11-2025) Jamie commented on WeChat live that 小斗 (she meant Douyin, because WeChat and Douyin are competitors on the video/live front), is already in 工业社会，by that she meant the analytics for broadcaster (live show host), while WeChat is still at 农业社会。Good analogy. I guess that’s one reason the singer I like (you probably know whom she is, if you read enough of my blog posts), also goes live on Douyin sometimes. A second reason “why someone goes live only on Douyin”, I can think of, is there’s an exclusivity between the show host and Douyin (Byte Dance). Note this is nothing new, as we seen similar things on Spotify or Apple in the west.

Keep in mind I am 2nd class citizen there as I don’t have an account with Douyin. To log into Douyin, we need the Douyin app, but the app is only available in the China app store (including HK).

Jamie also commented YT: 翻唱的歌拿到的广告费大多数要交版权费。一个矛盾是如果是自己版权的歌，一般流量就低，也就没啥广告费。

My comments: Jamie is a straight shooter. She would say what’s in her mind. That obviously a double edge sword: it has both pluses and minuses because usually people don’t want to hear anything negative about them.

PS:

I wrote another two singers, and this is the 3rd of the singers series, the first two are: Liang Jingru 梁静茹 aka Fish Leong and Ayen 何璟昕. We know Fish Leong learned quite a bit from the famous Jonathan Lee (李宗盛), and Ayen 何璟昕 (links to Wikipedia, full disclosure: yours truly made some contributions to her Wiki page recently), is also quite unusual in her career path, she grew interest in music in middle school and high school, but she chose to attend a college in Beijing, major in digital media and arts (Engineering degree), and she launched her music career during/after college.

The key are: you got to love that thing, and you probably need to be decently good at it. The latter also depends on the the competitive landscape and the business overall of that field: for example, I consider myself a decent programmer, but not a 10x dev, but I still made a decent living because the field is fairly lucrative (at least in my 24/25 years career, this may change due to AI etc). But music industry is more competitive. So were the creator and short video platforms.

Categories
Fun Fun Video Music

My impression on shorts or short video

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Short videos 短视频 （short form content on Wikipedia) are getting popular nowadays.

I have some reservations on the shorts, YT shorts or anything equivalent. Below is not a complete list but let me try list some of the popular shorts platforms. My main reservations are the short durations of videos, their impact on kids’ focuses, and the relatively short time span of short videos in the internet and social media history.

YT Shorts: I know my younger daughter only watches the YT shorts when she gets my phone 🙂

Douyin 抖音 (since Sept 2026): I don’t have account for now. But I did watch two short videos today. Also, this series (or playlist) looks/sounds good to me at least 🙂

For douyin we have to have a China based mobile phone and Chinese ID. In other words the app is not open to foreigners or to outside world. ByteDance’s TikTok serves that market.

Btw, here is a famous account 与辉同行

Also a drumset performance (song: 搀扶, MV here)

The songs I listened to when I was young (from 1980s to 2006).

Two videos from Toutiao.com (also owned by ByteDance, the parent co of Douyin): 这老师火到人民日报了！高考誓师大会上，数学老师祝福语

and 大美中国走进广东惠州，山海秀美，惠州人看看！

Buiness model of Douyin (to be expanded)

抖音会员是什么 (Also, Zhihu)

This also makes me to think – maybe TikTok and Douyin 抖音 got popular for a legit reason? 抖音和TT在短视频领域称霸是否意味着字节跳动有她的独到之处呢？就像最近的DeepSeek 对ChatGPT 的冲击和影响？一般一开始先是deny, 接下去说她们肯定是抄了我们的作业，最后发现不对啊，我们可能需要抄她们的作业？😂 Because their presentation or their content or their engagement are better than competitors (say, YT Shorts, and FB Reels)?

Also the 2025 graduation festival: this has been a thing since 2000, and I recall Bilibili was the early leader.

TikTok: I didn’t use it much. But I am aware that it’s widely popular among young people, and it may have taken a dip recently in the USA due to the recent law barring the app. But again whatever ByteDance (Douyin and TikTik) was doing seems working very well with the young people across the world. And for that I think as a minimum we should acknowledge their success: I understand sometimes it’s harder for people outside of China to acknowledge that Chinese people or engineers did something really impressive. If we can do that, we can follow up with some more helpful or meaningful questions such as why are they successful? What can we learn from them, and so on.

WeChat (short videos) 微信视频特指短视频: I don’t watch much of it honestly, especially recently – besides I watch a few music videos there 🙂 One reason I watched music is to stay away from politics. As some of you may know, I am not a fan of the current resident of the WH in the USA. From WeChat I saw content creators can also create playlist. Personally I haven’t found a way to share the link for the 合集 yet, note I don’t have a 微信公众号或者视频号.

Bilibili: they have both short videos and long videos. I am not fully converted to 弹幕 yet though 🙂 (Update) I finally moved up to level 2 there, after answering 60 questions (mostly are simple questions). I tried to verify myself as HUST alumni, but I failed 🙁

Here is one example of Bilibili video. Now I also recall the difference between Bilibili and Douyin: the former is a bit smaller in terms of scale, and also, they cater to the young and educated folks, while Douyin is for everyone. They have a playlist or 合集/视频选集 feature too, here is an example.

