China Entertainment 2000

The sudden rise of "Two Butterflies" caught everyone off guard.

This includes Warner executives such as Zhou Jianhui and Qian Jiang, who used Warner resources to promote the company under Zhou Yi's decision against all odds.

No one could believe that a mediocre singer who had failed more than once in the past could make a comeback with a few songs that had been proven to have failed once, but the reality is that this is what happened.

Shangrao, as one of Zhou Yi's influential bases, the speed at which "Two Butterflies" became popular can be said to be the fastest in the country.

The children who have left their hometowns never forget their roots. They donate to schools or build roads from time to time. They never do anything for show, but bring real money back to their hometowns. Not only SR City and Shangrao County, but also Poyang, Yushan, Guangfeng and other counties under Shangrao can receive donations. The local media can be said to be the most loyal fans of Zhouyi.

Naturally, they regarded the new singer Pang Long, who was strongly promoted by Warner, as Zhou Yi's achievement. They started to praise him as soon as he came on the stage. Not to mention the Xinhua Bookstore that sold genuine tapes and CDs, even the audio-visual stores that sold pirated products on the street started promoting him.

Although they cannot make a move now due to industry rules, they can first give an estimate. After all, there are only two days left.

This is what Guo Yuxuan thought from the beginning. They can definitely wait for the seven-day genuine protection period.

As a 45-year-old middle-aged man who worked his way up from Guangfeng County to SR City and now runs a small audio-visual store, selling genuine products is an exception, while dumping pirated products is his norm.

You need to eat.

He has been selling like this for almost eight years and has been eating peacefully.

Zhou Yi's sudden appearance made him earn a lot of money. Nowadays, the best-selling product in his store is still the "Warner Love Story" trilogy.

No one knows which little genius in the upstream world did this, and with all kinds of plausible rumors spreading, Sun Yanzi's life and death has made him look like a living dead in the eyes of some children who don't watch the news at all.

Although Zhou Yi did not participate in the song "Two Butterflies" this time, this did not pose any difficulty for him at all - he just had to change the lyrics and composition information himself.

This was not difficult at all for him.

There is no special reason, just practice makes perfect.

However, just when he began to imagine how long the short-term profit from "Two Butterflies" with Zhou Yi's name could last, the publicity from the boss of the local China Mobile operator made him confused.

"Zhou Yi's latest ringtone masterpiece "Two Butterflies", edit the text message..."

There are even activities where you can get gifts for signing up for ringback tone services.

He had heard of this ringback tone before, but it had never been introduced locally.

His wife brought both parents and the whole family to get Runtian mineral water, AD calcium milk, iced black tea and Yili pure milk.

Then, Guo Yuxuan felt like the sky was falling.

Several people's Nokia 1100s no longer required them to buy his cheap pirated tapes to listen to "Two Butterflies", which made him, who had been living a comfortable life in the piracy industry for so long, widen his eyes.

“Is this a song that can be played?”

"I guess so. You can find out if you call us. It's very useful."

Guo Yuxuan frowned and tried it——

"My dear, fly slowly~"

"I will fly with you in a lingering manner~"

"Wait until the autumn wind blows and the autumn leaves fall into piles~"

“…”

Half an hour later, he walked silently out of the store, lit a cigarette, and fell into deep thought.

There are a lot of songs available on the ringtone market. You can just download any song you like. It is much more convenient than tapes or CDs.

Fortunately, at least this can only be changed song by song.

There is no way to get rid of it!

Guo Yuxuan wanted to run to the China Mobile store two blocks away and kick their dog bowl!

What does piracy rely on to survive?

The good songs lead the bad songs, and the quantity wins.

There may be only a few songs that listeners like in a pirated tape or CD, but because a large number of other songs are added, the price increases from seven or eight yuan to eleven or twelve yuan, and consumers can only accept this price increase with a pinch of their noses.

Pirated copies of Warner's Love Story Trilogy, which are full of popular songs, cost more than 20 yuan, and in some places they can even be sold for more than 30 yuan.

Consumers had no choice before, but now it’s different——

They can change the ringtones one song at a time.

Although this is not enough to kill all pirates, it will undoubtedly dig away a considerable number of customers. Many people in the sinking market actually don’t have that much time to listen to the tapes or CDs they buy, but mobile phones are different.

You can choose your own ringtone, and you can also discuss with others which song is good to use as a ringtone.

