Ran Music: Beijing's Newest Record Label on Igniting Beijing's Music Scene

Having only just risen from the ashes of Spring Festival, Ran Music is still in its infancy as a record label but with three releases already under their belt, founders Shen Lijia and Zhao Jian have big plans to set Beijing’s music scene alight. Here we speak to Shen and Ran’s PR guru Daniel Lenk about music production, new records in the works, and what it takes to stay relevant in a vibrant but tough city for bands and producers.

What is Ran Music?

Shen Lijia (S): Ran Music is a Beijing-based record label – we’re a relative newcomer to the industry and while not genre-specific, we have so far focused more on putting out electronic music. We also handle mixing and mastering duties for our bands and others.

Daniel Lenk (D): Yeah, you could divide Ran Music into two parts – we’re building our own culture with our releases, which is a slower process. We’ve already released music from Luv Plastik and Animal Pop and we have two or three releases planned for the summer, but the other side of our work is music production – filling a niche and providing awesome mixes for their bands.

What are your individual backgrounds?

S: In the beginning, Ran Music was just me trying to survive, living from music by freelancing, but I had to diversify and realized that I had to also mix, master, and record. Later I found people who thought that my mixes were decent and people began to request my work. It wasn’t until this year that I was approached by our investor who saw that we had the advantage of good in-house mixing and mastering.

D: I’ve been in Beijing for many years, always enrolled in higher education but have been involved with different music projects to some degree throughout. With Ran Music I was provided an awesome opportunity to support a friend by learning about a different side of the music business.

What type of music do you hope to produce?

S: I have a basic idea about our aesthetics as a label. First, I prefer electronic music. I don’t care about the beat – it could be house, bass, hip-hop, as long as it’s electronic and it features a singer or a rapper. Now, especially in China, I feel that people prefer music that has vocals over pure instrumentation because it’s often difficult to hold the audience’s attention without a vocal part playing a role within the song.

D: We’re also looking for artists that can play their material live.

Would you say that there’s a defined audience for your releases?

S: I don’t think so. That’s also why we started this label – to build an audience, to build an aesthetic, to show people that this is good music, this is fresh music, something different than what you see every weekend in Beijing’s live houses – forward thinking producers and artists such as those found in Europe, or their American counterparts.

D: The word we always throw around is “culture” – building an alternative culture that can support and augment the Chinese music scene.

S: We’ve only been around for three months and only have two releases to our name so we have a ways to go but we have gained recognition and the attention of many Beijing DJs, especially through our Animal Pop releases.

Speaking of which, you just released Animal Pop’s Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 EPs – what did you learn from this experience?

S: So much. The process is all about how you work with these artists and you always need to compromise. For example, you must maintain the label’s aesthetics – if you’re not satisfied with a track, you have to ask the artist to remove or edit it and understandably, they may be very reluctant.

Dan, you’re more involved in PR for Ran Music. How do you approach this side of things?

D: In general, I try to do all kinds of different things that support the label. As far as promotion, it’s all about building the audience which is a constant process and involves learning how to make the most effective use of social media and media platforms.

S: We are working on having a new media platform where bands and artists take part in studio live sessions, producing hi-fidelity recordings, and listeners can experience a performance in a different setting. Also, this will allow us to invite artists and bands that we enjoy to present their music in a live setting.

Do you plan on making any physical releases?

S: Of course, that’s another aspect of the label – we all agree that CDs are now defunct, so we’re looking into vinyl, which has its own downsides due to costs. For artists that we believe have potential to sell we will release their work on vinyl. Because Luv Plastik and Animal Pop are both pretty new, it’s probably unlikely that we could sell records until they have built their fan base. One of our biggest releases will be the Ran Music sampler at the end of the year, which will feature all of our artists – that will definitely be a physical release.

D: If we get really desperate we can make stickers with QR codes and stick them everywhere [laughs].

Final question, where do you hope Ran Music will be in a year’s time?

S: I want this label to keep growing and it really helps that we have a very professional investor who understands us well and knows that this is a long-term project. Over the next year, I want to build a bigger team, have a bigger studio, and own an office space. I can’t say that we’ll be super successful but we want to improve and develop each person’s professional skills so that they may grow from being involved with this label.

You can catch the first episode of Ran's Half Liv music series featuring Luv Plastik here. The label will also hold the first edition of its Ran Live showcases at DDC tomorrow (Sep 12).

More stories by this author here.

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Photo: Ken