Also: I just uploaded my 1st video.

(06/04/25) I found a tip to not see the 弹幕 , just pop up the video in the bilibili app.

(06-11-25) Just learned sometimes the platform has exclusivity agreement with creator.

RedNote: or XiaoHongShu. It got a pop recent amid the TikTok ban. The bump or pop probably faded away. But the platform itself is quite popular among Chinese users and has quite good engagement from my observations. RedNote can create a playlist #合集 too. Here is one example Ayen何璟昕国粤双语合集. Note: it’s best to open this in the app. I noticed on my Mac it will automatically download the Android apk file for RedNote app. Or you may go to the xiaohongshu website and I am not sure if the same functionality exists on the website.

From consumer point of view, I think consume in moderation is the key. But from creator point of view, short video and playlist or 合集 in Chinese is a great way to generate interest.

Business model or income

I speculate one reason artists or creators do short video instead of longer or full length videos is due to copyright laws. I am not attorney but I guess a 20 or 30 seconds clip is less likely to cause issues for the copyright owners than the full length version.

This is more from the content creators or advertisers’ point of view.

YouTube油管和抖音有哪些差别？｜Weitube

一个50万粉丝抖音博主能赚多少钱，涛哥爱拆机真实收入全面公开#抖音创作者 #涛哥爱拆机

今天是庆祝我粉丝到50万的福利视频！回答一些你们常问我的问题，感谢每一个菜鸡粉丝的支持和陪伴！#这个视频有点料

PS: I will probably translate this post to Chinese, or rewrite a new one in Chinese.

Categories
Music

Songs I listened when I was in 20s

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 11-08-2025)

I have YT Music subscriptions (it’s probably a part of YT Premium sub) for a few years now. And I listened to YT and YT Music quite a bit especially since the sub. It allows me to play the music in the background. And they actually sent me a recap: the songs I listened to the most in past year etc. I believe those are the artists or musicians I listened to the most in each year:

2023: Sandy Lam 林忆莲 (Wikipedia)

2024: Fish Leong 梁静茹 and G.E.M. Gloria Tang Sze-wing 邓紫棋 (Wikipedia)

2025: Ayen Ho 何璟昕

I listened to many songs on this list 1990s-love-songs-90年代玉女歌手排行榜 too: but not the first song 最爱。The main reason was I didn’t understand Cantonese and at the time I probably only listen to the most popular cantonese song that’s being played in non-cantonese speaking regions. In other words, I listened to songs such as 一生何求。But I do remember this one’s melody – 劉小慧 ~ 初戀情人【Music Video 】

(Original)

Mostly mandarin pop (Mandopop), and cantonese pop (Cantopop). That was about 35 years ago. Not a complete list.

Sandy Lam 林憶蓮
林憶蓮、李宗盛 – 當愛已成往事

傷痕 Scar 林憶蓮 傷痕專輯: Love, Sandy (1995)

愛上一個不回家的人

CHEN Hui Xian 陈慧娴
Tao Wu Jie 跳舞街

Qian Qian Que Ge 千千阙歌

Piao Xue 飘雪

Hong Cha Guan 红茶馆

Sha Nv 傻女

Chen Shu Hua 陈淑桦
Meng Xing Shi Feng 梦醒时分

Gun Gun Hong Chen 滚滚红尘

QI Qin: Wang Shi Shui Feng 齐秦 往事随风

ZHAO Chuan: Ai Yao Zen Mu Shuo Chu Kou 赵传 爱要怎么说出口

WANG Fei: Tian Kong (Sky) 王菲 天空

Whitney Houston. I was a big fan of her in college. I remember spent about 10 Yuan (remember at the time the monthly allowance was like 100 Yuan) to buy her album “Hero” when I was in college.

This is a song “When you believe“, sung by her and Maria Carey.

Categories
Music

Shall We Talk?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I listened to this song recently, Mar 7, 2025 to be exact, from Ayen何璟昕‘s Eason 陳奕迅 – Shall we talk 女生版 Acoustic cover. 最近听到，Ayen何璟昕翻唱，陈奕迅原唱的歌 – 陳奕迅 | Shall We Talk (高清音)，粤语版，下面的视频有关于这首歌的讲解。

您真的聽懂《Shall We Talk》嗎？解讀林夕愛的哲學，聽歌學閱讀理解，現場鋼琴彈奏，20200302（中文字幕）(I came across this video a few days ago, and I also mentioned here – Cantonese song and lyrics writer)

也让我重新反思我自己对小孩的期望和平时跟她的交流。

听到/懂这个歌，我已是知天命之年 🙂

另外一个版本：shall we talk—小背心 （许靖韵Angela Hui 和 李靖筠Gladys Li） You will notice a heart warming scene towards the end. 两个女歌手都是93年出生，我大学毕业那一年：一下子32年过去了。

The original video for the above video cut is here – 許靖韻李靖筠洪卓立陳家樂活著Viva彌敦道失戀太少最後的茱麗葉人來人往 戀無可戀阿門愛後餘生黃色大門給自己的信無心戀唱他都不愛我小日子心癮找對的人Shall we talk今晚唱飲歌最終回英皇經典金曲 Go to 01:09:16 for #ShallWeTalk; the conversation between singers after the song was also good – it last a few minutes.

