Label series / 22 free CDs / 2006-2010

Norwegian Wood Music For China

Between 2006 and 2010 we gave away 220,000 CDs of Norwegian rock through the biggest music magazines in China. Three series, 22 discs, 10,000 copies of each: Bergen Rock City, Norwegian Wood Music For China, and one Stavanger Rock City. Nobody in the world had done it before us in China.

22 Free compilation CDs
220,000 Copies given away
422 Norwegian tracks
10,000 Copies per pressing
BERGEN ROCK CITY NORWEGIAN WOOD STAVANGER ROCK CITY X MUSIC MAG NOT ONLY MUSIC MAGAZINE 10,000 A PRESSING

The whole program

22 free CDs, 2006-2010

The idea was born in a bright moment in Beijing, when Kang Mao and I had just started October Party Records there. If I was going to lay my head on the block anyway, I could try to do more damage than something that only touched me and my own band. So we made deals with some of the biggest music magazines in China: a free CD presenting Norwegian bands inside the magazine, each one pressed in 10,000 copies.

It grew from there. Bergen Rock City ran to eight volumes, word spread at home, and friends from bands in other cities thought I was stingy for making CDs with Bergen artists only. I am not stingy. So Kang Mao and I came up with Norwegian Wood Music For China, and when Thomas Eiene called from Stavanger, his city got a CD too.

Do the math on it. 22 compilation CDs times 10,000 copies is 220,000 physical discs of Norwegian rock, spread out to music-crazy Chinese through their favourite magazines. If I am not completely wrong there are 422 tracks by Norwegian artists on them, which gives an average of 19.2 tracks per CD. Some discs were handed out at stands, like the October Party Records stand at MIDI Music Festival. The CDs even turned up in pirate versions on the Chinese web.

Then it was over. Work like this eats time and effort, and we did all of it as unpaid volunteer work. After six or seven years we had no chargers left to charge ourselves up with, so we agreed to focus on our own projects again. After 22 CDs it was time to do something else.

Bergen Rock City

Vol. 1-8 / 2006-2008 / X Music Mag

The first two volumes went out with X Music Mag in February and March 2006, and the series ran to eight volumes by the autumn of 2008. Eight CDs at 10,000 copies each is 80,000 free discs with Bergen bands in a couple of years. That is something to write home about.

Norwegian Wood Music For China

Vol. 1-13 / 2007-2010 / Not Only Music Magazine China

Thirteen volumes from September 2007 to August 2010, this time through Not Only Music Magazine China, after the same model as the Bergen CDs. Around 130,000 discs with Norwegian artists from the whole country, not just Bergen.

Stavanger Rock City

Vol. 1 / October 2007

Thomas Eiene in Stavanger asked if I could make a Stavanger Rock City Vol. 1 for China. Of course I could. He gathered the bands, and October Party Records took Stavanger along on the journey. It came in October 2007, the only city CD outside Bergen.

The Beijing years in the full catalogue The China story