Riding the wind of rebirth

Truney stood up and paced back and forth irritably: "Have you ever checked whether we can legally control him?"

"This has nothing to do with the law." Malmut replied carefully: "The power of our trade union comes from the authorization of the majority of trade unions. When the interests of the trade unions are damaged, it is our association's obligation to entrust us to negotiate. Therefore, the Digital Alliance's statement is untenable."

"Good job! Just take care of those sons of bitches!" Truney breathed a sigh of relief: "We can interfere in any business related to practitioners!"

"But these Asians are not easy to deal with either." Malmut paused and continued, "Their lawyer raised a point, that is, when the interests of practitioners are damaged, our association has the obligation to negotiate on behalf of them. Now he requires us to provide evidence that the Digital Alliance has damaged the interests of practitioners."

"Isn't it easy to get evidence like this? Isn't this the business we have been doing?" Truney said angrily, "Aren't Denor and Sheldon in charge of this matter?"

"The vice president..." Malmut paused and said, "They said it was indeed difficult."

"Why is it so difficult? Isn't it just like record companies, exploiting employees, increasing working hours, reducing benefits, shady contracts, illegal tax evasion and letting celebrities take the blame, etc..."

"But Sheldon said he found nothing during his investigation." Seeing that Truney was about to get angry again, Malmut quickly explained, "Network groups like the Digital Alliance are different from record companies. Their cooperative relationship with creators is also different from the contractual relationship with record companies. Basically, they sign a contract for each song, not for each person."

"Since there is no employment relationship, there is no such thing as exploitation of employees. In the past, creators liked to create at night, and we almost always tried to ask them to increase their working hours, but now it has become a manifestation of the practitioners' own wishes."

"The way practitioners make profits through the Digital Alliance is called profit sharing. There is no welfare. It is unlikely that there is a yin-yang contract because the profit sharing method announced by the Digital Alliance on the forum is basically transparent and simple, and they have a chat room where information can be exchanged freely. If there was such a thing, public opinion would have already occurred."

"It is unlikely that they are illegally evading taxes. They are still a supported industry, enjoying New York State's tax reduction and exemption policies. They even help the IRS withhold income taxes from employees, and I heard that they are well received by the IRS."

"So?" Truney exhaled a puff of cigar and grinned, "The mediation will start in court tomorrow. Are you going to tell me there is no solution?"

Malmut couldn't help but shudder, but had to bite the bullet and said, "Usually when we encounter a situation like this, we will take some... uh, special measures."

"Yes, but I haven't heard of you taking any action so far?"

"It's not that we didn't take action, but because those people are different from those in the record companies we controlled before." Malmut seemed a little embarrassed: "The people we controlled in the past mostly had specific offices or lived in New York City neighborhoods. Even if they became stars and moved to high-end communities, there were still people related to them who could be controlled by us in the neighborhoods."

"These Asians are different. They were all parachuted in. Their offices are all rented high-end commercial buildings. They all live in high-end communities. They are not within our current business scope."

If Zhou Zhi were here, he would have an inexplicable sense of familiarity with the Practitioners Association.

The Pao-Ge Society was a social organization that was once popular in Shu in the old days.

The membership of the Pao Brothers Society is complex, divided into the Qingshui Pao Brothers and the Muddy Water Pao Brothers. The Qingshui Pao Brothers are the upper nine classes of politicians, military gentry, merchants, scholars, and farmers. These people all have their own businesses and industries, and have social identities and status.

The other type is the bandits, robbers, swindlers, thieves, gangsters and gangsters. Truney started out as a gangster in Brooklyn. Because of his tall stature, he was recruited into the gang by the boss and became a bodyguard and thug.

Because of his ruthless actions, he quickly became famous and gradually took over some gang affairs.

After suffering severe blows in succession, the gangs began to transform and took control of grassroots industry unions. As a result, they turned out to be a blessing in disguise and found another way to make money.

It was quite comfortable to earn this kind of money, and it also brought fame and status, turning a once-hated gang leader into a union leader. This real improvement and whitewashing of social status often made Truney feel a little proud, and a sense of pride of "surpassing his predecessors."

After extending his tentacles into the music circle, Truney, who thought he was dedicated to his career, finally experienced what it felt like to be a human being.

This circle is full of sensual temptations and chaos. After taking control of the bosses of several record companies, Truney realized that the lives of rich people can have so many exciting things.

The record company could flatter Truney and everyone could make money. Now, after more than ten years of development, HIP-HOP, which is based on black music in urban neighborhoods, has passed the bumpy start-up period and officially formed a subculture.

The business opportunities here are almost unlimited.

However, words like "GANGSTER", "GANG", "CLAN" and "THUG" can often be seen in hip-hop culture, which shows that the original soil for the generation of hip-hop culture is closely related to people like Truney.

The record companies also hope to have someone like Truney to help control their singers, so they have made considerable investments in the "Practitioners Association" controlled by Truney.

These investments included both money and power. Several record company bosses also flattered and encouraged him, believing that Truney had the potential to influence his campaign for Congress and that it was totally worth a try.

Truney's great ambition is to be successful in both the black and white worlds. The poor white man from Sicily in "The Godfather" can grow up to be a hero who influences the political arena, so why can't black people do the same?

However, just when everything was going in a good direction, things began to change quietly.

When did it start?

At first, a player that was popular among young people began to become popular, and gradually, young people no longer needed to queue up in record stores to wait for CDs to be released.

Later, many record stores began to compromise, installing computers in their stores and opening something called "digital music stations" to provide digital music copies for young people.

This move has greatly promoted the development of pop music. From the previous bundled sales of entire albums, it has become single downloads. What determines the value of a star is no longer the value of an album, but the popularity of a single.

This gives many record companies the opportunity to release singles for singers. The revenue from a well-produced song is often higher than the revenue from a DVD in the past.

This is a revolutionary change in the music industry. (End of this chapter)