Chapter 737: Chinese Music Weightlifting Champion
“14 songs???”
When Qian Jiang got the documents thrown over by Zhou Yi and was about to prepare a new album according to the above requirements, he, who was particularly sensitive to numbers, immediately noticed Zhou Yi's unusual number of songs.
Generally speaking, a normal original studio album is 10-15 songs, but this is only in theory.
In the past, singers and record companies usually kept the number between 11 and 13 songs, firstly to save money, and secondly, to widen the gap with collections with many songs, so that collection albums would appear more affordable— —There are so many songs.
After all, when record companies launched collections in the past, they were all sustainable and exploited.
Zhou Yi's albums used to be mostly under 12 songs, so why did he suddenly release one with 14 songs?
In the industry process of Qianjiang for so many years, once a singer with original ability breaks the rules, either the album needs so many songs to express his musical personality, or more songs are needed to make up the number——
While highlighting the big songs in the album, it also proves to fans that I have not cut leeks.
As important as it is to stand up, archways are still needed.
There are only a very few singers who play 14-15 songs purely based on their mood.
But the key to the problem now is that Zhou Yi's musical personality has been completely shaped.
The I Ching Trilogy + "Jiangnan" has brought his most valued musical personality to the top in the industry.
If you want to move forward, you really have to rely on time, and it can no longer be accomplished by relying on albums.
Time will make Zhou Yi's Chinese musical personality, which he established through his first four albums, become even brighter - until something happens, at a very politically significant time point, this brilliance will transform into a true social and humanistic quilt. understood by the public.
This is how Luo Dayou came to the altar - at a special time point, relying on his social humanity, relying on his criticism and reflection, and even his appeal.
Li Zongsheng, who has always been inferior to Luo Dayou in terms of status, also lost here, although he did not follow Luo Dayou's path.
Zhouyi is compatible with both - individuals, society, family and country, and war.
The difference is that Zhou Yi has not yet written songs like "Pearl of the Orient" and "Tomorrow Will Be Better" by Luo Dayou, which have risen to another environment. At the same time, the number of songs about reflection and criticism is far less than that of Luo Dayou. many.
This is created by special reasons of the times, and even someone as powerful as Zhou Yi cannot copy it——
For example, "Pearl of the Orient" and "Tomorrow Will Be Better" were the two songs used for Hong Kong's return in 1997. You can't let Hong Kong return again, right?
In this case, Qian Jiang, who thought that Zhou Yi's album this year would only be of a regular scale, immediately sensed something was wrong: something was abnormal, and as an agent, he must pay attention to it.
"What is musical personality or not? Those are all the opinions of the industry that restrict themselves. The general public only knows whether something sounds good or not, whether it is pleasant to the ear or not."
Zhou Yi stretched his waist, smiled and gave him some reassurance: "This is a purely market-oriented album, but it has a definite and unified theme."
Different from his previous four albums, in this "Hush", a full 10 songs were songs that later became popular on a pop level - only four songs were not popular: Fang Datong's "Singer and Model", "Love" song", "Everyone Can", Xu Song's "Best Singer".
In terms of popularity, this album has the most hits.
"Market orientation - is it because of Sony and Boardman Records?" Qian Jiang, who was a little confused at first, suddenly thought of something and asked after being silent for a while.
On July 20, 2004, the European Union officially approved the merger of Sony Records and Germany's Boardman Records, and the merger process of the two companies was officially put on the agenda.
As of today, the two companies have completed all merger articles.
Howard Stringer, chairman of Sony (USA), officially announced last week that the two parties will establish SONY BMG Music Entertainment (Sony Boardman Music Entertainment) in November, with its headquarters in New York.
After this, the five major international record companies that have divided up the global music market for many years will be reduced to the four major ones. This will be a major reshuffle for the global record industry, and the Chinese music scene will naturally not be able to stay away.
After the merger, Sony Boardman Records will leapfrog Universal and Warner and become the record company with the largest market share in the world. The market share will be as high as about 30%, which is a terrifying number.
You must know that Boardman is also one of the five major record giants with a long history.
I don’t know how many people scolded the European Commission’s antitrust officials for taking black money from Sony, and then approved the merger bill.
There were also changes in company positions after the merger. Former Boardman Records CEO Jolph Schmidt-Holz was demoted and became chairman of the new company;
The original CEO position of Sony remains unchanged and he still serves as CEO of Sony Boardman Records.