Btw, I just created a YT playlist for Shall We Talk.

Last but not least, How to communicate with adolescent or teenagers

Categories
Music

想見你想見你想見你

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Wikipedia entry – 想见你想见你想见你 (English: Miss You 3000), note this is both a movie (TV) and a song.

八三夭 is the author and singer group for this song: they are official 🙂

Cantonese

八三夭 831【想見你想見你想見你(粵語版) Miss You 3000】 電視劇「想見你」片尾曲 Official Music Video

笑忘書-張敬軒 連續劇 續集-容祖兒 三生三世-張杰 想見你想見你想見你-八三夭 劇集medley cover by 許靖韻 小背心 Angela Hui (scroll to 10 min 30 sec for 想見你想見你想見你)

想見你想見你想見你 (粵語版) Miss You 3000 – 八三夭 831 medley cover by 許靖韻 Angela Hui

Personally, I like 【粵語】想見你想見你想見你｜火土填詞 x AYAN何璟昕｜想見你劇集主題曲 , while not official, the best. I know I am likely biased to some extent 🙂

Here is another one sung by Ayen – 粤语版《想见你》吉他弹唱GuitarGuitar (I am not sure if this is official, the Ayen何璟昕 channel is here).

Mandarin

想見你主題曲 cover 八三夭【想見你想見你想見你】吉他彈唱 女生版 | Ayen 何璟昕

八三夭 831【想見你想見你想見你 Miss You 3000】電視劇「想見你상견니」片尾曲 Official Music Video

魏嘉瑩 Arrow Wei【想見你想見你想見你】feat. 魏如昀 Cover 八三夭 831「想見你 상견니 Someday or One Day」片尾曲

Btw, I created a YT playlist for the song here. Side note: from the number of views, we can see mandarin views is much higher than cantonese. This is understandable in the sense that Mandarin speakers is probably 10 times of Cantonese speakers over the world. Google estimates there are 1.18 billion mandarin speakers in the world, vs 120 million cantonese speakers (refer to my blog post here 全球将近有1.2亿人口使用粤语 ). For comparison google search indicates there are 1.5 billion English speakers in the world.

Warning: try not to loop this song during the night. I did it once and it didn’t help my sleep 🙁

Categories
Life Music

你曾是少年

Reading Time: < 1 minute

第一次听这首歌，是因为我最近开始听Ayen阿昕的歌。S.H.E【你曾是少年】吉他彈唱 Acoustic guitar cover 畢業季｜Ayen何璟昕: btw, 我同意Ayen阿昕唱完歌后说的那一段鼓励毕业生的话。很多年之前，我应该还是大学低年级，有一次系里让我们全年级去一个大的阶梯教室开会，有一个日本留学生（研究生）给我们讲话：他用中文写了两个字，初衷 (Original Intention)。他说的也是类似的意思：就是提醒我们不要忘记出发前，我们最初的想法。

这里有official video – S.H.E [ 你曾是少年 Wings of my words ] Official Music Video (｢少年班｣電影主題曲).

KKBox 有歌词。以下摘抄几句：

或許再過上幾年 你也有張虛偽的臉
難道我們 是為了這樣 才來到這世上
這問題來不及想
每一天一年 總是匆匆忙忙

你我來自湖北四川廣西寧夏河南山東貴州雲南的小鎮鄉村
曾經發誓 要做了不起的人
卻在北京上海廣州深圳某天夜半忽然醒來 站在寂寞的陽臺
只想從這無邊的寂寞中逃出來

======

At the same time, somewhat related topic, please read this one as you see fit – 人到中老年少折腾

PS:

I came across this video 20岁和30岁的我：跨越10年的合唱《给十年后的我》 (Douyin, Bilibii) and think it has similar meaning.

Categories
iPhone app Music

Playlist

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Music playlist is quite common nowadays. For me personally I was a bit late to the party. I did use playlist on my iPhone Apple Music app, and on my YT: both desktop and iPhone. But recently since I started to participate the group exercise class at the J, I realized playlist and music in general is a big deal. I believe the Yoga teachers at the J has a playlist too.

An example or case study

清新女声何璟昕：薄荷糖般的味道甜入我心 (QQ Music QQ音乐 ) Note: you will likely need to log in to see the content. For me I use my WeChat login (SSO) for many China-based website/apps. You can read more about Ayen 何璟昕 here

I created a few Playlists for Ayen 何璟昕 on YT and YT Music – this one specially for original songs – Ayen阿昕原创+新歌. Note I have the premium subscription for YT and it allows me to listen to the YT Music in the background, in addition to some other features such as skipping ads in a video.

And I just noticed she has some playlists on YT too: this one is for 翻唱 cover – Ayen cover 何璟昕的翻唱

She did quite a bit of 翻唱 (cover, or acoustic cover) in last few years. I like them all. Some of songs are new to me because I left mainland China in summer/fall 1997. Below a “mixes” of 翻唱 cover songs I listened on 04-08-2025 early morning – “Mixes are playlists YouTube makes for you” per YT. I think the link above may expire after certain time. Btw, I think “mixes” or the YT generated list is a good way to explore what’s out there, because YT will recommend new songs. So in other words, this kind of playlist has some discovery functions. Update 04-20-2025 Btw, I realized this is a dynamic list. Update 04-28-2025: I started to appreciate the computers (and the AI) may have an edge or advantage to create playlist, based on the listening history. The recommendation algorithm may be similar to the social media posts suggestion.

