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

Chapter 923 The Year of Decline in the Chinese Music Scene

"Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity, Mr. Zhou."

"You're welcome. If you have any new ideas in the future, you can call this number or send an email to this address."

Seven days later, on the 20th, Zhou Yi met with Zhang Yiming, the chairman of the technical committee of Kuxun.com, in Beijing.

At this time, he had not yet evolved into his later complete form; he was still a high-level employee working for others after his business failed.

Wearing a standard plaid shirt, glasses, and short hair, he fits the stereotypical image of an internet technician in the public eye.

Born in 1983, Zhang Yiming is only two years younger than Zhou Yi, making them essentially the same age group. However, their current circumstances are vastly different.

The Book of Changes still doesn't know how to write the word "failure";
Zhang Yiming chose to start his own business after graduating from Nankai University, but predictably suffered a harsh reality check. Frustrated and unsuccessful, he joined Kuxun.com and began his long journey of self-improvement.

If Zhou Yi remembers correctly, Zhang Yiming will continue to fight despite repeated failures, constantly shifting between the perspectives of "King of Hired Managers" and "Entrepreneur," until ByteDance was born under his leadership when he started his fifth venture in 2012.

In the era when the three giants BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) jointly dominated the Chinese internet, no one could have imagined that ByteDance, a small company with an initial team of only a dozen people and a startup capital of only a few million, would one day rise to prominence in the mobile internet era.

With one kick, Baidu, the former hegemon of the Chinese internet, was ousted from the stage, and he took its place.

TikTok and TK have swept across the world, truly achieving success in both China and the US.

If it weren't for the fact that Zhang Yiming's kneeling in apology to the US was so swift that it not only stunned the Chinese but also the Americans, he wouldn't have been forced to kneel on the head. After all, the reason of considering the business environment is still a universal one.

There's a saying that goes something like this—in the eyes of Europe and America, no matter how you change your identity, you will always be a Chinese person.

As it turns out, the US could only talk the talk; no matter who was in power, the ban on TK was repeatedly delayed.

The most direct consequence of this was that Zhang Yiming's initial sliding knee was wasted, and he lost face in front of the whole world.

"You think highly of him?"

Watching Zhang Yiming carefully put the business card into his pocket and turn to leave, Cheng Hao, who was sitting in the chair in the conference room, turned around and said, "He actually gave him his personal business card."

"It's highly professional and has enormous investment potential," Zhou Yi, with his clairvoyant abilities, made his judgment without hesitation.

Seeing that the man had given such a high evaluation of the investment, Cheng Hao fell into deep thought, silently adding this name to her list of top investment priorities.

The last time Zhou Yi gave this kind of investment evaluation was for NetEase, which was once on the verge of being delisted.

In the end, Ding Sanshi, having ended the internal strife, propelled NetEase onto a fast track of growth, and also made Cheng Hao a wealthy woman.

"So that means increasing investment in this company?"

"The company? No, it's mainly him as a person."

KuXun.com does have potential, but the internal strife within management is too wasteful. Zhang Yiming himself was eventually ousted. Now, it's better to just sell the investment to a buyer in 08; there's no need to hold it long-term.

................................................

After the meeting with Gui Yi, Zhou Yi returned to Warner Music and immediately went into the recording studio to continue working on his new English album. He also took some time to listen to the demo of Hou Xuan's album "Antiques".

Because he acquired "The West Chamber" early on and Hou Xuan underwent training last year, the songs included in this album, "Antiques," which was originally supposed to be released in 05, have clearly changed.

Most notably, besides "Bridge", the songs "Kunming Lake" and "Bicycle Lovers", which should have appeared in the EP, are now included in "Antiques".

The person who chose these two songs for the album is Lee Jong-sung.

"He wrote, composed, and arranged all the songs on the album himself. I'm curious if you're selecting new artists based on your own template."

As the producer of "Antiques", when Li Zongsheng came to him to report on the album's progress after learning that Zhou Yi had returned to the company, he couldn't help but feel that the younger generation was formidable - all 11 songs on the album were written, composed, and arranged by Hou Xuan himself.

At first, he thought Warner was playing the so-called "inheritance system" to create hype for Hou Xuan's debut. However, after officially taking over as producer, he was silenced by the enhanced version of Hou Xuan who had received training.

Warner Music is going a bit too far.

Especially after he joined the company, he heard that Warner Music's most valued female singer-songwriter was still undergoing training...

“I suggest making ‘Kunming Lake’ the main single. This song has the shadow of your palace-style R&B, which is not a big deal for a new singer, since you are the one who promoted him.”

"Moreover, the lyrics of this song are very well written."

"Bicycle Lovers" is a commercially viable single that fits the mainland market environment perfectly... Pushing up his glasses, Li Zongsheng, now officially in charge of producing, laid out his album production plan and also briefly introduced the current competitive market environment to Zhou Yi—

In 2006, the overall quantity and quality of Chinese music declined significantly compared to the previous two years.

