Undercurrents is an ongoing column on SmartShanghai in which we profile Shanghai-based promoters and music makers living and putting on music events in this city, specifically within the context of the larger cultural, economic, and arts landscape in Shanghai. These are your manufacturers of cultural capital, Shanghai. This is the business of art and music.


From right to left, promoters Jason "Selecta" Tsunano, Lamia, Luce of 1LVSH

In less than four years, 1LoveShanghai (1LVSH), a crew headed by 26 year-old Canadian David "Diaosi" Luce and 22 year-old Taiwanese DJ Jason "Selecta" Tsunano, have become some of the biggest party promoters in the city, packing out venues like Arkham with 900 up-for-it partiers. For reference, an underground act like Bok Bok or The Bug is lucky to get 400 people. 1LVSH have succeeded by appealing to the middle ground and using old school methods like hitting the streets, flyering, postering, and posting meme-ish stickers of their faces.

Most admirably, they’re getting a bigger local turnout at parties [not counting festivals here] than probably any other foreign / underground promoter in Shanghai in the last seven years, except perhaps The Ice Cream Truck (TICT). But are they really changing the culture, or just riding trends? The music is similar to what you might hear at a spring break or EDM festival in America. And while they claim to promote alternative culture both Tsunano and Luce worked for Storm, a corporate EDM festival built by big money to increase brand awareness for companies like Budweiser. Either way, these are some of the most optimistic kids in this scene, and they have changed the promotion game in Shanghai.

Ahead of their show with Grandtheft this Saturday at Arkham, I sat down with Luce, Tsunano, and Laymeah, to talk about their strategy, the promo game, and the problems of trap and racy promotion.

[Full Disclosure: Luce is a close friend and I have DJed at several 1LVSH parties over the years]

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Tsunano: Like, a formal one? Official one? 1LoveSH is established in…

Luce: My soul. So, yo yo, what’s up, it’s Luce Diaosi, a.k.a. Xiao Xian Rou, a.k.a. Xiaobailian. So 1LVSH, we started [in] October 2011. I came to Shanghai [then] and linked up with some really cool people that were doing cool things in the city and had been here for a while. I was showing up to parties with like fifty people, and Skinny Brown (Popasuda) was like “dude, throw your own party”.

All these university students were blinded by the 100rmb all-you-can-drink clubs; kids were going out to like Phebe, Sky...We weren’t into that at all, so we basically started doing our party series [at places like Dada, Lune, and Node] to help introduce students and newcomers into shanghai to these other venues – the alternative venues, rather than the 100 kuai all you can drink poison and like, passwords to get in.


Tsunano: We’re trying to do the music which is not that underground and not that commercial. In between.

Luce: I find ourselves to be very middle ground. It’s not like a Shelter booking, where these kids won’t know anything about this techno act or whatever act. What I’m trying to say is that we’re pulling kids that go to these underground events, and we’re pulling the kids who go to these Top100 DJ acts.

Tsunano: Everyone knows [Luce] did guerilla marketing for Storm Festival before, and we use the same way for our own party -- Postering, WeChat…online and offline.




Luce: When our social media wasn’t so big, we depended solely on our street team, and just postering, flyering, and getting out there…me trying to [speak] Chinese to cool local people that I see walking by.


Tsunano: I think it works pretty well, because we saw some people on the street who came to us like “oh I saw you promoting so that’s why I come to the party”.

Luce:Our guerilla marketing and offline promotion is introducing a lot of people that wouldn’t otherwise know that these kind of shows are going on, or that places like Arkham / Shelter / Dada even exist. I feel that a lot of younger local people, they have no clue that this scene exists.


Luce: I find that the energy at the shows is different. When they do the bookings, I feel like they focus on these bookings to sell tables and bring credibility to their clubs. I know that there’s not way that you can book DJ Snake or Nicky Romero or Martin Garrix for over 40,000 USD and break even on ticket sales. So a lot of these bookings are more for selling tables to people who don’t even know who these artists are, but they know it’s going to be a big exciting night.

The people coming to our shows are listeners. There’s more fans. That’s why the energy is better. The artists we bring, these are just artists that we love. A lot of the artists we bring, local people won’t know them, but we spend a month educating people through social media and guerilla marketing . Four months away from the event, we’ll start posting interviews, their tracks… Soft introduction to the artists. And then once people start knowing who they are, we kinda go in with a little bit heavy promotion.

Thank god for platforms like Xiami, which is bringing international and local sounds and making them so much more accessible. Platforms [like this] are really building the music scene. People’s ears are more easily connected.


Lamia: Yeah, more and more the students from college want to go to places like Shelter and Arkham…The festival[s]. Even if they don’t know about the DJ, they want to go there to feel that vibe.


Luce: People keep saying trap is on the way out, I don’t see it going down, you can call it trap, 808 bass, shit [that's] 70 or 140 beats per minute and a heavy bassline. People are gonna call that trap, and that’s not gonna go away. Girls like that too, which is important. Especially in the west, girls didn’t like brostep and dubstep that much. But girls do like trap, and they do like twerk shit, and it’s way more important to play for…


Lamia: In the beginning, I really liked drum and bass, now I really like trap too. Even those kids who don’t like electronic music, they like trap. You can feel the beats.

Luce: You can see trap is a hybrid of hip hop and electronic, and it hits a bit more “high”, like how the Chinese would say “play high EDM”, and trap is that “high” with the hip hop. And the people that 2-3 years ago were huge hip hop heads, all these cats are into trap. We see lots of young kids at our shows but also older hip hop heads too.




Luce: We’re working with awesome people in Beijing. One’s by the name of Sasha, who runs a party crew called NB Noise, and the other one is the Internet’s saddest boy, Bloodz Boi, who’s a really cool young local cat. We’re bringing him next month to Dada. The thing is, these people in other cities, they want these artists.