This group of people may have been identifying with the same few songs for a long time, and their willingness to buy albums will suddenly become quite low... ?

Of course, this is not without benefits -

At least people like his parents and his wife would never have spent money to buy any albums before, even if they were pirated albums. They only listened to music on TV, or in roadside stores or on radio stations.

Then there are the people who would never spend money to buy albums in the past. Now the emergence of ringtones is a great help to them.

The appearance of Cailing brought this group of people in.

It was hard for him to tell whether this was good or bad.

The advantage is that more people will listen to music, and more people willing to spend a little money to listen to music means that the market may flourish again;

The downside is that this high download volume is likely to further drive down the overall album market, and the price of pirated discs may be further driven down by cheap ringtones.

Pirated albums are already very cheap. The most extreme ones can even compress tapes down to six dollars, but the sound quality and whether the tapes will deteriorate when you get them home are all up to fate.

But ringtones are different - they are cheaper than a six-dollar pirated disc.

At least that's what it looks like now.

"Let me tell you, this 'Two Butterflies' is pretty nice."

When Guo Yuxuan watched his wife hum the melody and lyrics of "Two Butterflies" after listening to it several times, he felt that he might need to start a price war.

Without a price war, it would be difficult to lure these people who have just been attracted to listen to music to buy songs.

"Fuck it! What the hell is Zhou Yi doing? Can't he just release an album?"

Same time, different place.

Wherever there are promotional points for China Mobile's ringback tone business, there are some discerning bosses who have seen the harm that the ringback tone market is causing to them, the pirates.

On the surface, the popularity of the "Two Butterflies" ringtone can drive the growth of new users in the market, but this group of people only buy the songs they like and don't want any other songs.

If this becomes a large-scale and habit in the future, how will the channel dealers survive?

To put it another way, this is also a harm to the legitimate album market!

Everyone is buying a single song, so aren't you also hurting as a producer of legitimate albums?

Isn’t this killing the goose that lays the eggs?

Of course, the reason why the big pirates are so active and indignant is that they are really a little scared this time -

Pang Long, he was an unknown singer before!

If Zhou Yi and his team can really develop this model, then both genuine and pirated albums will die together!

Fuck you Zhou Yi, you betrayed your class, did you know that?!

A singer is not singing well and making albums, but is destroying the album market. This is betrayal!

Blatant betrayal!!!

Zhou Yi hadn’t had time to leave after the meeting when he received a call from Qian Jiang and hurried back to Warner. In the conference room, he saw the data of the trial run of “Two Butterflies”—

From the 13th to the 16th, in just four days, Pang Long's sales data jumped from an unknown and out-of-date singer to a second-tier singer.

More than 100,000 copies of the original album have been sold through Warner channels, and more than 70% of the sales were driven by the popularity of ringtones.

Warner has many powerful SP partners and mature promotion experience. It has also opened a new SP music copyright agency called Warner Shengshi. Under the combination of multiple factors, the market revenue of "Two Butterflies" ringtones soared to 12.39 million yuan.

The share based on this data is enough to cover all the expenses of Warner Bros. since its establishment, and even make a profit.

"This is a very healthy model. If the quality of the songs is high enough, we can definitely follow the American music model, single + album, and walk on two legs."

Zhou Jianhui was very excited.

Unlike the worries of several major pirates, as people who own genuine records, they have already been tortured by piracy and they will definitely open champagne if pirates die.

As for the fact that the data of genuine albums may decline, there is nothing we can do about it.

If you give up something, you will gain something.

What's more, ringtones also have their limitations. In fact, they are more suitable for promoting albums. After the single becomes famous, it attracts a large number of passers-by, and there will always be people who will buy the album containing this single.

The effect is equivalent to Zhouyi’s landing on the Apple Music Store in North America.

"This sinking market has always been the private domain of pirates. What you are doing is equivalent to taking away their users, and they are very likely to attack you."

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

After a brief moment of excitement, Qian Jiang also felt a little worried.

It is certain that the forces behind the pirates are complicated and intertwined, and there are big shots standing behind them, working hand in hand. The chain of interests is too huge, and if Zhou Yi did not have this golden body, he would be destroyed directly.

Personal attacks are impossible now, and the business card of Zhou Yi cannot be touched.

Then we can only target the foundation of Zhouyi - that is, attack music itself.

