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interface news reporter | yang shuhongji

interface news editor | peng peng

in the past, young people in shanghai liked to watch movies on weekends, but now they like to watch concerts.

having worked in the performing arts market for many years, yu feifei, general manager of shanghai yunhua cultural development co., ltd., said frankly that the performance of the shanghai concert market this year was better than expected. her company will manage more than 60 concerts in shanghai this year, including popular projects such as gao wuren and richie jen.

in august 2024, the daolue music industry research institute released the "china concert report for the first half of 2024", which showed that there were 1,182 performances in the first half of 2024. according to the report, there were 147 concerts in shanghai in the first half of this year, far exceeding other cities in china. it is also estimated that there will be more than 200 concerts in shanghai throughout the year.

in 2023, shanghai's concert economy showed a significant growth and prosperity. according to guanyan tianxia data, shanghai held a total of 45,030 commercial performances in 2023, attracting about 24.779 million spectators and box office revenue of about 3.22 billion yuan, an increase of 15.6% year-on-year compared with 2019.

the concert economy has not only driven the prosperity of the performance market, but also significantly stimulated shanghai's cultural and tourism consumption potential.

data shows that jay chou's four-day concert in shanghai attracted more than 100,000 fans to watch the show. during the period, the search popularity of shanghai hotels ranked among the top three in the country, and hotel bookings increased by about 80% month-on-month. many hotels around the stadium were sold out several days in advance. in addition, during the concert, catering and hotel orders increased by more than 100%, further promoting the development of the local economy.

in 2024, the "concert economy" will bring a strong boosting effect, and relevant policies will be introduced one after another to further lower the threshold for holding performances, events, and exhibitions and improve the convenience of applying for them.

in 2017, shanghai issued the "several opinions on accelerating the innovation and development of the city's cultural and creative industries", which proposed the goal of building an "asian performing arts capital" and "encouraging well-known domestic and foreign troupes and artists to hold the world and domestic premieres of their original works in shanghai."

yu feifei told jiemian news that the popularity of shanghai concerts has continued to rise in recent years. on the one hand, it is because the audience's needs have changed. before 2020, the shanghai performance market had already shown a prosperous trend. especially after three years of the epidemic, the audience's enthusiasm for watching concerts has been further stimulated. on the other hand, thanks to the inclusiveness of the shanghai market, "shanghai's culture is inclusive, so concerts with different cultural backgrounds can be successfully held, and performances of different cultures can find a market in shanghai."

yu feifei also believes that shanghai’s continued rounds of policies on the “performance economy” in recent years have also boosted the confidence of practitioners.

for example, in may 2024, eight departments including the shanghai municipal commission of commerce, the culture and tourism bureau, the finance bureau, and the public security bureau jointly issued measures to further promote the linkage between commerce, travel, culture, sports and exhibitions to attract and expand consumption.

for large-scale concerts and music festivals, the policy provides support of up to 2 million yuan if the organizer introduces internationally renowned or domestically first-class large-scale concerts and music festivals with a total cumulative ticket sales of no less than 30,000 people. a one-time reward of 3 million yuan will be given if the total cumulative ticket sales exceed 50,000 people and the proportion of overseas audiences exceeds 10%. at the same time, high-quality literary and artistic performances are supported. for organizers who introduce excellent repertoires of internationally renowned or domestically first-class troupes in major national cultural and art festivals and exhibitions, and the cumulative audience is no less than 3,000, a maximum of 2 million yuan will be given. a one-time reward of 3 million yuan will be given if the cumulative audience exceeds 5,000 people and the proportion of overseas audiences exceeds 10%.

yu feifei told jiemian news that as an industry institution, after the introduction of the policy, the company is currently preparing relevant materials for submission. "for the sustainable development of the concert market, for companies, we must first ensure that this is a profitable project. with this subsidy, the introduction or export of culture and the market itself will have a very obvious boost."

she also pointed out that the ever-simplified application procedures are also a necessary condition for the continued prosperity of the concert economy in shanghai.

in august this year, based on previous rounds of facilitation policies, the shanghai public security department launched an online application measure for safety permits for large-scale events, which can be handled through a "one-stop" platform from now on.

the company where yu feifei works is one of the first beneficiaries of this policy.

according to relevant laws and regulations, applying for a safety permit for a large-scale event requires a number of materials, including an application for an event permit, an event plan, a safety work plan, etc. the city's large-scale event safety permit must be reported 20 working days before the event date. large-scale events with more than 1,000 but less than 5,000 people should be reported to the public security bureau where the event is held, and large-scale events with more than 5,000 people need to be reported to the municipal public security bureau's public security corps. previously, event organizers who applied for a safety permit for a large-scale event needed to provide paper materials on-site at the corresponding public security agency. if the materials needed to be modified or supplemented later, the organizers also needed to submit supplementary materials to the above-mentioned public security agencies. this process could be repeated many times, which was time-consuming and laborious.

after the introduction of this policy, shanghai enterprises applying for safety permits for large-scale activities can submit application materials online through the "one-stop service" platform "application for safety permits for large-scale mass activities" module. subsequent material modifications and supplementary reports can also be done online, without having to submit paper materials at offline public security service windows. at the same time, in order to facilitate efficient filling of application materials by applicants, the shanghai police also prepared a template for large-scale mass activity approval permit materials for reference by enterprises and provided "real-time assistance" services.

shen haiyan, political commissar of the large-scale events safety management brigade of the public security corps of the shanghai public security bureau, revealed to interface news that since the beginning of this year, the city’s public security organs have provided services and guarantees for more than 500 large-scale mass activities and 1,500 events, with more than 20 million people participating.

in order to meet the new expectations and demands of citizens for spiritual culture, leisure and entertainment, the shanghai police, together with relevant departments, have taken the initiative to connect with venues that frequently host large-scale events. on the basis of meeting safety standards, they have taken targeted optimization measures to further relax the upper limit on the number of people approved and release the carrying capacity of the venues.

in addition, in terms of cultural performances, the shanghai police increased the upper limit of the audience capacity in the shanghai stadium area by 7% based on a comprehensive analysis of the number of spectators in previous cultural performances and the actual evacuation conditions of the venue.

the shanghai police also stated that the public security organs have arranged sufficient police force at each event site to crack down on the disruptive behavior of "scalpers" and provide everyone with a safe and orderly viewing environment.

the concert market continues to bring surprises, and shanghai audiences are eager for concerts by world-class a-list stars.

in july 2024, shanghai municipal government counselors li an, gu honghui, and zhang wenyi wrote an article stating that “although shanghai has held many large-scale commercial performances in recent years, it lacks heavyweight performing stars with international influence or who can really appeal to young people.”

they suggested that shanghai still needs to solve the problems of many restrictions, slow speed and difficulty in landing of top-level commercial performances. involving international performance approval, visas, customs declaration, taxation, venues, transportation, safety and supporting services, etc., it requires relevant government departments to coordinate and work together, break the routine, and handle special matters in a special way. at the same time, shanghai also needs to expand the scale of venues to control the number of people, improve the ticket price mechanism, and optimize the real-name ticket purchase regulations for large-scale performances, so as to improve the convenience of citizens and tourists to watch performances, competitions and exhibitions.

the three also suggested that shanghai could form a "combination punch" of various forms such as "performance + tourism", "performance + event", "performance + exhibition", and "performance + shopping" to provide tourists with rich and diverse tourism experiences.