Flying over the bubble era

Chapter 1540 1541. Stepping In

In the new year, the record market becomes more prosperous.

After Christmas comes Valentine's Day, and just as the spring cherry blossom theme is being prepared, the graduation song is coming soon. The 8cm single perfectly turns music into something as simple as a mood book.

Lightness and thinness are the general trend of the popular development of things.

When you are in such a frenetic market, you can truly understand why technological changes bring about disruptive changes.

When an encouraging song becomes popular, 30 songs with the same theme will follow suit this year. When a female guitar soloist gains attention, a trend of mass copying will follow. Record companies never worry about making the wrong bet, because the market is so huge that it can accommodate any flavor. However, the huge market also makes singers too cheap, so they are easily launched for trial and error, and then easily abandoned.

The public believes in the current trend and taste of popular music, and therefore, they are more and more inclined to buy the records of their favorite singers as soon as possible. There are special survey companies responsible for paying attention to popular trends and the public's purchasing intentions. Record companies capture the changes of the public and further cater to them.

Therefore, at the beginning of the year, the record charts saw a refresh of the historical records of singles' initial sales, and the singers at the top of the charts all saw a significant increase in sales in the first week.

As singles began to focus on the first week effect, the industry had to adjust its strategy. When producing songs, the chorus was placed at the beginning, and this situation also increased significantly.

How to create buzz and how much publicity funds are spent also become decisive factors. In this scenario, there will be fewer and fewer stories of grassroots counterattacks, and more and more cases of record companies and publicity parties colluding with each other.

The public believes in the record market, and the industry believes in the public's purchasing power, so the market is getting bigger and bigger. The bigger the market is, the more it can accommodate different styles of music and attract more people to enter. The industry and the public, both sides have created this prosperous record industry. This is what the saying "confidence is gold" means.

The so-called "bubble era" can be viewed from another perspective as an era of confidence.

……

In the new year, the record market is booming, with hit singles becoming hot topics almost every week. Against this backdrop, the debut albums of Hutao and Xiongguang were released quietly.

The only topic of the album is that Akina Nakamori is the producer, but the album is too casually configured like a family album. There is almost no publicity, and the radio program that Shinichi Iwahashi took two girls to record is like a stone thrown into the water.

However, the two girls' program was not the stones thrown into the water. To be more precise, the people who threw the stones were the two girls. The act of throwing stones was intended to please the two children. Whether it would leave an impression on the audience was not important.

Shinichi Iwahashi himself accepted that this album was destined to lose money, and he just laughed off the speculation and ridicule from others.

The album promotion period was like an extracurricular activity arranged for the girls. When this formal promotion was over, the two girls returned to their own lives.

Hikaru Utada still hangs out in the recording studio on her days off, and sometimes goes to the GENZO building to play adventure games. Although she has released two albums, neither her father, Terumi Utada, who is a producer, nor Shinichi Iwahashi deliberately let her develop as a musician, completely following her interests.

But the more he allowed her to grow, the more he saw her innate talent. Iwahashi Shinichi sometimes met Terumi Utada and Hikaru Utada in the recording studio. When the little girl hummed softly, he and Terumi Utada exchanged glances, and there was something tacitly revealed in the father's eyes.

The two men moved gently so as not to disturb the girl who was showing off her true colors.

During this year's spring break, Shinichi Iwahashi arranged two weeks of training for Ayumi Hamasaki at a New York music classroom.

Unlike Utada Hikaru, who naturally showed her creative talent, what touched Shinichi Iwahashi the most about this girl was her awkward artistic personality. But this also meant uncertainty.

Whether she can become the superhero idol in Shinichi Iwahashi's mind depends on where this momentum will take her. In dealing with this girl, Shinichi Iwahashi must protect her personality from being damaged, at the same time, broaden her horizons, guide her to think more deeply, and on this basis, teach her how to become a singer.

Broadening his horizons is the first priority. As for how much he can learn in the two-week music class, Iwahashi Shinichi doesn't really care. It's not time for this girl to debut yet.

However, although Ayumi Hamasaki is not yet qualified to debut, the preparations for her debut have already begun. Since the girl came to Shinichi Iwahashi, he began to collect songs for her and recruit young composers to join the company. When Ayumi Hamasaki debuts in the future, he will try to avoid having her sing songs provided by veteran composers.

From planning an album to taking two girls through the promotion process, he just wanted to tell them what it's like to be a singer in the most intuitive way.

Utada Hikaru is a very low-key person at a young age. It is unknown what she feels about this, but for Ayumi Hamasaki, this experience is of great significance. Shinichi Iwahashi let her know what she had rejected and resisted, and what she will pursue in the future. This is better than a thousand words.

After arriving in Tokyo, Zhang Zi found a job as a clerk in a women's clothing store, which was a job she was good at. Zhang Zi could speak standard Japanese fluently without an accent, and she was never shy when facing customers in Tokyo, as if she had carefully prepared for coming to Tokyo at some stage.

Looking at Zhang Zi now in middle age, one can imagine what she would have looked like if she had come to Tokyo when she was young.

Ayumi Hamasaki moved out of the Iwahashi family and now lives with her mother in an apartment provided by the record company. Her grandmother decided to stay in Fukuoka alone, so Ayumi Hamasaki and Akiko, the mother and daughter, decided to move to Tokyo one after another, which led to the seemingly normal but actually unfamiliar fact that "the mother and daughter live together".

It was not until she moved to live with her mother that Ayumi Hamasaki realized that although she had been dependent on her mother since she was a child, in fact, she had never really "lived alone with her mother."

In their home in Fukuoka, Ayumi Hamasaki and Akiko sometimes get along more like a pair of close friends because of their grandmother, a more reliable elder. When they came to Tokyo and saw the vast world unfolding before their eyes, the mother and daughter unexpectedly got the opportunity to rethink the proposition of "mother-daughter relationship".

All of this originated from Shinichi Iwahashi who suddenly found Ayumi Hamasaki in Fukuoka at that time.

This time, Ayumi Hamasaki is going to New York, and Shinichi Iwahashi also asked Akiko for her opinion, saying that if she is interested, she can go with Ayumi Hamasaki.

Shinichi Iwahashi always opens the door to a new world for others as if it were a matter of course.