Image source @Visual China
Text｜Lanxi, author丨Xiaoman, edit丨Lanxi
019, Jay Chou held a concert in Paris, France. During the song call session, a fan stood up and said: "My husband has a dream, which is to listen to Jaylen singing "Learn to Meow"."
In order to satisfy the wishes of fans, Jay Chou sang a few lines of "Learn to Meow" and said that this was the first time he sang someone else's song during the sing session.
When the video clip of the concert was posted online, it directly attracted a fierce verbal battle between netizens.
On Weibo, some netizens said: "Jay Chou sang "Learn to Meow" and was simply a shame for Chinese music."
Last week, after "warming up" for 6 years, Jay Chou's new album "'s greatest work " was launched as scheduled. Although
only has six "new songs" in the new album, it still cannot stop the fans from placing orders.
In less than a day, the total sales of "'s Greatest Work" exceeded 5 million copies on the entire network, and the total sales exceeded 150 million.
Is Jay Chou’s new album good?
comments online are mixed.
Some people say that it is indeed very ordinary, and it is not as good as works at its peak.
Some people say that it is already very good, even if it is not as good as before, at least the current saliva song is much better.
In the previous live broadcast, Jay Chou responded that the new album had only six new songs and said:
"If you want to get 20 songs, will you have to wait until next year? I don't know when will come out? I think there will be new songs soon and you can't wait for everyone to hear them."
An album, from composition, lyrics, arrangement, to recording, MV shooting, promotion and distribution... all takes a lot of time and energy.
The era of mobile Internet has laid the threshold for music creation, and more and more grassroots musicians have joined the carnival, but rather than spending effort to create popular golden songs, "Divine Song" has gradually become the mainstream of the music market.
For example, the song "Learn to Meow" which was sung at Jay Chou's concert.
According to Chen Feng, the songwriter of "Learn Meowing Cats", it only took half an hour to write this song. "When I saw my cat suddenly jumping on the table, suddenly inspiration burst out, and the melody and lyrics were already out."
"Learn Meowing Cats" producer Yang Junlong once revealed to the media that in commercial cooperation on music platforms alone, "Learn Meowing Cats" directly brought tens of millions of revenue to his company, also had the copyright fees for short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, "this is settled according to the number of uses." The rules of music creation have been completely rewritten in Jay Chou’s “Divine Comedy Era” after
01
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The golden age of pop music is gone forever, leaving only emotional carnival, ideal tear, and progressive reflection.
In the era of traditional recording, new singers want to make a name for themselves, they must "sell the charts", "sign the concerts" and "disclosures".
One album with ten songs, and two or three high-quality title songs are required to maximize the audience's memory points.
is now like . Now, the original title song of two or three songs has become the "main lyrics" of two or three sentences. If the audience cannot complete the stay within 15 seconds, the lifespan of the song will be announced to end. The
short video platform also replaced the original TV radio program and became a must-fight place for the release of "Divine Comedy".
For example, the reason why "Learn to Meow" can be ranked among the top divine songs is actually inseparable from the help of platform marketing behind it.
In April 2018, in the first week when "Learn to Meow" was launched on Douyin, only more than 2,000 people used it as background music, which indicates that this song is going to be so cold.
"I feel very desolate". Producer Yang Junlong once had high hopes for this song, but he was still unwilling to accept it in the face of such a result. In the late night when he couldn't fall asleep, he suddenly thought of "gesture dance".
The next day, he found someone to design a gesture dance template for "Learn to Meow" and then listed a list of sweet internet celebrity KOLs, with more than 20 in total. Finally, he made a clear bid to let these account owners promote gesture dance.
When the internet celebrities issued the first wave of gesture dance "Learn to Meow", the market still responded mediocrely. Yang Junlong found someone to sort out these materials into a collection and then rolled and spread them for a round.
In this round of spread, "Learn to Meow" became popular.
At that time, the user group of Douyin had not been carefully differentiated, and it was easy to form collective hot spots, such as "gentle" and "butt dance" that often liked tens of millions of times.
