FOR YEARS, Michael Wong Man-tak had wanted to produce a swing-blues album, but the record companies knocked him back. Undeterred, Wong, better known for his action roles in films such as Beast Cop, decided to finance it himself. A move that would have been radical a decade ago is now all the rage.
Gone are the days when major record companies exerted a vice-like grip on the industry. Hard-hit by illegal downloads, the record labels are suffering, and that means cutbacks and focusing on mainstream music.
'[Record companies] are just looking for projects that fit in their environment,' says Wong, who has put more than HK$100,000 into his new English-language release, due out in April. The yet-to-be-titled live recording features 12 musicians from the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. 'I love music and I'm not worried about whether it fits into the market,' he says. 'I think this kind of music has a much broader range of opportunity than some of the local Canto-pop stuff.'
His instincts may well be on the money. Wong released a pop album, From Far Away, with a Thai record company in 1993 that sold nearly a million copies in Thailand.
Independent production is no longer the preserve of underground musicians. Celebrities and established recording artists are shunning the big labels, using them only to distribute their work.
Kam Kwok-leung is another artist releasing his music without a record deal. Kam produced a single, a cover of Les Moulins de Mon Coeur, with the help of musician Yu Yat-yiu. The song, originally written by Oscar-winning French composer Michael Legrand, is distributed by EEG's label, MusicPlus.
