The opening of China Entertainment Group gave Jay Chou a head-on confrontation

Chapter 497 The New King of the Internet Age
For Zhou Yi, this was a result that was destined to happen.

The difference is that this time he became the man who stood in the tide of the times and plucked the fruits, becoming the pig on the vent.

But for the European and American music scene, major record companies and even channel dealers, this result was tantamount to a sudden innovation - a blow to their aorta.

There are no middlemen to make a profit from the price difference, you can sell it at whatever price you want.

There are no vague statistics on physical stores or offline advertising promotion data, only clearly marked price tags on the Internet.

This result amazed everyone of this era.

Whether it was the King of Pop Michael Jackson, the white hip-hop god Eminem, or the already notorious 50 Cent, no matter if they had a feud with Zhou Yi or not, they all fell silent after the result came out.

Singers can estimate the sales amount roughly as much as they should, and there will never be a situation like that of Mavericks Records, the company jointly owned by Madonna and Warner, which should have made a profit but ended up losing more than 60 million US dollars due to channel operations.

This is undoubtedly a major benefit for singers, especially top singers like them.

Because it can increase their voice.

As Apple announced this number, everyone, whether they accepted it or not, knew one thing in their hearts:

The era of physical records is really over.

It ended on Apple's platform and in Zhou Yi's hands.

After the result came out, countless record and channel stakeholders cursed Zhou Yi on the Internet, smearing this singer from the far East with unprecedented intensity. However, they still could not stop this man from becoming the sole representative of paid music on the Internet - becoming a god instantly!
His fans are no longer limited to obtaining songs from major traditional channels, and his income is no longer dependent on a dense network of upstream and downstream distributors.

He opened a new era for the United States, Europe, and even the entire world music scene - the Internet paid music system was officially established from then on.

No matter how he is slandered or viewed, the name Zhou Yi is firmly tied to the history of world pop music. In the future, whenever the history of pop music is mentioned, this man from China will be an unavoidable figure.

When the so-called traditional "god-making" channels and discourse power were in the hands of traditional European and American old money, Zhou Yi, who did not follow the usual path, directly used his influence to work with Apple to create a "god-making" route that was completely independent of the traditional record channels.

"To put it in a broader sense, from now on, anyone who can make money from the paid music system on the Internet will have contributed to it."

Michael Jackson, the king of the last era and the representative of the last rays of the traditional record era, sat on the chair. After the initial chaos, his mind finally calmed down. He kept shaking his head, feeling a myriad of emotions in his heart.

If Zhou Yi can maintain a steady output of works in the future, at least three world-best-selling albums, that is about six to seven years. Combined with this achievement of opening up a new battlefield, he is the next generation of pop king.

No matter how much controversy there is, Warner will be able to market it, and there will also be many people willing to acknowledge it.

Not convinced?

If you don't agree, just keep it to yourself.

Zhou Yi’s fans will always have a natural sense of superiority whenever they quarrel with each other, and this is Kaishanguai’s biggest status advantage.

It turns out Michael Jackson wasn't the only one who thought this way.

On the 25th, Zhou Yi and Apple's action, which could be described as rebuilding the country, was directly reported by the media across the United States and swept the entire traditional media industry at an extremely fast speed.

Los Angeles Times: Spike, the first paid music publisher on the Internet

The New York Times: "Spike and Jobs' collaboration: a new structure for the 21st century music system"

On the 26th, The Washington Post: "Accurate Vision, Perfect Cooperation"

New York Post: "Spike, the founder of a new era in music"

"..."

On the 27th, even British newspapers such as The Mirror and The Guardian reported on the incident.

When Apple officially announced on the 29th that the number of paid downloads of Zhouyi songs had officially exceeded 1500 million, people in the entire European and American music market were already numb to the point of being unable to bear it any longer.

From the 23rd to the 28th, in five days, a total of 1500 million songs were sold.

Those who had never thought that Internet payment could unleash such energy were all dumbfounded, even Jobs himself.

“God, Spike’s songs are so popular on music apps.”

After looking at the data every day for the past five days, he felt like he was almost becoming like the Book of Changes.

It’s not that there are no other songs in the copyright library of Apple Music Store. It has obtained most of the copyright libraries of several major record companies.

But even so, the light still belongs only to Zhou Yi.

Amidst the barrage of insults and the utmost praise, Zhou Yi's reputation in Europe and the United States was deeply embedded in people's minds through these quarrels - along with that extremely eye-catching list.