In those days, the original singer of "Learning to Meow" Xiao Panpan will be reminded that the music has been used millions of times. "It's been kakka, and the phone feels like it's going to explode."
In the live broadcast room of Xiao Panpan , someone also gave her a gift of 300,000 yuan at a time, just asking her to sing a song "Learning to Meow".
According to Yang Junlong's recollection, he had found a popular internet celebrity "Daigula" with tens of millions of fans to promote it, but the other party initially asked for a promotion fee of 200,000 yuan, but he had no choice but to give up. " Swago " thought the song was naive and refused to accept the order directly.
But less than a week later, with the popularity of "Learn to Meow", both of these big internet celebrities took the initiative to shoot the video.
Yang Junlong said: "It is almost impossible for an ordinary song to become popular on Douyin, and its vitality is long-lasting. Without marketing."
Before the birth of "Learn to Meow", the background music on Douyin was mostly new and edited by old songs, mixed with electronic music rock dance music style.
, the song "Learn to Meow" tailored for Douyin users, has also completely changed the direction of "Divine Comedy". Its business returns are often tens of millions, attracting more and more companies to join the creation of Divine Comedy.
According to statistics, from 2018 to 2022, there were 13 songs on Douyin that have been used more than 10 million times, including "Learn to Meow", " You Look So Good at Smile ", "Your Answer", " Wind Blowing ", " Listen to Me, Thank You ", etc.
Haole Wuhuang Company has launched a large number of popular songs, such as " Star Sea " by Huang Xiaoyun , "Your Answer" by Ayong , and "The Wind Blow" by Wang Heye .
In the view of Tao Shi, the founder of Haole Wuhuang: "We are the company that dares to invest the most in the industry, and we have made some of the industry's spending records. Taking "Stars and Seas" as an example, this song spent 2 million yuan in 15 days in the promotion stage."
, like "Learn to Meow", in order to give the song more visual characteristics, Tao Shi not only changed the original lyrics "Like the Stars scattered in the Sea" to "Like the Stars to protect the Sea", but also specially designed many "guarding scenes".
For example, doctors protect health, soldiers protect their motherland, and fire guards protect their homeland, he invited firefighters from all over the world to link up the account, accompanied by the copywriting "Fearless sea of fire, coming towards you". In just a few months, the topic of "Fire Protection Version of Stars and Seas" has generated more than 6 million views on Douyin.
Since 2019, the entire domestic music market has been stirred up by the short video "Divine Song". Some industry insiders said:
" A lot of capital and companies have poured in. They just made songs and spent money crazy. At that time, everyone was very ambitious and everyone thought, "I can go on me." At that time, the cost of marketing was rising every week, and the number of songs was rising every week. "
In this industrial chain, from buying music hot search lists, to asking internet celebrities to create secondary works with BGM, to creating topics and rolling marketing, the average marketing cost of a song costs about 20,000 to 100,000 yuan.
But for many companies, even if they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing, they must be prepared to lose all their money. "Big hits" can only rely on luck, and there is no replicable logic and path.
So many people like to win by quantity. Among the 100 hundred songs at one time, only two or three of them can become popular can benefit, and the benefits obtained can cover all marketing costs .
After "Learn to Meow", Yang Junlong also launched "Learn to Bark", "Learn to Bark", "Learn to Bark", and "Learn to Bark", etc. He summarized this new way of playing as a music creation model in the short video era:
"We do whatever the market needs, and then cooperate with a wave of fresh and interesting marketing."
02
yunmao Culture, a "shenqu production company" located in Baiziwan, Beijing.
is here, and takes 24 hours to work. has a real-time hot topic detection system for public opinion. Once you capture hot words, it only takes 4 hours from writing songs to online.
The boss of Yunmao Culture is Song Mengjun , graduated from Xinghai Conservatory of Music and is a professional music class.
