Remember me
Half a month of pocket money spent with three or four friends and no hesitation, huddled in a private room, to sing our hearts out. But when the hours were over and the music had died, it was somehow as if our youth had along with it passed away too.
So too have the KTV parlours themselves recently been dropping like flies. For the past decade, KTV in China had been on the decline. More than 80,000 KTVs have disappeared from our urban landscapes, including the brands we and many others used to know so well.
Many of the factors at play have been more or less predictable. Traditional, often alcohol-fueled, KTV offerings which may have included enticing sexual services, are no longer in favour. Today’s younger generations are smarter and have a far greater range of options available for their entertainment.
COVID, naturally, was pivotal. The complete industry shutdown as entertainment venues where people would gather, followed by ad-hoc closures as local conditions dictated, brought the sector to its knees.
And when the dust had settled 3 years later, China’s youth had moved on. And while the mantra of old had been “eat, drink, sing K”, the industry today is bolstering itself on a diet of diversification, across multiple dimensions, age included.
As Xinhuanet.com reported last May, a customer-service representative of a KTV salon in Guangzhou revealed that from 11:00 to 16:00 every day, almost 80 percent of their customers patrons are now seniors. For a ballpark ¥40 per person, they receive a buffet and hours worth of singing. Attending seniors have noted that the associated VIP-card deal is particularly cost-effective.
Some others have even taken advantage of the privacy that KTV affords to hold matchmaking events; many seniors have apparently found a rejuvenation in that they believed was a long lost love life.
For the more physically able, climbing walls are now to be found in more-glitzy KTV rooms, with pool tables included as part of a package intended to lure today’s youth back to a sector not just hit by a pandemic, but also intellectual property.
That means not just fewer customers, but fewer songs too. With music as its base, copyright has always been an issue. It may be hard to find an old song to sing in a KTV today, while music software now commands the copyrights of new songs. As Daxue Consulting reports, “People going to KTVs sometimes have almost no songs to sing”.
Some though, don’t even come for the music. College students with an innovative streak have even decided that when the important exam season is approaching, a KTV makes for the perfect study room.
With their dormitories or bedrooms too hot or too cold and the library full, KTV’s advantages are very obvious. Air conditioning, large spaces and no need to wear headphones, mean that when tired of learning, to pick up and scream into a microphone is sure to release accumulated stress.
And as it seems, the screaming is key. As an aerobic exercise, which can promote cardiorespiratory circulation and improve lung capacity, singing simply burns fat.
As noted by VisionZine, a woman in Nanjing once posted on social media platforms that she was singing alone in a KTV for 2 hours. Her sports watch showed that she had burned 350,000 calories. The next day, she was 3.6 kilograms lighter.
A related example even shows that singing for nearly 3 hours had consumed 722,000 calories.
KTVs themselves have noticed the effect too, with one chain notably launching a special list of hits and training sessions, where customers can sing and dance alongside video, so that KTV boxes become immersive gyms.
At the gym, time always passes slowly; every minute becomes difficult as our muscles ache and an hour becomes a century. But our music lives on, in the KTV of a new now.
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