Rock and Roll: Glorious Years

Afterwards, the group of rock musicians naturally started drinking heavily again. Old Zhao even made a video call, and the two sides started joking around on opposite ends of the video call.

Ding Tong and Pan Jianhu, two veterans, got into a heated argument, which amused everyone.

Only Bian Lang, preoccupied with his own thoughts, didn't drink freely. After all, even knowing the data from Bilibili—that a million people were watching the live stream simultaneously for just over six minutes—Bian Lang had no idea what that meant.

Moreover, all the marketing accounts that jumped on the bandwagon this time were praising it. The "Eight Groups Announcement" and "Sima Man" who were jumping around the most before have completely fallen silent. However, Bian Lang thinks that if this Sima Man is still the same Sima Jiatou from the original Earth, then he is probably preparing a big move.

Anyway, things just happened one after another, and Bian Lang didn't think about making any plans or anything. He just figured he'd deal with whatever came his way when they came to confront him.

This has put Chen Shuting through a lot of trouble. She is currently video chatting with her son while monitoring public opinion online with Zhou Ketong.

Tonight's surge was a bittersweet experience for Bilibili. They'd never experienced anything like Bian Lang's record-breaking simultaneous online viewership in such a short time. The data was indeed higher during the New Year's Eve gala, but that was a live stream lasting several hours, and only at certain points did the number of simultaneous viewers reach one million.

Moreover, that was a large-scale event on their small, unremarkable website, which even required renting temporary servers to coordinate, making it completely incomparable to a chance event like Bian Lang's.

After the first wave of marketing accounts exaggerated the grand occasion, those who missed it began to retaliate fiercely.

The planning director deliberately arranged for official media to issue an apology and release the original live stream video after they were trending on social media for being criticized. This diverted the fans' anger, but it also incurred the wrath of fans on platforms like Xiaomi and NetEase Cloud Music who didn't have access to the audio.

Both top account executives, disregarding whether the timing was right or not, called Chen Shuting and sent her letters of intent for cooperation. Just looking at the reduced profit-sharing offer, Chen Shuting was once again convinced that her choice was correct.

Her son was already asleep on the other end of the video call, so she finally had time to have a proper chat with her husband.

"Old Mo, you know what's been going on these past few days. I've been incredibly busy, so the house-hunting thing might have to wait a bit."

"It's alright, no problem. Just rent it for now. But you'll have to ask your boss to help you figure out a way to get the kids into school."

"Well, I'll bring it up with him after I'm done with these next couple of days."

"By the way, could you ask him something for me? Did he design the mask for his first performance himself? I saw that people are making and selling replicas online, and they're selling pretty well. I like it too, and I'm thinking of..."

"Wait, Lao Mo, what did you say? You mean the mask Bian Lang threw to the Little Witch after his first performance, and now someone's making copies online?"

"Yes, I'll send you the link in a bit so you can see for yourself... What I was trying to say was that if that mask was his own design, I'd like to talk to him about copyright issues. I have a new story idea coming up, and I'd like to use his mask design for the main character's appearance."

"Yes, yes, I'll get this sorted out for you as soon as possible..." Chen Shuting said, but she had another thought in her mind: "If it really is Bian Lang's design, then it's copyrighted. If it really sells well, shouldn't the company consider this area of ​​business..."

After hanging up the phone, Chen Shuting opened the link Lao Mo had sent her and started reading.

"Horror masks, rock concert masks, murder mystery hacker masks, Halloween masks, street dance masks..." These keywords all seemed new to her.

She exited the store and searched for similar items, and found that although only three stores were selling them, their sales were quite good, totaling several thousand units.

"If this goes well, could it be considered a peripheral product of Bianlang?" With this in mind, she already had a small plan.

……

The next morning, Ding Tong, who had left early the night before, got up very early and, quite unusually, went home to see her elderly mother.

After knocking on the door for a long time without anyone answering and calling without anyone replying, Ding Tong went downstairs to the park outside the community and searched around. Sure enough, she found her elderly mother singing with a group of elderly men and women in a corner.

These elderly men and women weren't the kind who sang with a stereo; they all had their own instruments to accompany them, and none of them were common instruments like the erhu; they were all wind instruments.

Ding Tong found it amusing and didn't disturb her, watching for a while before going up to greet her mother during intermission: "Mom, you came down to sing so early, why didn't you wear more clothes..."

