THE National Day holiday is over, but Shenzhen still has a lot of fun to offer young music lovers.

    The annual OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival is now being held at OCT LOFT in Nanshan District and the 1234 Mini Music Festival is being held every weekend in Luohu District. On Oct. 24 and 25, the annual Beach Music Festival will also hit Dameisha Beach in Yantian District again.

    In fact, music festivals have become increasingly popular among young people in Shenzhen over the past few years.

    In addition to popular local festivals, well-known outdoor festivals such as the Midi, Zebra and Strawberry music festivals have also hit the city in the past two years, raking in over 10 million yuan (US$1.62 million) in ticket sales.

    “The two Midi festivals in 2013 and 2014 attracted about 100,000 and 60,000 audience members, respectively, and earned about 6 million yuan and 4 million yuan,” said Zhang Fan, founder of the Midi Music Festival. “That is a lot more than the Zebra and Strawberry festivals and more than the Midi festival in Beijing. It is quite impressive for such a young city to have such a mature music market. I’m sure that Shenzhen will soon become a major center of independent music in China.”

    Compared to major national festivals, most local festivals have not made any profits yet, but they have seen a sharp increase in attendance and sales over the past few years.

    “The first three OCT-LOFT Jazz Festivals attracted about 10,000, 15,000 and 20,000 audiences respectively, earning ticket sales of about 500,000 yuan, 750,000 yuan and 1 million yuan, which is a good sign,” said a staff member with the festival organizers.

    Over the past few years, the city has seen an increasing demand for live music, and already has several first-class small performance venues such as Brown Sugar Jar in Futian District, B10, Old Heaven Bookstore and Idutang in Nanshan District.

    “These venues are the main promoters of independent music. There are small concerts almost every night, offering different genres such as rock, folk, electronic, jazz and pop,” said Mugua, founder of Houqingnian, a music promotion company in Shenzhen. “Popular independent musicians and bands such as Li Zhi, Peng Tan, Tizzy Bac, Miserable Faith and Reflector have all played at these venues.”

    Mugua and his team founded Houqingnian in 2008. “At that time, it was very difficult to promote live performances in the city because of a lack of audiences and venues. There was no way to hold a successful music festival in the city then. However, the market has been increasing since 2012. Although some venues still have some issues, there have been more and more performances and regular audiences.”

    “Audiences in Shenzhen are nice,” said Jiang Ming, a folk musician who has performed in Shenzhen many times. “Audiences from many other cities only like to see ‘big stars’ and have no interest in independent musicians like us. But Shenzhen audiences are different and like to embrace independent music and musicians. When they are listening, they are very quiet and very into the music. I think that’s an important reason why the music festivals are becoming popular in Shenzhen.”

    (Wang Yuanyuan)