When she was in school, Song Mengjun posted a personal album, but she quickly fell silent after entering the market. He remembered that the most popular songs on the streets and alleys at that time were "Love Sell" and "Can't Be Promised".
017, the mobile game "King" Glory suddenly became popular, and Song Mengjun unexpectedly found that there were no relevant theme songs on the market. so he created a song of the same name, "Glory of Kings". As a result, once the song was launched, it quickly gained over 100 million views. Song Mengjun tasted the sweetness of "ripping on the hot spots", so he quickly launched songs such as "China has Wu Yifan" and "Hip Hop has China".
, Song Mengjun, who has repeatedly released hits, also successfully obtained financing and established Yunmao Culture, focusing on "Divine Song Manufacturing".
In 2019, Song Mengjun said in an interview: "In the backstage of Kugou Music , my personal song playback volume reached 920 million last year, and all works downloaded 8.08 million times. If you download a song at an average of two yuan, my total work in has created 16 million in a year. ”
In Yunmao Culture, each creator produces about 100 songs per year, and you can write one song in nearly three days. The company will release new songs every day, and the total copyright revenue has already exceeded tens of millions.
On Douyin, Song Mengjun's song "Insomnia Night" has been played nearly 3 billion times. Song Mengjun, who won by mass production, firmly believes in one sentence: " is like playing mahjong in this industry. As long as you don't get out, you are willing to study hard enough. Sooner or later, it will be your turn to be Hupao. "
Song Mengjun's future ambition is not only that, he also wants to create an industrial assembly line for the production of divine songs. "Some are good at arrangers, some are good at writing lyrics, some are good at producing, and some are better at copyright management. In this OA system, mutual assembly and cooperation can be achieved. ”
In addition to Song Mengjun’s Yunmao culture, there are many small music companies that have transformed into short, flat and fast divine song creations in the past two years.
Cui Kai’s company is located in a residential building and has less than ten people under his command. Their daily work is to collect the latest and hottest materials, and then organize and create new ones:
” We will disassemble the lyrics, arrangements, and tones of the hottest songs at the moment, and then add a little of our own things. It will sound different. A song comes out like this, maybe less than three hours, similar to the feeling of working in a production workshop. "
Every music worker may have dreams, but in the real environment of "bad money drives out good money", small companies like Cui Kai can only survive:
"This kind of music is not measured by the public or niche, good or bad, advanced or not. It is a reflection of commercial value. "
In addition to self-produced and sold creative companies, they also gather platform companies that gather resources. They collect songs from independent musicians, buy out the copyright directly if they have suitable works, and the single price ranges from 1,000-5,000 yuan.
Zhao Yingjie works for a song collection platform and receives four or five hundred demos every week, "but most of them are songs that cannot be listened to at all, and even the basic melody is not smooth. "
encountered hot news, and he also took the initiative to post requirements in the group. For example, Valentine's Day is approaching, so he encouraged the author to create emotional songs such as "love, sweetness, or loneliness, sadness". Recently, "Dream Hualu" became popular, "a large number of ancient style songs are about to be launched again."
"Children's songs, love songs, ancient style with strong sense of rhythm, these are the three most popular types on Douyin," Zhao Yingjie introduced, "In fact, many melodies and lyrics are made from previous works, but as long as they listen to them, there is no need for innovation."
As for suspected "plagiarism", "If is really copied, it can be settled with the copyright fee. If there is no fire, no one will pursue it at all. ”
03
When Rolling Stone Music was established for 30 years, its founder Duan Zhongyi held a "30th anniversary of the Rolling Stones" concert.
has been scattered with more than 80 Rolling Stone musicians, including Zhou Huajian , Wubai , Mayday, and Zhang Zhen. Yue , , Richie qi and others sang on the same stage, and they missed the glorious era of a record company. At the concert of
, singer Zhao Chuan said sadly, "I thought I would die of old age in the Rolling Stone, but the result..."