【Mr. 森林】Acoustic guitar cover | Ayen 何璟昕 (Oct 16, 2020, this is YT upload date, same below) Hint: this one has about one minute of funny behind the scenes 花絮/彩蛋 videos in the end – made me realize that it’s not easy to learn a new song and so on. Obviously, it depends on the song itself too. Also, I think many people would appreciate some of the light hearted carefree nature in the behind the scenes 花絮/彩蛋 too.

梅艷芳 – 似是故人來 Acoustic guitar cover 吉他弹唱 粵語翻唱+旗袍 | Ayen 何璟昕

千千闕歌 | 吉他彈唱 cover 陳慧嫻/張國榮 經典粵語歌 | Ayen 何璟昕 (Apr 17, 2020)

Eason 陳奕迅 – Shall we talk 女生版 Acoustic cover (Jan 21, 2022) I didn’t pay attention to Eason 陳奕迅 to be honest, and only till very recently I read his Wikipedia page.

陳奕迅 – 苦瓜 粵語吉他彈唱女生版（完整版）| Ayen 何璟昕

鄭秀文 | 終身美麗 Cover 吉他彈唱 何璟昕 (Feb 15, 2019)

一人有一個夢想 – 黎瑞恩 (Mar 30, 2021)

陳奕迅 Eason – 最佳損友 Acoustic cover (Aug 28, 2021)

謝安琪【喜帖街】Kay Tse 鋼琴+吉他彈唱 這是一首關於懷舊的粵語歌 | cover by Ayen 何璟昕 (Mar 22, 2020; make sure watch till the end 🙂

衛蘭歌曲串燒！低半度/驗傷/就算世界無童話/街燈晚餐 新歌老歌 吉他彈唱cover | Ayen 何璟昕 (Mar 1, 2020) This is a new experiment of singing 4 songs together (one after another) – 《低半度》《驗傷》《就算世界無童話》《街燈晚餐》

王菲/李健 – 傳奇 Acoustic cover｜吉他彈唱｜Ayen何璟昕 (Sept 30, 2022)

盛夏的果實 – 莫文蔚 Acoustic cover｜吉他彈唱｜Ayen何璟昕 (Aug 12, 2022)

你的眼神 国粤双语版 cover蔡琴/卫兰/林志美 Acoustic cover｜吉他弹唱｜Ayen何璟昕 (Sept 9, 2020)

周傑倫《回到過去》女生版宿舍版吉他彈唱 | Ayen 何璟昕 (Sept 25, 2020)

一场游戏一场梦 – 王杰 Cover 吉他弹唱 – 电影《风中有朵雨做的云》插曲 何璟昕 (Apr 7, 2019)

粵語民謠「四季歌」女生版 Acoustic cover 生活需要一些安靜🍃｜粵語歌吉他彈唱｜Ayen何璟昕 (Jul 22, 2024) My comment: one of my favorites, I like this simple folk song 🙂

阿郎戀曲（許冠傑）Cover 吉他彈唱 何璟昕 (Jul 16, 2017)

一生何求 陈百强 (Feb 26, 2021)

Other playlists I plan to create

Some of my older readers may know I have an iPod Nano 7th generation. Right now I just sync all my iTunes songs that I like from Mac to the iPod. Thinking creating playlist next (from Mac, then sync to the iPod Nano).

Usage of playlist

I think there are at least two use cases for me. One is the background music during work. Another one is background music for sleep. I used to listen to the radio (more specifically NPR or over the night it’s more likely BBC World News), but listening to news has its downside, because sometimes the news can be depressing, and other times news would keep me awake. I prefer some calming music over news. A secondary factor is using iPod nano as radio drains battery more quickly.

More on YT Playlist

I found playlist is integrated with YouTube Studio (I create YT video there too). I have 203 playlists: I think I need to clean up some. Also the link above is only available to me (because I am the owner of my YT Studio account).

PS:

Google search “can people make money from curating music playlist”

Search Labs | AI Overview

Yes, people can make money curating music playlists. Platforms like Playlist Push and others offer curators payment for reviewing music and maintaining active playlists. Pay varies, with some curators earning $1.50 to $15 per song reviewed, depending on their playlist’s listenership.

Btw, I just noticed two of my YT Music playlists have more than 1,000 views.

Ayen阿昕翻唱

and

Ayen阿昕原创+新歌

Categories
iPhone app Music

YouTube Music and Music Industry

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Music made together may one day heal mankind. – from “We Gather Here Together” (YT)

For music streaming nowadays I mainly use YouTube Music, because I have YouTube Premium subscription. It’s not perfect, but YT Music has a decent collection, and functionality.

YouTube and YouTube Music

When I was listening to Ayen 何璟昕 music both via YT and YT Music, as I switch between them as I was trying to conserve some data usage (partially because I lost power and Wi-Fi a few days ago). I noticed that YT Music is sometimes automatically generated by YouTube (Google), for example this channel. More on YouTube automation here.

Also, I realized there are two ways we can avoid using cell phone data.