Once Zhou Yi's golden musical body is broken, things will be easy.

"It's okay, just release the album reservation first."

Zhou Yi shook his head.

Generally speaking, this is actually his political achievement and something he must do.

In the next twenty or even thirty years, this will be the only thing in the music industry that can be seen as his achievement in the Music Association.

As for the pirates' feelings about someone trying to make a living from them, he wanted to laugh when he heard it.

In fact, if ringtones simply pulled in the sinking market that belonged to pirates, making them pay for ringtones but too lazy to buy albums, then the various MP3s that immediately began to drop in price were the last straw that broke the camel's back.

The sharp price cuts of domestically produced MP3s have made this formerly expensive device no longer out of reach. MP3s led by brands such as Patriot, combined with the rapid development of Internet music, have successfully killed everyone, regardless of whether they are genuine or pirated.

If the legitimate products are still supported by the ringtone market, and the artists have commercial performances and advertising endorsements after they become famous, then the pirated products have nothing but pirated albums.

On December 18, 2004, when major companies in the industry were still staring at the data, Warner, which was at the center of the storm, once again launched a big move -

"On December 31, Zhou Yi's fifth Chinese album "Hush" will go on sale. At the same time, the cassette album will be available for pre-sale across Asia on the 20th. Those who purchase the pre-sale album will receive a beautiful gift from Zhou Yi..."

With Warner's current size, the speed of preparing albums is already very fast. Universal Music took only 10 days to prepare the first batch of Zhou Chuanxiong's hit "Man Ocean".

You should know that it took Zhou Chuanxiong just over a month from the time he signed with Universal to the recording and release of this album.

Warner's speed is naturally not much behind.

Especially for those tape albums that do not require MVs, the first and second batches of recordings were completed early and are waiting in the warehouse for shipment.

However, what no one expected was that just one day later, Warner's official website issued a notice that the album pre-sale had ended.

"Thank you very much for the enthusiasm of Zhou Yi's fans..."

The 500-word announcement can be summed up in one sentence: The goods are gone, it’s our fault, we will definitely correct it next time.

"Fuck you Warner, you're out of stock?"

This pre-sale end time is unique in the history of Chinese music, which is somewhat unbearable.

Because Zhou Jianhui has always been a marketing person, many people are wondering if Warner is putting on a show. But what they didn’t expect was that Zhou Jianhui, the president of Warner, actually posted a handwritten letter of apology on the official website.

"Due to my wrong decision, I only prepared 1 million copies of Zhou Yi's cassette album..."

1 million?

only?

This shocking number made everyone in the music industry unable to hold their breath.

Why didn’t you say you printed 2 million copies?

"No, no, no, according to the source, he really printed 1 million."

Sony, Wang Lihong Lounge.

When the agent brought such bad news with an ugly face, Wang Lihong, who had already conflicted with Zhou Yi's schedule, also looked ugly.

Originally, he was very confident that he could give Zhou Yi a try. He was very satisfied with the album "The Sun and the Moon in My Heart", which could be said to be his culmination work in recent years.

"Really 1 million? How is that possible? This is a pre-sale!"

Wang Lihong couldn't believe it.

The pre-sale of the album is 1 million, which is a bit unreasonable. When did the market of Chinese music become so good?

"To be precise, it's not just the Chinese market."

The agent sighed: "Zhou Yi's pre-sale sales for one day are the highest in Asia."

There are more than 270,000 tickets from the mainland, more than 180,000 tickets from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and more than 140,000 tickets from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries;

220,000 in Japan, 110,000 in South Korea, and so on.

Even the princes of West Asia joined in the fun, collecting more than 20,000 and nearly 30,000 tickets.

Relying on football friendship and international status, Zhou Yi finally entered the vision of these princes.

And this is not open to the world yet, otherwise the European and American countries combined could add up to more than 100,000 or 200,000 tickets.

"Lihong, let's move it up, or we can withdraw it."

The agent gritted his teeth and said, "If you all send them out on the 31st, you will be shattered into pieces."

Wang Lihong: “…”

Although that's what he said, it sounds really aggrieved to him...

He had carefully prepared the album for such a long time, and thought he was confident that he could compete with Zhou Yi, but the pre-sale results alone were enough to make him unable to raise his head.

"…In advance."

After a long silence, Wang Lihong slumped down in his seat...