Hi there, thank you for getting in touch!!
This is a good question, and I wish had an equally good answer.
For digital buying:
7digital.com has a limited selection (e.g., Peggy Hsu, Deserts), which is a shame because I like that store. Search on an artist and maybe you’ll have luck!
iNDIEVOX.com has a lot of the indies’ releases. I’ve bought from there many times. (the *mp3 bit rate could be better (*SEE BELOW), but it’s a good way to support the bands, imo) The site is in Chinese, but quite easy to navigate in Chrome, which has Google Translate. Another plus for iNDIEVOX is how close they are to the indie scene, it’s so much more than a store.
iTunes is definitely worth trying. You may get diverted to the US store/TW store, depending on the artist.
Tenzenmen (http://tenzenmen.com/) sells thru bandcamp, but they carry a lot of the mainland indies (as well as Australian bands). Lots of punk and noisy things!
You already know about bandcamp, but I want to reiterate how great that site is. High quality, full previews, competitive prices = win, win, win. =)
Xiami.com is blocked outside of China (with some possible exceptions, or if you are able to mask your location). It’s a semi-sketchy business proposition for the artists (Lin Di of Cold Fairyland told me the payments are a joke), yet a lot of the mainland bands link to xiami from their douban pages. (It’s in Chinese, but the process is not too difficult)
For cd:
I haven’t tried far out distant sounds (http://faroutdistantsounds.storenvy.com/), but that looks pretty good.
A lot of the TW indies link to books.com (http://www.books.com.tw/CD/sa/index.php) when their cds are coming out. I have never bought from there, and I’m not even aware if it ships abroad. In any case, it’s a Chinese site.
I would say Amazon is nearly useless. What little they have, usually carry an appalling import price.
A friend of mine suggested going to a record store in your local Chinatown, but I’m imagining a sea of Mandopop & Cantopop, and not so many indies. (I’m basing this on web browsing of a store here in Houston)
One thing to consider is that the indie labels seem to only do small print runs of their releases, that’s why you often see the out of stock/sold out message at YesAsia, etc.. I’ll add that YesAsia will sometimes have a true bargain price on somewhat older releases, and another thing is if you have the money to put together an order of a few cds, you get a slight break on price.
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So there you go – not much help, I’m sorry!
If anyone out there has some good suggestions, PLEASE HELP! This is a topic that interests most of us, right? I know we have some bands that occasionally visit FYCI, if you read this, your insights would be most helpful.
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Getting some response already! Kanzi58 replied: On Itunes, I’ve found: Come on! Bay Bay! (even their new release), Wonfu, and even Hedgehog. I don’t know who else is there, but it’s definitely worth trying. And just to repeat myself, Xiami seems not to be restricted at all in Canada. Thank you! =D
I’ll add that ma-te lin, Elephant Gym, Tian Yuan (from Hopscotch) are also on iTunes.
Did you know that you can nag iTunes to carry bands? I’ve done that a few times. It’s really a thing, I’m not joking!
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*about the iNDIEVOX mp3 bitrate: I just now downloaded the new PiA, and it is 320 kbps – the first that I can recall at that size. Maybe this is a new policy? (So I wonder if I go to re-download past purchase, perhaps they are now also 320?)
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More help for this ‘buyer’s guide’, this time from doufuhua: “I can recommend PChome Global for Taiwan CDs. They are cheaper and faster than YesAsia. I’ve bought mostly DVDs from them, but it seems that they carry some indie bands, like Elephant Gym. You may need to search by the band’s Chinese name, but the ordering interface is in English.” Thank you for the help! =D
f yeah chinese indie tumblr 