1) Listen to music on YT Music: if we download the video via Wi-Fi in advance, and listen to it in the Download mode, not the library mode. The playlist in Download mode can play continuously, or you can actually loop the playlist if you like;

2) Watch videos on YT, if we download the video via Wi-Fi in advance. If we start playing from the last downloaded video, it will continue to the next, and so on.

If we are watching the video from the library mode, it will use data on YT Music.

YT Music Sync from Library to Download: there is a sync icon button in the downloaded playlist, press it and a popup will show up, ask you to confirm, you say yes, and it will apply the update.

Some More Tips for YT and YT Music

Loop in YT: I just found out we can loop a single song on YouTube too (move mouse over the video, right mouse click, and you see an option of “Loop”. Also, sometimes YT has the “transcript” function (I think it depends on how the creator set it up), and you can follow along with the lyrics for a song (or words/captions for a video). Note the looping works both on Desktop and in the iOS app.

YT Music: you can loop a song or loop a playlist. The icon is at the bottom right when you play a song. If you just want to loop a song, tap twice and make sure you have a number “1” inside that loop.

A bug in YT Music (italics for emphasis):

I learned this lesson the hard way a few times. I found that, “saving to playlist” in YT Music website will mess up my playlist pretty badly. Now if I can stay away from doing that. By “messing up” I mean a lot of duplicates or songs that I don’t intend to add got added when I did the “save” 🙂

Also, I found recently, for many songs, we can jump directly from YT to YT Music by press a “play icon button” inside YT (when applicable).

Sometimes we need to get to the comments and edit. Below is the link getting to the comments.

Google – My Activity (YouTube comments)

Also, YouTube History has a link to “Comments”

A subtle bug in YT Music

Someday I hope I can become a product manager for YT Music and I noticed a subtle bug: in the YT music occasionally the cover page (the image and the song name) is wrong. The music or the song is still correct. The video is correct too.

a screenshot from YT
YT: note the YT music image and song name don’t match the song in YT

Music industry

The landscape of digital music is overly fragmented, in my opinion. For example, in China it appears QQ音乐 and 网易云音乐 (Ayen何璟昕 on 网易云音乐) are popular. In the west Spotify and Apple Music are two largest platforms. Personally, I used mostly YT and YT Music as I have YT Premium Sub. Then there are the social media platforms: which are also fragmented, obviously.

Keep in mind in last 10 years or so, the music industry has experienced seismic shift – music is increasingly being streamed online, instead of the good old days of CD, or singles sales. I think it may have something impact on Ayen 何璟昕‘s journey becoming a musician/song writer/singer. She does have one advantage: her undergraduate major is digital media – and we can see some of her work in the MV (music video) she created.

I still remember the days at Best Buy there are racks and racks of CDs on display, it was probably 15 or 20 years ago. Both our 2012 Toyota Camry and 2012 Toyota Sienna still had CD player build in – both has bluetooth and USB too, so it can be connected to smartphone.

Google search “npr music indstry steaming” || NPR – How the music industry has changed in the first quarter of this century

Copyrights etc.

Also, I just came across this – 中国音乐人，困在版权里。从虾米音乐关停聊聊中国音乐人的版权困境。by Feng’s Music Channel (叨叨冯). You may read some of the comments if you know Chinese. It’s interesting to say the least.

This reminds me at St. Louis Children’s Choirs, they check the copyrights of the music or the song they are singing, and pay the author a royalty or something like that. I don’t know if they use companies such as Swank Motion Pictures or some other company. Btw, our old daughter sung at St. Louis Children’s Choirs from 1st grade to 7th grade, and we have many wonderful memories.

More about music copyrights in China: 什么是音乐版权？by HEM Records

I recall many years ago, probably in year 2004, I heard a lot of controversy of copyrights issues at YouTube too. That’s when YouTube was bought by Google.

In terms of singers, think I am going to write about Sandy Lam (Lin Yi’lian) and G.E.M. Deng Ziqi next.

It’s hard to make a decent living as a musician

I am not talking about the top dogs, such as Taylor Swift in the USA, or G.E.M. Deng Ziqi in HK. They make money both from music (even from streaming, because of their music are being played quite a bit on streaming platforms), and from live performance.

But most musicians are not that lucky: the two income streams are usually not enough to make decent living. I saw people work on a few other things to make ends meet: teach, write customized music (song, lyrics, collaborate etc.), make/sell instruments. For example, I saw many song writers do customized music. And Ayen何璟昕 does all three. Carlos makes instruments.

(Update 05-03-2025) I confirmed above with a friend who has about 3 millions streaming (a year) on Spotify. He told the gross profit is about $10,000. But he needs to pay record label and recoding studio etc., so basically he has nothing left after that. He also said people like Taylor Swift has billions of streaming for her songs. Also Spotify has better payout ratio for people like Taylor Swift, compared to ordinary creators Joe and Jane. Last but not least, this is not new phenomena: it was like that pre-streaming, and I assume that’s applicable for the days when CD, cassette and vinyl were the main media for distribute the music. So if I could expand it a bit, it’s basically similar to the wealth distribution of the USA: the rich get richer, the poor becomes poorer. (Update 05-16-2025) This reminds me of the similar point Warren Buffett said here on YT Shorts – “a more and more specialized economy”.