Tsunano: Some of them even fly to Shanghai [for these shows].

Lamia: Hangzhou, Wuxi…


Luce: Marketing is marketing. People like booty. People like muscular men in tommy boxers, in Shanghai, on massive billboards, and I don’t say “yo how could they do that to Justin Bieber”.


Luce:Busy Gang are my boys and we love them dearly, and we’re trying to push them because we believe in them. Marketing is just marketing, man, and pushing the line is good marketing. It’s like Eminem. One of the reasons he sold millions…he was doing shit that was crazy outrageous about women, homosexuality, and that sold, and got him massive amounts of attention.

The line is very low right now. It’s not hard to put [out] something like what Busy gang did, and I’m sure nothing has been on a Chinese hip hop mixtape before that’s that controversial. Those girls are super cool with Busy Gang, they’re Busy Gang’s best friends.


Busy Gang performing at Arkham for 1LVSH


Luce: Back in the day, it was to bring people together for good music, good times – showing students the alternative Shanghai. Togetherness. Now, I don’t think the message has changed, but it’s grown because we’re not students anymore. I would say that 80-90% of the people that are coming to our shows now are local.

Tsunano: Nowadays we are trying to shift the culture. That’s why we got the name SHFT. Right now the culture is quite separate in the music industry. Underground people just care about underground people. Maybe their target audience is more expat. And some commercial, Top 100 DJs thing, they’re just targeting Chinese table buyers. We are trying to shift this culture because we want people to know this kind of cool music that we like.


Luce: One goal is to build a bigger circuit. Right now Beijing is going really well. It looks like we might be heading to Chengdu next month. We’re not shy with brands. Like any entity, if you don’t have the corporate brands, there’s no way you can earn a living. So we’ve been working with brands like Urban Ears and Red Bull, and we need brands to support us.




Luce: They just called us in. Basically it seems the question of the year is “how do we attach our brand name to EDM?” It just goes back to the bread and butter story of earning the trust of the people. I really respect Red Bull, they have RBMA, they tour artists around China that otherwise these cities would never get to see these acts. That’s the way I see branding and these events. The brand brings in an act that the people would never otherwise see, so the people are happy with the show and stoked, and then they start trusting the brand and that turns into brand loyalty. I feel like that’s the equation to what’s going on with so much branding over events in China.


Luce: It seems like it. The textbook EDM, the raging Martin Garrix EDM, that kind of music is blowing up massively in China. One of the reasons is, the big corporate billionaire brands are pouring money into this. There’s so much awareness from Storm and Great Wall Festival.

The EDM industry in China, I respect a lot because it’s really about the artists and the music, it’s not about the drinking and the drugs, to the local people, which is really cool to see because I feel like that’s the opposite of other parts of the world..


Luce: In terms of 1LVSH, I don’t think it really affected us much except helping us broaden our connections outside of Shanghai. And just cause I say I don’t like EDM, ….I understand EDM, the industry, it’s a money-maker and I don’t frown upon that. In the end it’s business.




Luce: My biggest complaint is -- and I’m not bashing anybody, because I respect everybdy’s grind -- a lot of the bigger PR companies, they make it a lot harder for smaller people that are trying to do cool shit. For example, I’m a student, and UZ or an act I know is playing, so I have the option to see this act and pay 100 kuai and all my drinks, or I can go with this dude that lives down the hall in my dorm that’s offering free drinks, free entrance, free sofa, champagne poppin', all the girls from my dorm are going…it’s hard to compete against that.

Tsunano: Maybe I agree with that, but Shanghai nightlife is one of the only reasons I stay in Shanghai. Some people say Tokyo doesn’t have the vibe that shanghai does. And Taipei also. I feel comfy, but I can’t find any big bookings or DJ event.

Luce: In one night you can go see Martin Garrix, or you can see UZ at arkham, or The Horrorist at Shelter…it’s crazy. Every end of the spectrum. You have choices, there’s something for everybody.



Luce: One was at Geisha, we had Conrank, and the management were basically like crying. I was trying to block them from getting in the booth to stop Conrank from playing trap. But also later that night, I threw a hat into the crowd, these Raised in china hats. One hit a girl in the eye and she tried to get money out of the whole situation…[it] went on for like four months. Nothing ended up happening though.


Luce: Don’t look for a lot of handouts. When you first start out as a younger promoter, you don’t have any social media following, any following at all. You have to hit the streets with flyers, posters, go to universities…That’s the only way you can start to build. Other than that, maybe don’t do it at all because you’re gonna lose money for the first two-three years. Or more. You might lose money until you decide to stop doing it [laughs].

Tsunano: I think they should do it. It actually brings up the culture. We are all shifting the culture.


Luce: Don’t trust a venue owner who says [there won't be problems] because they have guanxi. 90% of the time they’re just saying that, and you are gonna get fucked. Second -- don’t expect to make money. Three -- make sure that you’re well rounded in both English and local promotion.


Luce: Massive shout out to the whole crew.



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1LVSH's plans for the next few months are...

Friday April 18 @ 8mm, Beijing w/Grandtheft
Saturday April 19 @ Arkham w/Grandtheft
May 2 @ Dada Shanghai w/Bloodzboi
May 9 @ Bar Rouge w/Four Color Zack
May 14 @ NASA Chengdu w/Troyboi
May 15 @ Arkham w/Troiboi
May 16 @ Dada Beijing w/Troyboi

Then launching a summer rooftop series the first weekend of June. They're also part of Red 8, a studio with Devan Fioozi (Raised In Shanghai), Al Rocco's music and recording studio, and the 1LVSH office, with plans to open a new space new Suzhou Creek in May.