Written by Zhang Tai
Editor/Li Kexin
Title image/IC Photo
Bar singer is a rather mysterious profession in the eyes of many people, and the prefix of Beijing Imperial Capital adds a different aura to this profession.
Young people pour in in batches, and countless dreams, beliefs, confusion, and loss are intertwined here, and finally they converge into sweat and tears, which are integrated into the night of Houhai and Sanlitun.
“The order for this performance is too urgent. It starts at 8:30 in the morning. I can afford it at 5 or 6 o’clock. Including the modeling and the journey, it still takes an hour and a half to arrive at the event site. This work is definitely not possible at 600, at least pay I have to add two hundred.” It was already 1:30 late at night, less than seven hours before the official performance, and Wang Zihao could not count how many such urgent orders he had received.
As the lowest level of professional singers, there is no reason not to accept orders when they come. Affected by the epidemic, the price and market size of performances are less than 30% of those before the epidemic. There are tens of thousands of practitioners in Beijing. The cake is not big, but it is divided. too many people.
The event is a store celebration in a shopping mall in Huairou, Beijing. It starts at 8 o’clock and ends at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. During the period, about 40 songs will be sung. In the middle two hours, the store will order lunch for the band. Without much preparation, the band plugged in the equipment, adjusted the state, and began to perform.
It may be due to the lack of publicity in the early stage, the store celebration is obviously a little deserted, and the hard-working singing sometimes disturbs passers-by. The elderly people lead the little grandson to cover their ears and walk away quickly. The band has become accustomed to this, and try their best to Looking for interested customers, cooperate with the store to promote the promotions prepared by the merchants over and over again, and at the same time send small gifts to maintain the hard-won popularity.
▲At 8:00 in the morning, the band members started the audition after receiving the equipment.Photo/Hydrogen consumption photo
The event went well. Thanks to the singer’s hard-working interaction, the number of customers entering the store increased a lot than usual. The boss specially gave an extra 500 red envelopes as a reward.
According to the statistics of music company Beijing Yinlang Culture, there are about 30,000 similar performances in Beijing each year, covering weddings, group building, annual meetings, and exhibitions. These 30,000 unknown small performances also It has become the best source of additional income for bottom-level musicians.
Wang Zihao is a post-95s contract singer of Beijing Yinlang Culture. He performs every night in Shangdi Hutao, which cooperates with Yinlang Live. He is good at folk songs and pop. His original occupation was hotel management, but like many young people, he embraces the right The dream of music, I hope that one day, it can be discovered by talent scouts and become a blockbuster like Zhang Lei and Liang Bo who are good voices.
But with the decline of the record industry and the difficulty of monetizing music, life has to go on. Being a singer in a bar has also become the first stop for countless young people to become professional singers.
▲The transportation cost to and from each event often accounts for 10% of the income.Photo/Hydrogen consumption photo
After the event, I packed the piano into the car. It was past five o’clock in the afternoon. Wang Zihao needed to rush from Huairou to Shangdi before eight o’clock to perform at the music restaurant in Shangdi. Today is the weekend. Going to the restaurant to eat a hot meal, I can only make do with buying some bread and milk at Bianyifeng, and rush a few bites at the door with my partner before going on stage.
▲ After eating in the car, Wang Zihao took a photo of the night scene outside the car window.Photo/Hydrogen consumption photo
Compared with the randomness of commercial performances, bars can give singers relative stability, but here we can only say relative stability.
According to statistics, the Beijing music performance market has entered a period of explosive growth since 2012. There are currently more than 1,000 music restaurants, bars, and hot pot barbecue stalls in Beijing, and the annual growth rate exceeds 10%. %, according to the properties of the store, it is divided into full-week and weekend performances. At present, it is conservatively estimated that there are more than 20,000 bar singers.
Correspondingly, although the catering and entertainment industry has grown rapidly, the industry is mixed and basically operated in an extensive manner. The service content is relatively simple, the information is basically opaque, and the degree of Internetization is very low. Among them, there are taverns that the capital market is very optimistic about recently, and there are also national chain restaurant stores like Hutaoli, so bar singers want to work, not only must Active integration requires continuous improvement to a large extent.
Unlike traditional industries, almost all bar singers do not have long-term contracts. The salary is calculated in days, which is roughly divided into 200-300 for beginners, 300-400 for successful hands, and an additional commission ranging from 30-100 for a song. See It seems like working three hours a day, singing and singing can earn more than 10,000 yuan a month, is that so? Yes, but not all.
Let’s talk about the conclusion first, less than 20% of people who can actually get a monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan. The reasons are divided into external and internal reasons. The external reasons include the closure of the bar for rectification, the high cost of the stage, and the availability of better choices, while the internal reasons are mostly physical reasons and the inability to work.
