Hello dear readers! Happy July 🙂 July means that we are in the full swing of summer and that means… a new season of Voice of China is going to be here soon. Or is it not?
While Jay Chou, Na Ying, Wang Feng and Harlem Yu will still be uncovering new voices for us, Voice of China will cease to exist due to a legal dispute over copyright.
Instead, for this summer, we will have China Super Vocal accompanying us. The generic format of the show as well as the chinese name 中国好声音 (zhong-guo-hao-sheng-yin) will remain the same even though it is branded as a new show.
The most distinct differences other than the change in the english name would be instead of selling this as season 5 of 中国好声音 (zhong-guo-hao-sheng-yin) in mandarin, it will be know as 中国好声音 2016 (zhong-guo-hao-sheng-yin 2016). The logo of the show has also changed to a simple ‘V’ instead of the usual fingers & microphone.
(However)…these adjustments apparently aren’t sufficient for Talpa Holdings, subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. Talpa plans to take further legal action in preventing the airing of Star China’s “new” show. Additionally, the company is separately producing a new season of The Voice of China with Chinese company, Talent International.
I won’t comment on who is in the wrong or what kind of punishment should be meted out because I think it’s really hard for us, as people outside of the industry, to know what is going on. Suitcases like this are very common, especially in China. (Case in point: just last year, my favourite show, Go Fighting!, was suspected to have faced copyright issues as well and delayed airing for an entire month.) All I know, as a consumer, is that I am glad that there is competition between providers, leading to more choices for me. I do hope that China Super Vocal will not be affected and still continue to air because I really enjoyed Voice of China Season 4 (complete recaps available on my blog) which featured the same judges. If it keeps up with its standards, I might recap it again this year.
PS: Some random titbit for those who read all the way here. Seems like this year, we won’t have any more sister-brother alliance between Na Ying and Jay Chou. Instead, Na Ying suggested Jay Chou and Wang Feng to form a nanny-dad alliance since both have recently became fathers. Not sure about you, but I’m looking forward to it!
SkimmedMilkDRAMA 
Haha! I am sure Jay Chou will be bragging about his daughter a lot! Did you listen to his new son?!
Talking about the Voice, I am surprised they have a copyright problem. I mean, this is season 4 we are talking about! And the Voice is an international series and nearly each country has their own version. Something bad must had happened…
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I just listened to it and I must say, I am impressed! I actually like it quite a lot. Poor Hannah, barely married and it seems like she has a fierce competitor for Jay’s love :p I was just thinking Hathaway is so lucky to be Jay’s daughter and having a dad who wrote songs for her then I read one of the comments… It said “Awww, Jay wrote a song for his daughter” and someone replied, “Nope, his daughter wrote him a song.” Hahaha. Totally cracked me up. I actually look forward to his bragging xD
Seems like they did buy the copyright for the past few seasons but there was some conflicts with Talpa, the original production company, over the copyright fees for this year. Apparently, the China side wants to drive down the fee despite the increasing popularity of the show and Talpa is very unhappy about it. I hope they resolve it soon though.
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Hey Kate! Any chance you know a good site to watch episode recaps for the voice China? I’ve been trying to find two rappers that preformed in the recent auditions, a guy and girl duet, that also had part of their song in english. I can’t find it anywhere, but I have a feeling I’m just not looking in the right places and I just moved to China. Thanks!
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Hi G, http://www.amiehu.com/2016/07/sing-china-season-1-episode-1.html is doing recaps for Voice of China Season 5 (now renamed Sing! China). You can check it out. If you want to discuss about the auditions, you can get on the reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/cpop/comments/4xdrdv/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E6%96%B0%E6%AD%8C%E5%A3%B0_sing_china_formerly_the_voice_of_china/ I’m not sure which episode is that but you can just navigate around 🙂 Cheers
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