Since the beginning of the year, his former record label Rock Records released Ah Niu's new album "Peach Blossoms Bloom". Although the title track "Peach Blossoms Bloom" is popular, it is clearly not in the same niche as Hou Xuan. On the contrary, another singer promoted by Rock Records, Cao Ge, is worth paying attention to.

While both albums feature lyrics and music composed by Cao Ge, his new album "Gege Blue" is clearly superior in quality, given that he received musical education from a young age.

In addition, Lu Jianzhong, a newcomer under HIM International Music, has soared to fame with "Tears of a Thousand Years" and can almost be said to be Hou Xuan's biggest competitor this year.

"Lin Junjie of Ocean Butterflies Music released his new album 'Cao Cao' in February, achieving record-breaking sales. Songs such as 'Cao Cao' and 'Immortal Body' propelled the album to its best market performance to date, but his niche doesn't overlap with the latter..."

If he hadn't experienced it firsthand, Lee Zongsheng would find it hard to believe that the Chinese music scene, which was thriving just two years ago, has declined to this extent this year.

To date, only Lin Junjie's "Cao Cao" and Sun Yanzi's English album "Strategy Selections" have sold more than 50 copies in the entire Chinese music scene.

Secondly, Mo Wenwei's new album "If There Is No You", Hu Yanbing's new album "Music Code" and Xu Wei's cover album "On the Road" have sold over 25 copies in pre-sales.

Of these people, apart from Lin Junjie of Ocean Butterflies Music and Mo Wenwei of Sony Music, the other three are all singers under Warner Music.

Without inflated figures, the sales of a few artists below the top tier almost collectively plummeted, even Chen Yixun couldn't escape this fate.

After all, Chan Yik-shun's newly released Cantonese album is limited by the Cantonese genre. Although one song, "Best Friend," is quite popular, the album's overall sales are not high.

"If this 'Antiques' book sells more than 15 copies a month later, it can be considered a huge hit."

Lee Zongsheng offered his professional assessment.

The reason for emphasizing real sales figures is mainly because, in order to make things look good, many singers in the music industry will try to boost their sales figures to some extent, with only a few top artists not needing to resort to such tactics.

Since Warner Music is promoting new talent, it naturally cannot avoid the usual practice.

He had a feeling, a very serious feeling—that the music scene might be entering a dark age, an era where releasing albums wouldn't make much money, and only releasing hit songs and doing gigs would make money.

"About that, more than 15 a month, and aiming for more than 30 a year."

When Zhou Yi returned, he had already seen the reports on those shocking realities of the music industry, but he was powerless to change them.

2006 marked the beginning of a decline for the Chinese music scene.

While top singers can still maintain their sales and hit songs, there is no doubt that a large number of mid- to lower-tier singers have gradually lost the ability to generate positive sales through albums.

The music scene had already settled down, no longer as vibrant as it was at the beginning of the century, and many small and medium-sized record companies began to close down one after another starting from this year.

Fortunately, Warner Music benefited from Zhou Yi's early planning and was able to make a fortune through ringtones. For example, if Hou Xuan's album "Antiques" had become a hit through ringtones, the revenue would likely have exceeded that of the album itself.

Well, in fact, the song "Bicycle Lovers" was enough for him to achieve financial freedom through the peak of the ringtone market.

Zhou Yi isn't the kind of heartless boss who would only pay Hou Xuan 2000 yuan a month even though the song is a hit; he's actually quite conscientious.

And another landmark event of decline, as time went by, arrived as expected—

In early May 2006, the nomination list for the 17th Golden Melody Awards was officially announced.

Contrary to everyone's expectations, Jay Chou, a strong favorite to win, was surprisingly eliminated during the nomination stage – he received zero nominations for individual awards.

This can be described as an event that shook the entire music industry.

As one of the former "Chinese Music Bi-weekly Awards", even during its lowest period, the Golden Melody Awards never refused to nominate Jay Chou, even though he didn't receive many awards in the end.

This time, however, Jay Chou didn't even receive a single nomination, effectively ending his Golden Melody Awards journey a month early.

In his best-selling album "Beethoven in November" last year, only Fang Wenshan's lyrics and Hong Jingyao's arrangement were selected as the best lyrics and best arrangement.

Jay Chou, who had returned to Taiwan early with great joy, ready to witness his nomination in front of family and friends and even planning to try and win the Zhou Yi Award at this year's Golden Melody Awards, was completely dumbfounded—

His fans even directly shouted "rigged".

"I don't understand why this is happening. I can only say that I shouldn't have reminded my grandmother to pay attention to these things." A furious Jay Chou expressed his dissatisfaction with the Golden Melody Awards to the Taiwanese media for the first time.

(End of this chapter)