Marking its fifth anniversary, the Taipei Music Center (TMC), recognized as Taiwan’s most important hub for pop music, launched a special edition in July, Sense & Sound: Five Ways into Taiwanese Pop Music. The volume brings together insights and reflections from musicians and industry professionals, tracing the past, present, and future of Taiwanese pop through five immersive approaches. To reach a wider international readership, an English e-book edition has also been produced and is now available on TMC’s official website.

Capturing the Island’s Soundscape Through Industry Voices at Home and Abroad

In an era when music is everywhere, how do we perceive, preserve, and carry forward the sounds of our time? The title of this anniversary volume echoes the year’s theme, “Make a Sound into the Future.” More than just an anthology of voices spanning generations, regions, and venues, each offering a unique perspective on how music is experienced and shared, it also invites readers to experience music through five distinct pathways: “Melodies Made Tangible,” “Where Sound Comes Alive,” “Inside the Taipei Music Center,” “Explore the Boundless Possibilities,” and “Make a Sound into the Future.”

Co-created with the creative team “studio ordinary,” the book is published in Chinese with an accompanying English e-book. The chapter “Melodies Made Tangible” explores how music, through physical carriers such as cassettes and vinyl, as well as exhibitions and album design, becomes a visible and tangible part of everyday memory. Curators Shih-Fang Ma and Masa offer perspectives from the exhibition “MUSIC, ISLAND, STORIES: Pop Music in Taiwan,” showing how Taiwan’s pop music has been preserved and shaped through physical objects and settings. Kind of Blue Records founder Tsan-Pin Yu and Datao Vinyl founder Jim Chang discuss the allure of physical music, while Grammy Award winners Jheng-Han Li and Wei Yu share how design transforms an album into a collectible work of art.

Next, “Where Sound Comes Alive” moves from the planning and operation of live venues to the broader evolution of the industry, showing how live performance continues to amplify sound in the moment and drive Taiwan’s pop music forward. This chapter features a conversation with Live House SUB co-founders Sam Yang, Dela, and Chi-Kang Chiang, joined by Legacy general manager Arthur Chen, discussing the challenges and possibilities within the live house ecosystem. NUNO, founder of EMERGE FEST, Ta-Chien Hsiao, founder of Vagabond Festival, and Kuo, lead vocalist of Sunset Rollercoaster and initiator of the Sunset Town Festival, share how music festivals serve as platforms that connect fans and the industry. The team behind the Busan International Rock Festival team and Japanese Live House operator Ryota Nishimura further contribute insights, bringing cross-border perspectives to the book.

When a song completed in the studio can be heard around the world, and as creators step onto the international stage and resonate with audiences abroad, the imagined boundaries of creation begin to dissolve. Pop music is no longer a one-way output of sound, but a continuing dialogue — a possibility that unfolds within an ever-expanding soundscape. In “Explore the Boundless Possibilities,” producer Shou-Chuan Lee and critic Kuan-Heng Chen discuss the tides and ecosystem of music in the streaming era, while musicians Eric Chen and Sandee Chan reflect on a future of collaboration between AI and human creators.

Celebrating Five Years, Planting Seeds for the Next Five

In addition to gathering the observations of music industry professionals, this book also documents the key milestones of TMC’s first five years. In the chapter “Inside the Taipei Music Center,” readers are taken into the heart of TMC, tracing its founding journey, guiding principles, and little-known facts about its venues, gradually revealing facets of the center rarely seen by the public. The concluding chapter, “Make a Sound into the Future,” features an in-depth interview with Chairperson Kay Huang, the fifth-anniversary music project, and a conversation with veteran producers Hsiao-Wen Ting, Jamie Hsueh, and lyricist Yi-Wei Wu, who discuss talent cultivation both onstage and behind the scenes — together sketching how TMC continues to cultivate, accumulate, and plant the seeds for the next five years.

Anchored by the theme “Make a Sound >>> into the Future,” TMC’s fifth-anniversary program connects five years of achievements with its vision ahead. The commemorative volume Sense & Sound: Five Ways into Taiwanese Pop Music invites readers to begin with this book and step once again into TMC — to discover why it was created, how it continues to grow, and what kind of future it strives to shape.
 

Sense & Sound: Five Ways into Taiwanese Pop Music is now available at Eslite, Kingstone, Books.com.tw, Tien Chiao Shih, and bookstores across Taiwan, and will soon also be available through Pinkoi’s official store. The English e-book edition is now live on TMC’s official website. Through five immersive ways of listening, let the voice of the island play on.