Ouyang Haopeng of another group, Jiulian Zhenren, performs in the band's first virtual concert on May 17. [PHOTO BY ZHOU CHEN/FOR CHINA DAILY]

According to Zhang, live-music venues have been affected severely by the pandemic, and it's unclear when they will begin to recover. Since February, some live-music venues have closed due to the lack of income, such as Tu Space in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and DDC in Beijing.

Strawberry Nebula 2020 also aims at helping live-music venues to recover from the heavy blow of the pandemic.

"Live-music venues gave birth to many great Chinese indie rock bands. With the pay-to-watch model, those live-music venues will get some income when people watch those online shows together," Zhang says.

Besides Miserable Faith, other Chinese indie bands have tried to reconnect with their fans by holding pay-to-watch online shows.

On May 17, the three-piece rock band from Lianping county, Guangdong province, Jiulian Zhenren, gave their first ever online show, which attracted about 120,000 audience members. The show cost 12 yuan per ticket.

"Since all the ticket revenues are given to the bands, it guarantees the bands' income during the pandemic," says music critic Deng Ke.

The young band, which sings in a combination of Mandarin and the Hakka dialect, celebrated their second anniversary on May 4. Band members are lead vocalist, guitarist and singer-songwriter Ouyang Haopeng, vocalist and trumpet player Mai Haipeng and bassist Ye Wanli.

They rose to instant fame after making their debut appearance on the reality show, The Big Band.

"We've been planning to perform our first concert for a long time but our plans were disturbed by the COVID-19 outbreak, which was very disappointing," says Ouyang, 26, who's also a primary school art teacher. Three years ago he quit his job at a film and television company in Shenzhen to return to his hometown. "The first show was very special to all of us."