Duan Zhongyi responded in tears: "I'm sorry that you didn't let you grow old in the Rolling Stone, and let everyone leave their hometowns and make a living. I'm really sorry, I didn't take good care of everyone! "
In the 1980s, the record industry of Chinese pop music started hot. In the 1990s, the record industry reached its peak of glory. Polykin released the album "Kiss Goodbye" by Jacky Cheung in 1993, setting a sales record of more than 4 million copies, and it was not broken until the digital era.
Duan Zhongyi once said in an interview:
"From the mid-1980s to the 1990s, the record industry was an absolute gold industry. Any album by Lee Zongsheng and Zhao Chuan could sell 1 million copies in Taiwan, let alone the entire Asian region. The albums of at that time were very expensive, about 100 yuan per piece, selling 1 million records is 100 million yuan, and the record company gets 30% of it, which is 30 million yuan, and the singer gets 5% by himself, and he can earn 5 million yuan. So in that era, there were myths every day that you could buy an , Mercedes-Benz, and by writing a song. ”
998, South Korea's Saehan Company launched the world's first MP3 player MPman F10, supports three format memory of 16/32/64M, digital music officially landed in the market, and the record industry began to suffer a huge impact.In fact, the glory of the record era is very short, only more than ten years ago, but it has left countless classics.
At that time, it took a long time to post a record, high cost and few opportunities, so every album would carefully polish the lyrics and music, and not easily cater to the audience's emotional catharsis.
For example, Mayday , when it first formed a group in 1997, everyone could only practice in the 7-square-meter bedroom of the guitarist monster, and they invested in major record companies. Giving a demo, I was lucky enough to be appreciated by the big brother Lee Zongsheng of Rolling Stone. Two years after the preparation, Mayday's first creative album "Crazy World" was officially released, including works such as "Crazy World", "Zhi Ming and Chun Jiao", and "Hug", and sold 300,000 copies in the market.
Independent musician Cui Longyang started learning guitar in 2003 and started forming a band in 2007. He has been struggling in the circle for so many years. He often missed the past record era:
" The past songs have a stronger sense of social responsibility, paying attention to people, phenomena, society, and soul. No matter how bad the songs are, there are producers who provide quality assurance behind the scenes. Even if the current songs of are rock music , they mainly focus on their current experience. Whether it is fun or not, the situation becomes smaller and shallower. ”
Cui Longyang also wrote a magic song to his friends and made a quick money: “Write 4 songs a day and 50 songs a month.” It was relatively cheap at that time, 1,000 yuan per song, and I earned 40,000 yuan in 10 days, but I wrote it completely without creativity and formatting. I really couldn't do it and I was going to vomit. "The advancement of the technology carrier of
will inevitably bring about changes in the production methods of pop music, but in today's music environment, we can no longer create the next "Jay Chou".
record company no longer exists, the pop music industry system collapses, and "Divine Song" is rapidly occupying the market with lower costs, faster speeds, and more magical melodies.
Even so, people's demand for good music still exists. In those pure auditory environments that are separated from short videos, the ears and soul also need to be nourished from art.
So, when Jay Chou's "The Greatest Work" was released, it instantly caused a huge sensation.
In this era of AI algorithms, it is not that good songs have no market at all.
, such as " Lonely Brave " by , Karen Mok , " So many people in this world ", and " Liu Shuang " by , " Mohe Dance Hall " by , all of which impress the audience with their true thoughtful lyrics and song creation.
In fact, there are many "bad songs" in the recording era. However, after the precipitation of time, memories have helped us sift away defective products, leaving us with unforgettable and touching.
In today's social process of drastic changes, people desperately miss the classic works of Cui Jian, Jay Chou, Luo Dayou, Stefanie Sun , and , while brainwashing the divine songs of the short video platform.
Sometimes, What people miss is not the old golden songs, but the "slow-paced era" that can never go back to .
Music is like the waves by the sea, with tides rising and falling. Whenever a new wave hits, it will always send something and take away something.
The same is true for both "Golden Song" and "Divine Song".