(Update 05-09-2025) I looked around a bit more. I found couple places that musicans can sell their products.

TomPlay website

Gum Road (also google search “any musicians successfully sell on gumroad”)

Related: Google Search “is it harder to survive as musician”

Last but not least, [Piano Cover] 八三夭 831 – 想見你想見你想見你｜你沒看過的超難還原鋼琴版 (the piano instruction video and also the author sells music sheet too)

(Update 05-12-2025) I found couple music platforms that act between musicians and the YT. For example, I found this one ewway.com at 痴人. And I came across another one Bquate SAC from this song 此生无憾 (国粤对唱版). I like to do a bit more research in the near future.

(Update 05-13-2025) Here is another one 敢开始 submitted by Tencent. In this case, it seems the song was submitted by the publisher to YT Music. You can watch the actual music video here –東風日產勁客《敢開始》Ayen何璟昕 原創歌曲 既有所想，就勇敢開始，不為一個結果 .

I noticed “Auto-generated by YouTube” (link goes to Reddit) in the description. From programming or software integration point of view, I speculate the music platforms have backend integrations with Google/YouTube via API. This is likely accomplished via a batch process.

Last not not least, I found the competition among Chinese songs are so tense, and for example, for 哪吒2主题曲 — 此生无憾. I am aware of 7 versions on YT. And this is only a partial list. One of them is very gimmicky, and obviously I won’t give special attention to the channel or the video. But you can guess which one 🙂

1

2

3 – 此生无憾 (国语女生版)

4

5

6

7 – 哪吒主题曲【2】完整版《此生无憾 》张碧晨演唱👍🌹好听

PS:

Also refer to How to listen to Chinese music or songs nowadays

PS 2:

I noticed one Ladue HS graduate picked composition as the college major. I think the college is JHU. I want to wish the senior best of luck.

PS 3:

A thread on Apple Music

Categories
Music

Cantonese song and lyrics writer

Reading Time: 5 minutes

When I was in college in Wuhan (1989 to 1993), some of the most popular songs were in Cantonese, and were sung by Hong Kong based singers. This was because at the time, the mainland just opened up, and culture wise it was way behind both Hong Kong and Taiwan, thus the Mandarin pop were mostly from Taiwan, and the Cantonese pop were mostly from Hong Kong. They in turn “borrowed” some popular song or music from Japan, which is even more advanced.

Fast forward 30 years, it seems to me the Cantonese pop declined a bit because the old generation singers in HK, who are mostly in their 60s, have mostly retired. One thing I noticed recently, there are some new singers and song writers that are based both in mainland or in HK, and they are continuing this important tradition of writing Cantonese songs.

I listed some of them below. Will update as I came across them more. Note the link in Douyin.com is not easily accessible outside of China. I will try to find some other sources in that case.

*FireLand火土 (ins; YT; my YT Playlist here)

He (or she) is the author of 【粵語】想見你想見你想見你｜火土填詞 x AYAN何璟昕｜想見你劇集主題曲

From Instagram it seems he is from HK.

*陳鈺海 (Douyin page, 抖音）

*Mr. Chen doesn’t have a social media account or something like that, at least I found it yet. He maybe the most prolific 粤语填词人。I consider him to be the best among the young folks too.

He is the author of 《時間不等你》. This seems to be one of Ayen Ho a.k.a. 何璟昕‘s grownup song, if I may.

放手以后 

I also think 放手以后 Letting Go is a bit similar. I talked about 放手以后 right below this. More on Mr Chen: quote Carlos (who is 陈钰海’s teacher) ‘s instagram

…… 第二站到了荔枝乡茂名，数年前在网上开始教学生填词，三年间陈钰海名字已经在国内填词界名无人不识，有80多首原创作品上市(果然青出于蓝)，…… (roughly translated into English: my student Chen Yu hai has made tremendous progress being a Cantonese lyrics writer in last 3 years)

Btw, this is the short clip for 放手以后 on Douyin, and it’s available on the WeChat too.

Other songs

Also, 粵語填詞，《不讓我的眼淚陪我過夜》，學生陳鈺海讓齊秦金曲粵語重現

【粤语版】李荣浩 – 乌梅子酱｜小清新吉他弹唱版

希望你被这个世界爱着 国粤双语版 粤语词@陈钰海～菜鸟填词 (Blibili). 何璟昕的微信公众号(Ayen何璟昕)上也有这个短视频。YT Shorts by Ayen 希望你被这个世界爱着 国粤双语版.

One thing a bit unfortunate is Mr. Chen doesn’t have a YT Channel. Note for me personally it’s much easier to get to YT as I am in the USA, and it’s harder to get to Douyin etc. Also, I noticed quite a few people mostly posted on Douyin. I can understand to some extent, thinking it’s likely their main audience is based in mainland China.

Also noticed the composer for the song 時間不等你》is 石羽函 (baidu; apple music), and Mr. Shi is quite talented musician, singer and song writer.

*Carlos 卡洛斯 (FB, Instagram, YouTube)

(YT) 放手以后 by 卡洛斯偕同填词学生陈钰海，及网红何璟昕于内地发表的第一首原创作品，在内地各大平台同时发佈，香港暂时未有得听 (Carlos’ Instagram). Note Carlos is also the composer for the song. Also note the song is available on YT now.