"Hehe, don't you even know what month it is? Wear more clothes, how can you even say that!" Although Ding's mother complained, she was still quite happy that her son had come to see her.

Ding Tong was stunned for a moment, then slapped herself across the face and said, "Mom, look at my mouth..."

"Alright, alright, what made you decide to come today?"

"I listened to a song last night and wanted you to hear it too, so here I am."

"You can just send it to me, it's not like I don't know how to use the internet, why do you have to come all over Beijing?" Ding's mother felt that her son was just making excuses.

"I just wanted to come and see you..." These words truly touched Ding's mother's heart.

"Okay, let's go upstairs. We'll have lunch here. I just got some wood ear mushrooms today, so I'll stir-fry some pork with wood ear mushrooms for you..." After saying that, Ding's mother greeted her old friends and called Ding Tong home.

Just as she got home and was about to go to the kitchen, Ding Tong stopped her: "Mom, let me play you a song. One of my little brothers made it. I'm sure you'll like it."

Ding Tong also comes from a musical family. His mother was the lead singer of the chorus of the General Political Department's Art Troupe, and his father was a conductor. They had a son who played rock and roll. In those days, the couple was often nagged by their colleagues. When Ding's father passed away, some people said that he was angered by his unfilial son Ding Tong, otherwise he would have lived a few more years.

"Rock and roll?" Ding's mother asked somewhat uncertainly.

"Hmm, don't jump to conclusions yet, listen first..." Ding Tong said, taking out her phone and opening the original live stream video on Bilibili.

……

Bian Lang also got up early, and after washing up, he went downstairs to get a bowl of rice noodles. On his way to the rehearsal room, he checked the new song charts. "Dye the Night Black" had already climbed to second place, while "Those Without Ideals Don't Feel Sad" had surpassed Xia Yuxi's new song to climb to fourth.

After estimating that there were still more than half a month left, he felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders.

Upon logging back onto Weibo, it became clear that if the original owner's phone hadn't used a Kirin 9000 chip, it probably would have crashed by now.

Ignoring all the private messages, Bian Lang glanced at his follower count, which was already close to 80.

The post where he challenged Sima Nan received over 50 likes and tens of thousands of comments.

I glanced at it, and the latest post was: "Gold diggers, that old scoundrel Ma released a video, charge!"

"Hmm, I wonder which fan club these gold diggers are from. I wonder what grudge they have against this Sima Jiatou that they've all come here to sympathize with me."

Clicking on the link, I saw that Sima Nan had indeed updated his video, and Bian Lang laughed as soon as he saw the title.

Bian Lang's new song is suspected of plagiarism!

"Could it be that we're actually from the same hometown?" Bian Lang joked to himself before opening the video to watch it.

In the video, Sima is seen wearing a Zhongshan suit, sitting in a round-backed chair in front of a large bookshelf, holding an unopened folding fan in his hand.

After the usual greetings to the audience, he began his commentary:

"Just yesterday, I commented on the rock songs that musician Bian Lang has become popular in Europe. I think that as a Chinese musician, one should take it as one's responsibility to spread Chinese culture, rather than blindly following imported music. Bian Lang responded to me and yesterday quickly created a song with lyrics that are full of Chinese spirit. After listening to it, I felt very excited and gratified that our new generation of musicians has such awareness."

Seeing this, Lang couldn't help but curse, "This Sima Jiatou really knows how to pat himself on the back, talking as if he deserves some credit for this song."

Then, Sima Nan in the video changed the subject and continued, "But I wonder if any observant fans have noticed that there are two parts of this song that sound very familiar." The screen then switched to an edited version of Bian Lang's live stream video, showing the two parts of the military song.

"That's right, the two sections of music you've heard are measures three through ten of our country's military song. Some viewers might ask, it does sound familiar, but why does it feel a little different? That's because Bian Lang cleverly shortened the original eight measures to four. Regardless of the song's musicality, I just want to ask Mr. Bian Lang, did you obtain permission from the original composer? Doesn't this constitute plagiarism?"

Besides, can you just take military songs and modify them like that for fun?

Seeing this, Bian Lang understood Sima Nan's tactics. He immediately turned off the video and chuckled, "These Sima guys really aren't simple-minded at all..."