From July 2003 to 7, 23, the paid download rankings of Apple Music Store are as follows:
No. 1: "Baby", paid downloads: 110.77 million;
No. 2: "Viva La Vida", 100.65 million

No. 3: "Yeah", 95.92

No. 4: Counting Stars, 91.92

No. 5: We Are Young, 81.92

No. 6: "Something Just Like This", 81.77 No. 7: "Apologize", 78.32

No. 8: Natural, 77.26

No. 9: "Good Time", 77.03

No. 10: Enemy, 75.77…

光是付费下载的前十名就直接砍下了总和为871.33万首的销量，11-20名同样为周易两张英文专辑里的歌曲，销量总和突破了630万。1-20总和突破1500万……

In a music store, the top 20 paid download charts were dominated by the same singer - the all-inclusive Spike chou almost blinded everyone's eyes!
Under this list, all doubts are vulnerable and all insults are not worth mentioning!
This is simply a miracle - no, it is a miracle!
It is true that Apple recommended the album cover at the beginning, but the fact that the album sold to this number can only mean that everyone, including Warner, underestimated how popular the songs in Zhou Yi's two English albums should be.

"Attitude Show" has eleven songs, "Forever Young" has ten songs, totaling 21 songs. Only the reggae song "Rude" from the first album did not make it into the top 20, and the remaining 20 songs occupied the top 20. This is the first time on the chart that a single song beat itself by places.

“Two albums, 21 songs, 20 internet hits…”

Fuck God Jesus Mary!
Is your mother a human?!

If putting these songs in the album and selling them before just made people think that Zhou Yi was squandering resources and it was a pure waste, then when the Apple Five-Day Chart came out, many senior executives within Warner wanted to kneel down and kowtow to Zhou Yi.

What's worse is that some people even want to strangle Zhou Yi for being extravagant.

Dad—No, Grandpa, please Grandpa!

If these 20 hit songs could be separated, they could form the main tracks of seven to eight albums.

You sent out all the photos in just two of them, you really don't hold back!

Knock it inside!
On the 29th, Bild, one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany and even Europe, published a rare pop music column, adding fuel to Zhou Yi's story. Along with the British newspapers such as The Guardian and The Sun, Zhou Yi's reputation once again resounded throughout Europe.

Bild: Chinese singer Spike leads a new era of Internet music!
The Sun: The King of Internet Pop! A list of Spike's rumored girlfriends! All of them are extremely hot! Who will become the queen?
"..."

This issue, The Sun sold the best.

Even Shakira was included in the list. When she was interviewed, she made a rather ambiguous comment but did not give a clear answer...

It was also through the usual exaggeration of The Sun that people remembered that Zhou Yi's data was only for the US region. With the global rollout of iPod, the sales of Zhou Yi's classic songs will undoubtedly increase several times on this basis...

That is to say...

"Fuck! How many hundreds of millions can you make?! Or dollars?!"

Domestic, Hong Kong Airport, VIP Lounge.

After completing the recording of "Meeting", Sun Yanzi packed his luggage and took the same flight as Zhou Yi, preparing to fly to Taiwan to participate in this year's Golden Melody Awards, which the media called "the least suspenseful".

This can be considered as Zhou Yi’s annual trip to Taiwan.

However, this time after participating in the Golden Melody Awards, which is the least suspenseful, he will fly directly from Taiwan to Japan instead of returning to the mainland as before.

She was just reading the newspaper, but when she saw the reminder in The Sun, she counted on her fingers, her eyes suddenly widened, and she looked at Zhou Yi in a daze as if nothing had happened.

"Not only that, Apple won't charge me because my total sales have exceeded 300 million songs."

Zhou Yi took a bite of the apple and amusedly flicked the woman's smooth face after sufficient rest and maintenance. "Not only that, for the part exceeding 300 million songs, they will give me 40% of the sales as an incentive."

"Wouldn't that be a huge loss for my grandma?" Sun Yanzi opened his mouth to take a bite, but ended up biting into nothing and pretended to grind his teeth.

"How is that possible? At most, he doesn't make any money from me and gives me some subsidies."

Zhou Yi chuckled, feeling very satisfied.

These songs of his have always been the first, second, third and even top ten in sales charts over the years. In the record era, they didn't look very obvious when they were crammed onto a record, but once they were available on Internet music websites, that was the beginning of the explosion of their influence.

It is not an exaggeration to say that it was a sweeping victory.

The Apple Music Store is just getting started now, but its revenue next year will reach more than 43 billion US dollars, directly accounting for half of Apple’s total annual revenue. This is the power of iPod + music store paid downloads.

As of 2016, the Apple Music Store has sold more than 250 billion paid downloads of songs.

You can imagine how fat this piece of meat is.

In the Internet boom, the winner takes all.

Once it gets going, the speed at which money can be made will far exceed the imagination of anyone in this era, including Steve Jobs himself who came up with the idea.

Never mind whether Joe's goal of selling 100 million or 300 million songs now seems like an idiotic act of giving away money, at least more than 99% of people thought he was crazy at the time.

In the mainland, an Internet practitioner named Xie Zhenyu also saw business opportunities in building a music platform from various reports, which further strengthened his belief.

As long as we do a good job on the project at hand, the future financial prospects will definitely be bright!
Xie Zhenyu was extremely excited to see the future from the Apple Music Store model, and continued to lead the team to devote themselves to research and development.

The project they are currently developing is a music app called Kugou Music...

(End of this chapter)