*心之洛 (google search here; my YT Playlist here)

@lokslyrics on YouTube and Bilibili (note he has much more stuff on Bilibili)

He (or she) wrote the 【哪吒2】片尾曲《在故事的最終》粵語版｜港風填詞翻唱｜唱哭每個成長的孩子 Acoustic cover｜Ayen何璟昕 || Noticed the word “故鄉阡陌” and it reminds me of my childhood hometown and the village, the village school, and the 阡陌 I walked from my home to the village school, and so on. The word 阡陌 /qiānmò/ is no longer commonly used in modern Chinese (mandarin) anymore.

阡和陌分别指田间南北方向和东西方向的小路。泛指田间纵横交错的小路。
 「躬耕农田，出入 阡陌」

Here is another beautiful song written by him (it appears 心之洛 is a gentleman – from his YT Channel – I saw 他/他的) 【粤语版】若把你（cover Kirsty刘瑾睿）温柔粤语版【AyenX心之洛】Acoustic cover 吉他弹唱 and sung by one and only Ayen 何璟昕 🙂

《爱如火》温柔粤语版cover｜Ayen何璟昕 X 心之洛｜粤语歌吉他弹唱

超絕粵語填詞！張韶涵《麻瓜》粵語版

Also, update 05-08-2025, I just created a playlist for his songs on YT.

*Jericho Liang Bilibili Douyin

He (or she) wrote Cantonese lyrics for 粤语版【世界赠予我的】王菲｜Ayen何璟昕, plus a few other songs Ayen sung (I will add more as I saw them).

*Ayen Ho 何璟昕 (links to Wikipedia)

You may notice that I already wrote a blog post about her. One thing keep in mind is she is multi-talented, and she can do song writing (both compose and lyrics), as well as sing and producing videos. She manages all her social media and music platform on her own: as explained here 一個人就是一個團隊？/揭秘：我平時是如何一個人製作視頻的！

Last but not least, I noticed she does write for intro of a song on YT (e.g., again using 時間不等你【粵語新歌】as an example and graphic design too. Here is what (I assume) 陳鈺海 and Ayen 何璟昕 wrote (YT video here). Beautiful, isn’t it? I googled “芻狗” because I don’t know the word 🙂

時間不仁，以萬物為芻狗……

在這個喧囂的世界里，時間如同流水般匆匆流逝，轉眼間，我們已經來到了一個又一個的時刻。曾經總以為時間很多很多，後來才明白，時間無情地帶走著我們的一切，無論是青春的容顏，還是歲月的滄桑。因此，我們應該學會珍惜時間，珍惜愛，因為時間不會等待任何人。

時間 不會在等你
不會在倒退
有天醒覺 掛念著誰

曾經總以為時間很多很多，後來才明白，時間無時無刻都在帶走你的一切……所以，請珍惜時間，珍惜愛。

如還幸有愛 請你及時
別要 等一天追悔

......

She wrote quite a few songs, most of them are from young girls’ perspective: I would say girls between 16 and middle 20s of age. Her song is uplifting for the most part, but added a bit sad elements (looking back), and sometimes I felt they are curing, probably both due to her folksy music 民谣 and her unique voice, as well as Cantonese dialect. I am going to give some examples below:

Uplifting: 原創粵語歌曲 何璟昕 Ayen【如果今天天气正好 Nice day, Blossom age, without you】 Official HD MV

Curing: 何璟昕 Ayen《月光 Moonlight 》官方高畫質 Official HD MV || 摘抄一段歌词，when did I last hear the word 徜徉 in real world? I don’t remember.

月光 愈光 鋪在海上
摻雜回憶 並肩徜徉
再沒有哪天 似這個晚上
你共我 看月色 純真的漂亮

徜徉/chángyáng/动词

悠闲自在地行走。 「徜徉于山水之间」

Beautiful, isn’t it?

More on the Beauty of Cantonese language 粤语之美 古汉语之美

您真的聽懂《Shall We Talk》嗎？解讀林夕愛的哲學，聽歌學閱讀理解，現場鋼琴彈奏，20200302（中文字幕）(YT)

Quote a bit of the lyrics of Shall We Talk below.

明月光為何又照地堂?
寧願在公園躲藏 不想喝湯
任由目光留在漫畫一角
為何望母親一眼就如罰留堂?

As explained in the video above, this has a lot of culture stuff behind it. Keep in mind the lyricist: 林夕 is one of the best Cantonese lyricists in HK and in the world. Also Eason 陳奕迅 – Shall we talk 女生版 Acoustic cover (YT video).

And 最後的茱麗葉-容祖兒 愛後餘生-謝霆鋒 小日子-容祖兒 ShallWeTalk-陳奕迅 英皇金曲 medley cover by 許靖韻 Angela Hui feat 洪卓立 Ken Hung (about 10 mins mark): I personally like this video quite a bit as the lady (girl) next to許靖韻 Angela Hui tried to comfort her when Angela was getting emotional towards the end of this song. And the gentleman next to Angela 洪卓立 Ken Hung finished the song for Angela too. Such a caring and sweet team.