Fortunately, Zhou Yi once said something to Mr. Schmidt - when Schmidt scolded him for choosing online music, he retaliated and reflected on whether he had led the company well and whether his performance had increased over the years.
The old boy remembers a grudge.
After the merger, the strength has been greatly increased. Although it doesn't look good on the face, privately they will definitely demand a crazy crackdown on Zhouyi's market share - it is not impossible to start with China first.
There is too much piracy in China, and at the same time, there is no ground for online music charging. As long as it is done properly, it may not be impossible to break the market myth of Zhou Yi.
After all, Warner Records is no longer the record company that was backed by its parent company, Time Warner. It has only been independent for less than a year. Although it still has the anchor of Zhouyi, its overall power is definitely far inferior to that of Sony Boardman Records after the merger.
In this case, when Zhou Yi mentioned market-oriented albums, Qian Jiang immediately thought of what Zhou Yi might be worried about - not only that the market is very likely to be attacked, but also piracy must be carefully guarded, otherwise the album will not be released yet. There is no need to sell it if it is leaked all over the place.
"...a little bit."
Zhou Yi nodded as usual: "But don't say that to the outside world. Just promote it as a rescue album that attempts to save the Chinese record market again."
All said and done, he still had to set up the memorial that he should have, and by the way, it would be a foreshadowing and an excuse for him to retire from the music scene in the future.
At this point, to be honest, there are very few songs that he can reproduce to form a high-quality album. After all, the Chinese music scene has only been booming for a few years after the millennium.
It’s not impossible to continue to produce albums with high reputation in the industry, but in that case the market will overturn——
Because further down the timeline, it is really a song that other than music enthusiasts will never listen to.
"Orange Moon", the most popular album by Fang Datong Road, is his most popular one, while "69 Movements", the least popular album by Tao Zhe Road, is his most artistic expression and is also his personal favorite album, far surpassing "Black Willow";
The albums that best shaped Jay Chou's musical personality in his career were only the first and second albums. The more popular the albums that followed, the better the commercial performance, such as "Ye Huimei", "Qili Xiang", "Chopin in November" 》.
But now, Zhou Yi, who has established his position in the industry with the help of his first four albums, believes that it is time for him to transform. After all, if he doesn't transform, there will be no songs that can be reproduced. Now he has to pick and choose the remaining songs in his memory, and there are many songs that cannot be used at all.
I can't say that I will go back and sing songs like "Ten Thousand Reasons to Be Sad", "Can't afford to be hurt", "Two Butterflies", "Autumn Will Not Come Back", "Pray to the Buddha", etc. That is the real thing. Collapse of character.
The first four albums were placed too high.
Just in time, the merger of Sony and Boardman Records provided him with a perfect reason and excuse to completely transform his business——
"Zhou Yi's fifth album was forced to engage in commercialization and the quality of the album declined. It's entirely Sony Boardman's fault! They have to rely on market pressure to overwhelm Zhou Yi! Zhou Yi chose to take off his artistic cloak for the sake of Warner's market share and use his extraordinary personal talents against two major international capitals!”
"Sony is guilty of a heinous crime!"
"In the winter of 2004, Zhou Yi defeated capital with his talent."
This is the subsequent marketing strategy. Zhou Yi has arranged every pit for Sony, waiting for them to jump.
This is another reason why the songs in his album are obviously full of the theme of "love", but the album is called "Hush" - even the album cover tells people (Sony Boardman) to shut up.
It's hard for Sony to bear more of the infamy, and he will reap the benefits. From now on, he will assign incense sticks to Sony during every new year and festival.
Of course, this is Zhou Yi’s own internal rhetoric to Warner.
Warner's external rhetoric is another matter. It should be said that Zhou Yi is a little higher - Zhou Yi's choice for this is a "rescue work."
As we all know, the domestic physical record market collapsed completely in 2004.
There is no mistake. One post, one content, one 6 one, one book, one book, one read!
Don't look at the current newspapers that offer 500,000 for you and 700,000 for me. The celebration party will be held here today and there tomorrow. But when you actually check the list, you can see that there are more than 200,000 of them, and more than 300,000 can be seen everywhere.
All for the sake of face.
