hollywood billionaire

Chapter 283 A hit single with a revenue of tens of millions

If Billie Eilish has made a name for herself in the music industry, then in the past two months, her bestie Madison Beer has spread her enthusiasm to every area she can touch.

After the VMA awards ceremony, with 650 million people watching the live broadcast at the same time, "Closer" finally surpassed "Cold Water" and took the number one spot on the singles chart, where it stayed for six weeks.

On October 10, Billboard magazine announced the latest issue of the list. The Future Bass collaboration between The Chainsmoker and Holsh continues to lead the list with a huge advantage that makes Han Music despair and choke.

In terms of digital sales, "Closer" dropped 16% this week, retaining its title for the eighth time with 13.7 digital downloads.In terms of streaming playback volume, "Closer" dropped 3% this week, but the historical data of 3780 million plays still allowed Columbia Records to claim the top spot for seven consecutive weeks.Even counting only the membership-based active broadcasts, there were 2160 million times.

What’s even more frightening is that this week, the radio play frequency of “Closer” actually increased by 9%, finally returning to the number one position with a coverage rate of 1.38 million listeners.

This week's "Closer" won all the three subdivided lists of Billboard, including the digital sales list, streaming list and radio play list. It is no doubt that it will become No. 1 on the overall list.

This grand occasion of four charts reaching the top of the charts at the same time has only occurred four times since the birth of the streaming media charts in 2013:

The first time, June 2014, 6, "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX.

The second time, from February to April 2015, was Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ number one single “Uptown Funk”.

The third time, November 2015, 11, Adele's "Hello".

And this fourth time, it’s “Closer” by The Chainsmokers and Halsey.

At the same time, The Chainsmokers also broke a record. This group surpassed Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's "Thrift Shop" and LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" to become the group that has won the most number one singles in the past 12 years. Duo.

The last group to win this honor was Outkast, who dominated the scene with "Hey Ya" in 2003-2004.

This kind of milestone work that is destined to go down in history is not an opponent that Han Yi can defeat just by relying on his strong financial resources and song list announcements.

Just like the audience who were keen on slow love songs in the 90s chose "One Sweet Day" and "I Will Always Love You", and the fans who tried pop dance music for the first time in the [-]s chose "I Gotta Feeling", the electronic music of the [-]s was The European and American music circles, which are holding the altar, chose to use "Closer" to crown this EDM wave sweeping the world.

Some trends can be changed, but very few trends are destined to be beyond human control.

"Closer" is one example.

But being unable to surpass "Closer" does not mean that you cannot surpass yourself. After the VMA awards ceremony, "Closer" won the championship for six weeks, and during these six weeks, the single that accompanied it in the second place has not been changed.

It's "Cold Water".

In the first week after "Closer" won the title, "Cold Water" sold 82000 digital copies, ranking second.It was streamed 2020 million times, ranking second.The radio station covers 1.34 million people, ranking second.

"Closer" topped the charts for the sixth consecutive week, and "Cold Water" ranked second with digital sales of 85000 copies.It was streamed 1990 million times, ranking third.The radio station covers 1.21 million people, ranking third.

In other words, the single's data has barely changed in six weeks, demonstrating rock-solid stability.

How did you do it?
Streaming is very simple. Han Music’s big playlist strategy can allow any single in the copyright library to be cold-started from scratch and get millions of plays in a week, making a hit single that has won the No. 2000 spot on Billboard The song remains in the range of [-] million plays, with almost no problems.

In terms of radio coverage, the playlists of commercial radio stations change on a weekly basis and once a month. Singles like "Cold Water" that are stable in the top ten of the charts will basically not be adjusted.From 1.428 million people when it won the championship, to 1.34 million people when it fell to second place, and then to 10 million people on October 3, although it shows a continuous downward trend, it is in line with the normal and healthy life cycle of a single. .

As for the increase in digital downloads against the trend... that's because "Cold Water" launched a discount sales model at the end of September to save the decline in digital sales.

The price of 69 cents a song can well attract the purchasing power of the last batch of people who hold the currency and wait and see.

Han Music, which just two months ago was still mocking "Cheap Thrills" and RCA as "69ers", held up the discounted price tag and shouted "It smells so good".

This is what shopping malls are like. When you do it yourself, it is "intelligent and keen advance decision-making". When others do it, they are "shameless people who exploit loopholes in the rules."

Han Yi is not exempt from vulgarity.

