Sunrise Records has been doing business behind an unassuming storefront in Taipei amidst the bustle of Zhongshan North Road for 48 years now. Over that time, buildings have gone up all around the store, and buildings have come down. Events of momentous importance have taken place, stirring passions, now bringing excitement, now heartache.... For Sunrise Records, 48 years have gone by as if in a day. And in all this time, the firm’s love of music has never flagged.
Classical music buffs in Taiwan often used to say: “If a certain record can’t be found at Sunrise Records, chances are it can’t be found anywhere in Taiwan.” For Taiwan’s fans of classical music, the Sunrise Records shop is sacred ground. Even today, in a world where digital streaming has come to rule the roost, orders from customers festoon the wall behind the counter at Sunrise.
Second-generation proprietor Addison Lin still habitually refers to his father and mother as “the chairman” and “the president.” In his mind, the lives of his parents are inseparably tied up with the story of Sunrise Records.
From shop to company
“Way back then, I used to sleep right upstairs,” says Lin, who gazes toward a corner of the record shop. He seems to be seeing the Taipei of 48 years ago, in 1967.
“In the beginning,” explains Lin, “my parents sold stereo equipment over here, and half the shop was actually a restaurant. The records back then were just used to demonstrate the equipment for customers.” The audio equipment business was going well, so they bought a lot of high-quality records from all around the world. These attracted lots of music buffs to the shop. “Before long, they were selling more records than stereos,” says Lin with a chuckle.
This fortunate turn of events nudged Sunrise away from audio equipment and into record distributorships. In the 1970s, Sunrise Records was the best source for people looking for music from overseas. The store distributed classical, jazz, and world music for such vendors as DGG, RCA, and Telarc. And in addition to importing foreign records, Sunrise also was licensed by overseas music labels to manufacture records in Taiwan. Records produced here delivered the same music at a lower price, and were thus very popular.
In 1984, Sunrise and the late Ma Shui-long, a noted composer, collaborated on their own production of his Bamboo Flute Concerto, a deft combination of traditional Chinese instruments and a Western orchestra. The record attracted huge sales in both Taiwan and abroad. In the 1990s, Taiwan’s BCC radio picked this concerto as the theme music for its on-the-hour news broadcasts, making it universally familiar to any and all living in Taiwan.
Rising and falling fortunes
In the mid-1990s, a market awash in pirated CDs dealt a severe blow to many record companies, and Sunrise Records was no exception. Digital technology then began making galloping progress after the year 2000, and almost everyone selling music on physical media was forced out of the market by the Internet. Despite these two shocks, however, Sunrise Records remains in business. But even Sunrise has had to bow to reality and make some adjustments.
“Independent record producers were affected the worst. The last record we made was Love-lit Face, by Li Jingmei. We recorded it in Moscow. The production costs came to about NT$5 million,” says Lin, adding that average production costs—around NT$1 million per record—are so high that there’s almost no profit to be had. It takes sales of at least 5,000 to break even, so some records make money while others don’t. The firm’s revenues had previously been coming from its record distribution business, but with the market shrinking, Sunrise had no choice but to stop producing records.
With stores that sold physical media disappearing from the picture, unexpected circumstances in 2008 propelled Sunrise Records into the spotlight for unrelated reasons.
When a big street protest broke out right next door at the Ambassador Hotel, Sunrise Records just happened to be playing the album Songs of Taiwan in the store. Someone came in and asked them to turn up the volume. Police became concerned, and in the ensuing conflict the store’s front door was damaged.
Interestingly, as a result of the incident, customers thronged the store to buy the album, which sold out within a day. As customers kept streaming in, they ended up buying up a lot of the other records too. Says Lin: “Our shelves were practically empty for a few days there.”
The kerfuffle brought Sunrise Records once again to public attention, and the locally rooted music that it had long promoted received a big boost. In 2010, however, the firm’s business took a hit when Lin’s mother Chang Bi, who had been handling the distributorships for overseas clients, suffered a stroke. Lin and his two sisters had to step in to help out.
Challenge for the second generation
In 2013, Lin took over the reins from his parents in his capacity as special assistant to the chairman.
For Sunrise Records, the key to survival through changing times has been its ability to make needed changes. After digital streaming technology came into the mainstream, music formerly delivered on CDs selling for several hundred NT dollars was suddenly being sold at NT$30 per song in MP3 file format. Sunrise Records responded by switching to a new strategy. On the one hand, the firm has continued to act as a distributor for several dozen high-quality overseas labels, and could justifiably be called Taiwan’s repository for non-mainstream music. At the same time, Sunrise has launched an online music store and a Facebook page, and participates in the “public broadcast licensing” system operated by the Association of Recording Copyright Owners to enable radio stations, department stores, and other retail establishments to legally play the sort of music that meets their needs. The system allows for billing either by the song or by units of time, thus ensuring reasonable profits for record companies and recording artists.
“The Internet ought to give us more possibilities, not more restrictions,” says Lin, who often feels amazed at the many possibilities of a new age. Last year, for example, Sunrise Records licensed a publishing house to sell a detective novel accompanied by a CD to intensify the reading experience. Sales of the CD bundled with the novel were more than ten times those of the CD by itself. For this reason, they’ve decided to make an active effort to seek similar tie-ups with partners in other industries, including films, television, websites, advertising, travel, and hotels.
Lin has made good use of management expertise picked up in a previous career at the Hsinchu Science Park to keep his parents’ decades-old distributorship going strong, and at the same time has actively made plans to innovate and embrace all sorts of new possibilities. Striking a balance between tradition and innovation, this record store has managed to stay in business and write a new chapter in an already illustrious history.
Sunrise Records, which is now into the second generation of management by the Lin family, has preserved tradition while innovating as necessary. Under second-generation proprietor Addison Lin, the firm has successfully preserved the human touch that founders Lin Min-shan and Chang Bi so lovingly cultivated. (courtesy of Sunrise Records)
Sunrise Records, which is now into the second generation of management by the Lin family, has preserved tradition while innovating as necessary. Under second-generation proprietor Addison Lin, the firm has successfully preserved the human touch that founders Lin Min-shan and Chang Bi so lovingly cultivated.(courtesy of Sunrise Records)
The people pictured include the late classical composer Ma Shui-long (center). (courtesy of Sunrise Records)
In addition to promoting high-quality art music, Sunrise Records has also discovered many big pop music stars, such as Johnny Yin, named Best Mandarin Male Singer at the 1st Golden Melody Awards. On the photo, we see Johnny Yin (left) with producer Vincent Liang. (courtesy of Sunrise Records)
With digital streaming becoming increasingly ubiquitous, stores selling music on physical media have been disappearing from the scene. But the Sunrise Records shop remains hallowed ground for music lovers.