Coupled with the rise of online music, piracy has caused the market environment to be extremely bad. Hu Yanbing's actual sales so far have been champagne with 200,000 copies sold.
The entire physical record market is extremely depressed, and the dreams of countless musicians and industry insiders have been shattered.
At this time, the great music emperor Zhou Yi tried to use his influence to save the suddenly collapsed record market. To this end, he did not hesitate to break the balance between art and commerce of his albums and engage in commercialization, just to use his own efforts. Give the record market a shot in the arm.
You ask for evidence?
10 super commercial songs are the proof!
Have you ever seen Zhou Yihui put so many commercial songs into one album?
Why would he do this if it wasn't to save the market?
He writes songs and sings like this just to keep more people in the habit of buying records!
This is love! It’s great love! So the theme of his song is all about love!
Sony is guilty of a heinous crime!
Zhou Yi’s final stubbornness is that he still retains a few songs in the album that deeply integrate soul, R&B and other singing styles as well as deep thoughts. If these songs become popular, then Zhou Yi will return to the past of balancing art and business. in the state;
If it doesn't become popular, it means that there is still a lack of mature music business market in China. Although Zhou Yi was very disappointed, he still tried to cultivate the domestic music business market, and for this reason he began to write more songs with particularly high popularity.
No matter how many people believe it, this marketing must be promoted anyway - after a few years, it will naturally be confirmed as a fact.
This marketing method is very classic, and it has a large audience even in the era of mobile Internet.
The most typical example is Jay Chou -
Because the album "Bedtime Stories" was too commercial and the quality further declined, the only popular "Confession Balloon" was pulled out as a sacrifice to save face -
You can see such a statement everywhere including Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili and other platforms: "In fact, Jay Chou was also surprised by the popularity of "Confession Balloon", because this was a commercial work he wrote casually, and other in-depth songs that he made carefully were not popular. He was disappointed, blah blah..."
In fact, it is pure nonsense, because no singer in the world can foresee whether his song will become popular after writing it.
But you can see this kind of rhetoric on all platforms, and everyone is actively spreading it. The question is, if there is no water army, how can Jay Chou need water army?
Passers-by also accepted the personality of Jay Chou who was disappointed with the Chinese music environment, and saved his reputation for this album.
But in fact, if there was no water army to set the trend, there would not be such a unified perception on all platforms, and there would not be such similar rhetoric.
"Bedtime Stories" has a total of 10 songs, but it ended up with four commercial advertisements from cooperating brands. Is this called disappointment in the Chinese music environment?
What a joke.
It's not that the explosion of "Confession Balloon" became a fig leaf to attract the attention of a large number of passers-by, and the underwear of this album had to be stripped off.
Jay Chou's commercialization can be washed like this, so there is no reason why Zhou Yi can't do it, not to mention that even if he has too many commercial songs, the ones he has inserted are also extremely popular.
At the level of passers-by, Zhou Yi estimates that his "Hush" is probably going to be the best-received one in the past five years.
By that time, even if Zhou Yi's future albums are more commercial, as long as they maintain a certain high quality standard, this universal formula can be applied: they are all for the purpose of cultivating a good commercial market.
Zhou Yi shoulders the physical record market of China's 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities, 2 special administrative regions, and one Taiwan Province!
He can even leave a lead for his farewell in the future - after releasing the album, he will cooperate with the publicity and occasionally say something like "musicians need to work together to maintain the music market."
In that case, after a few years of subtle influence, Zhou Yi's final withdrawal was because writing highly commercial albums could not save the market. Zhou Yi felt sad and decided to bid farewell to the music scene in a decent manner.
In the future mobile Internet era, when netizens are doing archaeology, they will secretly spread some information and lead the rhythm, and the image of a tragic hero who sacrificed under the wheel of the times will be vividly portrayed.
And this tragic hero really said he would quit the music scene.
As a result, netizens who are looking for archaeology in the future will naturally come up with a topic: If Zhou Yi did not need to save the market, or if he did not quit the music scene out of exhaustion, what heights could he have reached...
A world-class star who was clearly at the peak of his career had to retire sadly due to the times, leaving the world with an insurmountable figure and a future that makes people imagine -
If there were no interference from the times, how strong would a complete Zhou Yi without any constraints be?
It is precisely because we have never seen it that we have unlimited room for imagination.