Because there is no labor contract and daily salary, almost everyone in the bar has experienced the experience of being “dismissed” that day.
Most of the singers in Beijing are concentrated in Tongzhou, and most of them are shared rentals. For a small bedroom, the rent is 2,500 a month plus water and electricity grids, plus 2,000 yuan for the car fee (the off-duty time is basically after 12 o’clock), plus 3,000 for meals, plus Buying equipment for learning, etc., is basically in a state of backwards.
When ideals and survival collided, countless singers with dreams poured in, and countless lost singers flowed into the distance, to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, to fourth- and fifth-tier cities, and back to their hometown. With the increase of age, most singers They were not able to persevere to the end, just like the waves, they flowed to other industries and never looked back.
However, there are also very few singers with excellent singing skills, image, interaction, and typhoon. Not only do they have no risk of being dismissed from get out of class, but their income can also be compared with Internet people. Their basic salary has not opened the gap with ordinary singers, and has risen rapidly. The income is additional income such as song ordering and rewarding.
According to the internal information of Yinlang Culture, among its more than 2,000 cooperating artists, the top 8% of the singers can earn more than 20,000 per month, and 3% of the top singers can earn more than 30,000. Wang Zihao is one of them.
▲ Wang Zihao is doing a warm-up game before the opening, photo / hydrogen consumption photo
The eight o’clock performance time was getting closer and closer, and Wang Zihao also began to wait off the stage. In order to get closer to the guests and to quickly open up the atmosphere, Wang Zihao was busy greeting the regular customers. Most of these people came to the singer, either in groups of three or five, or alone. They were greeted by the singer, and they seemed to be very face. They kept showing off to their friends that the singer was his friend, and at the same time loudly told the waiter to arrange a position close to the stage.
During the period, Wang Zihao kept drinking the warm water soaked in the fat sea. During the day, he sang 40 songs in a row and lacked enough rest, which has exhausted most of his energy. Now he is using his experience and willpower to mobilize his excitement. In his words, The salary given by the company is not for pension, and there is no such thing as pension in this industry, all are temporary workers.
▲The cover song “Broad Ocean and Sky”.Photo/Hydrogen consumption photo
With the opening song of “The Lover Missed” by the five-member band and the opening remarks of self-introduction, the evening performance of Wang Zihao and his partner Yiwei officially began. At this moment, both the diners and the drinkers were mobilized by the passionate music on the stage, and began to wave the light sticks in their hands, releasing all kinds of boredom at work.
The regular customers who have just joined in have also begun to exert their “money ability”. Through the large-screen interactive system of Yinlang Culture in the restaurant, they can order songs and give rewards to singers, and “sprint hard” to be the most beautiful boy in the audience, “rushing to the top” in the eyes of friends. Reward the king.
Wang Zihao explained why some people spend money to order songs and said: “Many people come to the bar for entertainment, hoping to use external forces to set off their abilities. Many VIP customers can spend more than 10,000 yuan in one night. Of course, you also need to be able to go to the bar. Earning is not a big deal, it is not just a few words of big brother and big sister, there are many psychological things here, in fact, the essence is sales and empathy.”
Of course, not all customers can understand with normal thinking. In his not long acting career, Wang Zihao also met many wonderful customers.
Some people go on stage to grab the microphone after drinking too much, some people feel impulsive consumption and want to go back, some people stand under the stage and hand over wine on stage, some people are full of fun and make friends with people everywhere, some people die ten times in a row. If you want to love, Wang Zihao can resolve them one by one through the microphone.
But there is another kind of headache that gives stores and singers the most trouble. Because of the special nature of bars, singers can only turn off the music and ensure their own personal safety when it is unavoidable.
The performance that night lasted until 1:00 a.m. After the end, Wang Zihao glanced at the number of songs requested that day, and it showed that there were 46 songs. block, plus the reward for the screen, the stage revenue that day broke 10,000. According to the proportion of the basic salary, Wang Zihao and his partner also earned about 5,000 yuan that day.
I flipped through the circle of friends and found that many regular customers were posting videos of him singing. The boss in Fragrant Walnut also posted several performance videos. , must be satisfied. The sudden relaxation was accompanied by tiredness, which made Wang Zihao miss the way he had just entered the industry at the time, and cherished the present even more.
“It’s really not easy to be a singer. I’ve seen very few people here who have become famous in one fell swoop, and most of them have spent more than ten years of study, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, and gave them the best age. Music, but finally left because of ideas, family, income, life and other reasons.” Wang Zihao said.
“Perhaps this is the case in all walks of life, being fettered by real firewood, rice, oil, and salt, maybe it should be like this. Dreams can’t hold the body, and reality can’t keep the soul.”