Liu Hao, Editor-in-Chief of Neocha.com talks about NEXT

CW: Neocha is a social networking site for Chinese creatives. How’d you make the jump from that to a streaming music player? We’re always discussing how best to promote our users’ content, whether it be visual art or music. Neocha’s biggest user group is musicians, so we decided to focus on all the great music being uploaded to the site and create a desktop application that streams music like an Internet radio station. It’s partly called NEXT because of the player’s most prominent button, the “NEXT” button, taking users to the next track.

CW: Why are you giving people access to Neocha’s database for free? Charging for legal downloads in China is a tricky proposition since it’s not part of the local Internet consumer culture yet. Right now we’re focusing on giving a larger voice to Chinese independent music.

CW: Why is the library 100 percent user uploaded? What’s the advantage? We are very strict about only allowing 100 percent original, user-created uploaded material on Neocha.com as we really want to promote and celebrate the hard work and creativity of independent / original musicians in China.

CW: What kind of feedback have you gotten about the player? Everyone who uses NEXT seems to like it quite a bit, however, the absolute number of Chinese indie music fans is still somewhat limited. We are always very encouraged when we get emails and comments from NEXT users around the world who appreciate the window we've given them into a interesting slice of Chinese youth culture.

CW: How do you think this player will impact the local music scene? More than anything, we hope the NEXT player opens more people’s eyes to the creativity of young Chinese musicians. With more fans we hope that the local music scene can benefit from higher attendance at shows and more interest in buying musicians’ music.

CW: In the 2.0 version, there’s a Top 10 list. What songs have been popular with listeners? The list is constantly changing based on user ratings through the NEXT player. The current top three songs are: “Holiday” by a post-punk indie rock band Rubber Phonograph Needle (橡胶唱针), “Kitty” by a male / female duo band called Carrchy (卡奇社) and a song called “30 Years Ago” by the folk rock band Shanren (山人).