As long as "Cold Water" can maintain its runner-up position, let alone discounts, he is even willing to give it away if it can't be included in the sales volume.

Because "Closer" has topped the charts for 12 consecutive weeks, it is the highest performance of electronic music and electronic music producers on the Billboard main chart.It marks that the EDM culture, which started in the 1980s, gained momentum in the 1990s, rose in the 2000s, and exploded in the 2010s, has officially reached its peak in the mainstream cultural circle.

In the next seven years, there will be some electronic music titles one after another, such as "Starboy" by The Weeknd and Daft Punk, "Rain On Me" by Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande, "Without Me" by Halsey, BTS's "Dynamite" and "Butter", The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber's "Stay"... But no electronic music producer can be listed in the artist column like Calvin Harris, Zedd, Diplo and The Chainsmokers before. He put his name on it and won the first prize.

With the commercialization and mainstreaming of Techno music in the 2020s, this EDM wave sweeping the world will be replaced by retro dance music that is fully integrated into the pop music structure and gradually disappear.

Electronic music will still have a wide audience, and Tomorrowland and EDC will still be hard to find, but they will no longer conquer radio stations and charts in an independent and unique form using the most traditional Chorus-Buildup-Drop model.

At least until Han Yi was reborn, this situation continued.

Therefore, Han Yi must do his part if he wants the electronic musicians he has signed to continue to produce results, allow the newly acquired Mad Decent to ride on the wind, and make Han Music's future layout of the electronic music industry smoother. We will work hard to enhance, expand and extend the commercial performance and cultural influence of electronic music in the mainstream circle as much as possible.

For the song "Closer", he could only provide singer Horsi to sing the vocal melody. He couldn't control other things, and he shouldn't.

But for "Cold Water", he owns the complete master tape copyright and music copyright.

He is the direct beneficiary behind the scenes of every penny that record companies and copyright distribution companies can pocket.Since the single was officially released at the end of July, the total weekly plays of "Cold Water" on global streaming platforms, including the United States, has not fallen below 7 million.As of October 3000, the streaming data recorded by Han Music has exceeded 10 million.

This means that in the past two months alone, Mad Decent, a subsidiary of Han Music, has earned at least US$192.63 million in revenue from this song.

After excluding the artist's share, there is still nearly 150 million US dollars remaining on the account.

Taking into account the long-tail effect of hit songs, "Cold Water" can bring at least twice this amount of revenue to the label in the future.

And this is just one aspect of streaming media. As the champion single gradually enters the public eye and daily life, more and more movie producers, advertisers, and even shopping malls and large chain restaurants will choose to display "Cold Water" Add to their playlists to attract customers, and sync and public performance licensing revenue can rise into the seven-figure range.

In other words, one song "Cold Water" can bring tens of millions of dollars in revenue to Mad Decent and its controlling Han Music.

Considering the production cost of this single, these green US dollars are all net profits.

At this point, no matter how stupid, stubborn or complacent you are, you have to admit that Han Yi's business behavior of spending US$3600 million to acquire the shares of Diplo and Kevin Kusatsu was a shrewd and far-sighted strategic investment. .

The actual royalties and licensing fees received, plus the valuation of the master tape copyright and music copyright in the capital market, are enough for Han Yi to recover his capital.

Even if he holds it until after 2020, when Wall Street starts to buy music copyrights aggressively and the premium for hot songs reaches the highest level, Han Yi can not only recoup his capital, but even make a fortune.

For ordinary people who don't have a memo plug-in, after completing this investment transfer, they can retire in place and enjoy the long and leisurely winner's life for the rest of their time.

Even if you don't think that far ahead and put all the proceeds from "Cold Water" in the Mad Decent label account, the money will be enough to support Mad Decent to continue operating for five or six years without releasing a single new song. time.If the production and promotion staff were cut off, leaving only the most basic operation and maintenance functions, then Mad Decent could even rely on this song to survive forever.

A champion single contains such huge energy.

This year, there will be a total of 13 Billboard No. [-] singles.

Except for this one that belongs to Han Music, the others are the assets of the three major music groups.

Going back 76 years, since Billboard released its first list on July 1940, 7, almost every number one single produced in the American music industry is in the copyright library of these three groups.

One can imagine the unshakable strength of Universal, Sony and Warner in this field, and the difficulty for Han Yi to join them.