Another example: 遙遠的她. And just quote one sentence below:

遙遠的她 彷彿借風聲跟我話

And the YT video is here – 張學友 – 遙遠的她 女生版 Acoustic guitar cover. The lyrics of the song was written by famous author 香港粤语填词人潘源良。Quote Wikipedia:

潘源良（英语：Calvin Poon Yuen Leung，1958年11月8日—），香港填词人、电影编剧及导演、足球评述员、书法家，有“浪子词人”之称

Reference:

Cantopop at Wikipedia

粤语 (Cantonese) at Wikipedia

I don’t see an “粤语填词” in Wikipedia. In fact I don’t know how to translate it into English either. Thinking about how I do that, as well as potentially creating such as an entry on Wikipedia. (Update) I saw 歌迷问：为什么说用粤语填词，比普通话填词难太多? at Zhihu.com. Also I did see 填词 at Wikipedia.

PS:

Not directly related to this, the other day I talked to my 15-year-old about the English song I listened when I was in college in Wuhan, and how much I paid for Whitney Houston tape then about CNY 15 Yuan. And I told her it’s similar to the cost of nice meal nowadays. Then I was a jobless college kid, 15 Yuan was something. I recall my dad used to give me about 100 Yuan a month in the school year 1992 to 1993, for a month worth of food etc.

I also recall, when I was listening to all those beautiful Cantonese songs, for that matter the mandarin pop songs written by Jonathan Lee (李钟盛), suddenly I realized that in a way, if we use the software engineers as analogy, the singer is a front end engineer, and the composer, lyrics writer and so on are back end engineer. We know in software world it’s hard to find true full stack engineers, but in the music world, Ayen is one because she pretty much does everything herself.

PS 2 (05-24-2025) I came across this wikipedia page on Cantopop, and I contributed a little as I saw fit. I am not fully convinced that “进入21世纪，粤语歌曲影响力渐减…” though.

Categories
Music

How to listen to Chinese music or songs nowadays

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Mainly two ways:

Streaming

We can use both apps and websites for below. For QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, we can also use WeChat Mini-program (less functionality, but smaller footprint and works).

Outside China: Apple Music, Spotify, YT Music and SoundCloud. The first three (Apple, Spotify and YT) probably have the most Chinese songs.

网易云音乐

NetEase Cloud Music 网易云音乐.

Also: 我在国外这样使用网易云音乐 | Using Neteast Cloud Music Abroad | HONGFEI Z. Btw, using this new Chrome Extension NetEaseMusicWorld++, the old one “NetEaseMusicWorld+” is no longer available on Chrome Web Store. Personally, I felt this is better/lighter weight than using the VPN which has more implications. Note you will still register on the platform in order to listen to the music there: personally, I used my WeChat to register/login.

QQ 音乐 QQ Music

Both inside and outside China: QQ Music QQ 音乐. I used WeChat to log into QQ Music. Note they are both a part of TenCent or 腾讯。They have paid plans, and I may explore those plans in the future.

I also installed both QQ 音乐 and 网易云音乐 mini program 小程序 on my WeChat. I’ve used quite a bit of QQ 音乐 and liked it.

(Update 05-26-2025) One more example of QQ Music: 何璟昕（Ayen）. I just realized they have a few paid plan.

(Update 07-03-2025) I logged into QQ Music via WeChat and here is my profile. I also created a playlist Ayen何璟昕-原创原唱-2024/25 on QQ Music QQ 音乐. I think QQ Music is useful as it shows the lyrics, and it’s handy for my Cantonese as I am not familiar with the language. I am still in the learning mode. Other benefits of QQ Music is its integration with WeChat as mini-program (小程序）as well as plugin and play in my old car (Toyota Sienna 2012) as an iPod (via USB).

Btw, I recall I used “login via WeChat” for the China based video sharing platform Bilibili too. The main platform in China that does not support “login via WeChat” is Douyin. Btw, I realized Douyin is available in Hong Kong nowadays.

Other apps

(Update 05-26-2025) Kugou7

There are also other ways such as Qing’ting FM 蜻蜓FM app: but recently I decide to use more YT Music (no Ads because I am a YT Premium Subscriber) and also QQ Music mini program (no Ads either).

Another reason is I think YT Music doesn’t block anything and has servers based in the US. So they are probably the fastest if I do streaming. I can download songs inside YT Music too.

Nowadays playlist is obviously also important. I found QQ Music has some cool playlist. Because I am just a new user and used it only on WeChat mini-program, I will share as time goes.

(Update 05-09-2025) I found out the WeChat itself also has music, and it’s embedded with the video (Shi’ping) functionality. So one has to have a Shi’ping hao because he/she can publish music. I found the “scroll lyrics” feature is neat: this may be powered by QQ music. See below.

I just confirmed it: WeChat users can now add songs to the videos they post

Chinese messaging app WeChat has a new feature that allows people to add songs to the videos they are sharing with friends. The feature is drawing these background tracks from QQ Music, one of the streaming services operated by WeChat’s parent company Tencent’s music division. 

Good old MP3 player

They were popular before the takeover of smartphones.

Personally, I am still using my iPod Nano 7th gen, which is more than 10+ years old (I bought it in late 2012).

I am going to reload some new songs when applicable and the nice thing about this one is it’s just a MP3 player and a radio (FM) tuner. So, less distraction for me – especially during night.