Why bother writing songs? Fast forward to the "Don't Laugh Challenge"

Chapter 57 A Paragon of Black and Red, Deciding the Path (1)

Although Zhou Yumeng had already warned him beforehand, he really didn't expect it to happen so quickly.

After all, this kind of thing involves an artist's career. For a large company, especially for a leader like July Records that stands at the top of the industry, the chain of interests involved must be huge. So important decisions must go through layers of scrutiny and be made with utmost care.

So at first he didn’t think that July Records would actually put him in charge of this matter.

After all, although he has experience with several hit songs, for a company like July Records, there are countless big names they have collaborated with. They should be able to find any master-level producers in the industry who are well-known, as long as they don't have irreconcilable conflicts.

Compared to those who came from the golden age, his experience with hit songs is negligible. They came from the era of physical records and ringtones, and they have been tested by blood and fire.

Moreover, his background wasn't exactly honorable; everyone knew how he made his fortune.
That's right. Compared to these people, he can only be considered to have made a fortune at best, caught a trend, and reaped a wave of market dividends.

The downside is quite obvious: in the short term, you may have solved your livelihood and bread problem, but your image has already been solidified among the audience and fans. It will be very difficult for you to get rid of the impression that you are "Tang", "only make Tang songs", and "a country bumpkin".

Even if you are truly putting your heart into making something, it is still the same.

Take his new album as an example. It's made up of some good quality works, but it ended up like this.

When it first circulated only among rap fans, it received rave reviews.

However, once it spreads through the internet, especially through short videos, the resulting surge in traffic has led to a barrage of criticism.

Only three songs on the entire album were spared: "A Laugh in the Vast Sea," "The Ascetic Monk," and "Nocturne."

However, correspondingly, these three songs also had the lowest popularity of the entire album, only moderately popular, popular only in the rap circle, and have not yet broken into the mainstream. The song with the highest number of plays, "Nocturne", only has around 5000 million plays.

While this data would have been phenomenal for Xia Shen when he first emerged, or for some aspiring musicians, it's simply not good enough for him now.

In his opinion, it makes sense that the song should be better.

There's also a poem from the "Compendium of Materia Medica," which is rather conventional.

No one calls it Tang (a derogatory term for a song), and many people are even praising it. But the problem is that this song has now been magically equated with fitness.

Many listeners say that now, as soon as they hear the melody of this song, they immediately start experiencing PTSD.

This song is clearly meant to express the cultural heritage of Chinese pop culture, and it incorporates electronic music elements to rap, expressing the core message that Chinese pop culture is also keeping up with the times. It obviously has absolutely nothing to do with fitness.

In fact, Xia Shen felt quite helpless about this situation.

Ironically, the highest quality album didn't have the most ideal data or the most traffic. Xia Shen originally thought that the album with the most potential to become a hit was "Nocturne".

It turned out not to be.

He simply couldn't understand why, under these circumstances, July Records would consider themselves instead of those master producers.

When Xia Shen went to July Records and met the vice president, he didn't beat around the bush but directly expressed his doubts.

At this moment, in the vice president's office at July Records, three people are gathered.

Besides Xia Shen and the amiable middle-aged man, who was also the vice president, there was another young man. This young man was exceptionally handsome, with striking and well-proportioned features and an excellent physique; he was the kind of person who would stand out in a crowd at first glance.

Then, with her hair parted in the middle, she was sitting on the sofa.

Who else could it be but Cai Zhiyin, a top idol who was once incredibly popular and had a huge fan base?
However, the current Cai Zhiyin is quite different from the spirited national idol that Xia Shen remembered.

He looked visibly haggard, with obvious dark circles under his eyes and a sense of exhaustion in his gaze.

It's obvious that he's not in good shape lately.

That's understandable; after all, it's no wonder people are in a bad state when something like this happens to them.

But it is, after all, fried noodles, that's a fact, and Xia Shen makes no comment on the matter itself.

He only came here to make money, and he didn't have much contact with Cai Zhiyin.

At this moment, Xia Shen was in a conversation with the vice president and had just asked his question: Why did it have to be him when there were better candidates?
Because this is a really difficult task. To put it bluntly, if you don't do a good job of writing songs and managing the career of an idol whose career has collapsed, it will become a hot potato.

Therefore, he had to understand July Records' motivation before considering whether or not to take on this challenging commission.

It should be noted that the contract contained a clause stipulating that he had the right to refuse the company's requests within a reasonable scope.

Therefore, it is called a 'delegation' rather than a 'task'.

The vice president remained silent for a moment before finally replying, "The reason the company is considering this is quite simple: we recognize your abilities. Of course, don't think I'm just making empty promises; I'm stating the facts."

In this day and age, it's not that you're amazing just because you can write good songs. What's truly impressive is being able to write good songs that are also commercially successful. Don't think this ability is easy; it's actually very difficult to achieve.

In short, it all boils down to this: being famous for being infamous is still being famous. The person standing in front of you now is a role model. When Cai Zhiyin first debuted, we put him on the show with the intention of letting him take a pure idol route.

However, it turns out that even large companies sometimes don't have a very thorough understanding of the market, because the market is actually quite unpredictable.

To put it bluntly, it's all about uncertainty. Whether you'll become popular, how you'll become popular, and whether you'll sell well—luck plays a part too.

"Hmm." Xia Shen nodded, agreeing with this point.

Having been signed with Visual Effects Culture for a long time, he has seen and understood many things. In fact, doing marketing is like playing Minesweeper; often things don't go as planned.

The vice president continued, "So you know what happened next. Things developed beyond our expectations. Cai Zhiyin moved in the direction of being black and red. At that time, after analysis, we believed that this was not in line with our positioning and that it would not last long. We would soon be overwhelmed by the market."

So when he was being ridiculed and turned into a meme, the company chose to stop it promptly, sending out numerous lawyer's letters in an attempt to turn the situation around and set things right.

"Mm." Xia Shen nodded.

He knew what happened next; it failed.

The vice president smiled wryly: "The result was that the backlash from netizens was even greater, making the situation completely irreversible. Later, we had no choice but to change our strategy and take the route of being both controversial and popular. We started to deliberately push and influence in this direction. Otherwise, do you think that a meme can last forever just because netizens like it?"

(End of this chapter)