There are thousands of champion singles in their copyright library, with annual revenue of 100 billion US dollars... Even if there is a reward mechanism with constant cash back, how long will it take for Han Yi to go from zero to one to one thousand, catching up with the big three? ?
In addition, don’t forget that music, or popular music products in the 21st century, does not only have the function of pleasing the ears.Along with the presentation of visual content, music can also become entertainment content that brings visual enjoyment to people like movies and TV series.

And this kind of music visualization content can also bring considerable income to music groups as various types of income from online media are gradually expanding and formalizing.

This is the MV.

Music videos, starting with the 1927 song and dance film "The Jazz Singer," have been one of the most popular categories of entertainment in modern society.Ordinary people like to listen to love stories composed with melodies, and also like to watch moving scenes recorded by cameras, and they cannot resist the audio-visual charm of combining the two.

The music industry will naturally not give up on this cash cow that Bollywood and Disney are getting stronger and stronger the more they water it. In 1974, Queen's shocking "Bohemian Rhapsody" MV was released. This complex rock music is widely considered to be the first global hit single, and the core of its marketing strategy is its accompanying music video. In 1981, MTV imitated the success of Queen and began to copy this business model in large quantities, bringing the concept of music videos into thousands of households and becoming a promotional tool that every record company has painstakingly researched.

In that era, music videos themselves were not directly profitable, and record companies only regarded them as a purely promotional tool. This phenomenon continued into the Internet era and continued until 2007, when YouTube was sued by Viacom.

As we all know, YouTube is essentially a video sharing platform. It does not produce any content itself. All videos are created and uploaded by users.A large part of these videos use unauthorized commercial music, or are cover videos of popular singles, or simply MP3 files stolen by users.

As a result, in 2007, Viacom filed a $10 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube, accusing the site of "blatant" infringement by allowing users to upload and view copyrighted material owned by Viacom. copyright.Viacom complained that the YouTube platform hosts more than 150000 unauthorized clips of Viacom shows, including full episodes of many popular TV shows, and that these videos have been viewed a total of 15 billion times.

2007 billion in 15.

I will not go into details about the remaining lengthy court battles and legislative duels, and jump directly to the results - the media giants failed to break the armor of the IT upstarts, but instead helped the latter to put on a stronger shield. Google used the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Act to defend itself, claiming that it was just an online platform and should not be punished for users' personal infringements.In the end, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against Viacom, and film and television companies and music companies lost a huge piece of fat that was almost in their mouths - they were no longer able to obtain royalties directly from the platform.

However, in order to appease the copyright holders, YouTube, which was victorious, also made certain concessions. In 2007, YouTube announced that it would start a partner program to share advertising revenue with users who meet its standards. In October, YouTube launched the Content ID system, allowing copyright holders to enter their copyright information into YouTube's system. YouTube will help copyright holders detect the use of copyrighted content in uploaded videos, and based on the frequency of use of copyrighted content, a certain number of A proportion of advertising revenue from users is distributed to the original copyright owner.

Although by doing this, the royalties that film and television companies and music groups can get are far less than the royalties and package licensing fees paid to them by streaming media platforms, such as Netflix, Apple Music and Spotify, it is better than nothing. At least, from now on, users MVs that are free to watch can also receive advertising shares based on the number of clicks and interaction rate.

The reason why Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music and Abu Dhabi Media jointly established Vevo is because they have taken a fancy to this segmented industry that will be worth billions in the future.

To give a random example, Justin Bieber's "Sorry" MV has received 2023 billion views as of 37. Based on the interaction rate of YouTube pre-roll ads, these free broadcasts can provide Vevo and the Def Jam group behind it , bringing sharing income between US$508.2 million and US$1270.5 million.Calculated based on the median interaction rate, it’s almost $6539428.72.

If placed on a streaming media platform, 37 billion views can bring at least 3000 to [-] million U.S. dollars in revenue to the copyright owner, which is more than three times YouTube's advertising share.

For Viacom and the media giants, one can imagine the regret of missing out on billions.But for the three major music groups, this sharing model is not unacceptable. After all, the royalties they can get from online music stations like Pandora are actually less, and MVs have never made money in history. , now it can become a source of income, which is something to be thankful for.

As a result, music copyright holders are significantly more tolerant of music videos than video copyright holders, and well-produced MVs have gradually become a growth point for record companies and musicians.

The newly born Han Music will naturally not miss this deep well which, although full of shortcomings, is enough to drink to its fullest.

"Cold Water", the 200 theme song sponsored by Bud Light with US$2016 million, is the first top masterpiece of this new music group in the field of music videos.

(End of this chapter)