Chapter 205: Big Sale

PS: Thanks to book friend Youfeng for the tip!

The day after "Time to Say Goodbye" was released, Miss Luo Quan's name finally entered the public eye on a global scale.

World-famous newspapers such as the UK's Daily Mail and The Guardian, China's RMRB, Japan's Asahi Shimbun, and the US's New York Times all cleared their own pages for this talented musical girl, promoting this series of excellent musical works she recently released to the world.

The last Chinese musician to be competed for reporting by major newspapers was the well-known pianist Wu Feng. Six years ago, at the age of eighteen, he won first place in the International Chopin Piano Competition, which can be described as having a bright future.

And the facts are indeed so. In less than three years, he became a world-renowned pianist and was invited by the Golden Hall in Vienna to perform a piano performance that can be called the most wonderful since the new century.

And Miss Luo Quan might become the second Chinese person to be invited by the Golden Hall in Vienna after Wu Feng.

The excellence of "Farewell Moment" has already received the answer from the praise of countless famous musicians. As a crossover work of opera and pop music, it perfectly integrated the advantages of both.

Just looking at it in the pop music scene, its musicality or artistry is the highest level, and Miss Luo Quan's singing, which makes countless fans amazed, is an even greater bonus.

In short, this is a song that is bound to leave a heavy stroke in the history of pop music. Its historical status is also bound to be quite high. Saying it is a world-famous song is not an exaggeration at all.

Although the album encountered a small setback when it was pre-sold in China, Miss Luo Quan used her talent and strength to make the "piracy party" completely submit and obediently pay for the digital album.

And the pre-sale volume of the physical album is also at the top level in China in recent years, having exceeded 700,000 copies. After the official release, this number will only be more!

Moreover, this is still in China where the habit of buying physical albums is not very popular. In Japan, the pre-sale volume of the "Love" album exceeded 2.8 million, second only to the pre-sale volume of 4.86 million copies of "Adult Ceremony" that Miss Luo Quan created herself.

Before signing the copyright authorization contract with Universal, Miss Luo Quan kept an eye on it.

She didn't make any requests to Universal, and how to promote and release it was completely handled by Universal. But except for the album authorization in the Chinese region sold to Penguin, she also wanted to retain the authorization in the Japanese region.

This one was naturally left to Sony. When she first became famous on the internet, Sony was the first to find her and offered a very conscientious signing price for a newcomer. Although it didn't succeed in the end, it also won Miss Luo Quan's favor.

Now that she is famous, she certainly won't forget this "old partner" who gave her great help at the beginning.

When her first song of the new album went online, Director Ishimura personally called her, wanting to buy the authorization of "Love."

And Miss Luo Quan, who had already prepared, naturally sold the album authorization in the Japanese region to Sony. Although it was only one country, as the world's second-largest record market, it was enough for Sony to make a lot of money.

Of course, Sony also paid a sky-high price for the authorization of this album—a full 300 million yen!

And as usual, the shares of other producers and creators have to be calculated separately.

Of course, don't look at the authorization fee being so expensive, a pre-sale earned it all back.

With Miss Luo Quan's current appeal, she basically doesn't need to spend much money on promotion in Japan. Sony only needs to reveal a little bit of news, and there are plenty of fans on the internet to act as water armies!

This is still in Japan, where Japanese is the mother tongue. In the United States, the sales of "Love" are even more explosive.

The sales of digital albums have already rushed toward the 7 million mark. Although it has just started this year, it has basically locked in the best-selling album of the year on the B-Chart.

In addition, Universal, which has no pre-sale plan, receives countless calls wanting to pre-order albums every day, ranging from a few, hundreds, to tens of thousands.

And those who buy tens of thousands are not necessarily retailers. Miss Luo Quan's rich iron fans are now all over the world, not just in the United States. It is said that an Arab prince in the Middle East pre-ordered 99,999 albums at once. Regardless of whether Universal has a pre-sale plan, the order is placed there anyway. Just send it to me when it's printed!

Selling so well, to be honest, even Universal Music, which is used to seeing big storms, is a bit unexpected.

When they first wanted to sign a contract with Miss Luo Quan, they just felt that she was talented. This time it was her first English album. With the foundation of the Lovemusic band and Gao Liang, this album would definitely sell well.

But no one could have imagined that Miss Luo Quan could be so talented that she had only released half of the album and was listed in the candidate list of the 100 greatest albums of the new century by "Rolling Stone" magazine, and the traffic exploded.

Yesterday, she wrote a song like "Farewell Moment," which attracted reports from world media and raised her popularity to a higher level.

Under such circumstances, after Universal Music received all the song and video resources sent by Miss Luo Quan, they first carried out sound quality optimization work, and then handed it over to the printing factory to print the album.

Of course, such a best-selling album certainly cannot only sell the ordinary version.

The Universal Music company, which is well-versed in this, in order to further expand revenue, in addition to the ordinary version of physical records, also continuously launched two different versions, namely the commemorative version and the limited version.

The ordinary version of the record sells for 25 US dollars, with only the ten songs and two MVs of "Love," and an album cover taken by Miss Luo Quan herself.

And the commemorative version of the record doubled directly, selling for 50 US dollars. The content, besides those of the ordinary version, the packaging is larger, and it will come with all the portraits of Miss Luo Quan since her debut.

Speaking of which, although Miss Luo Quan possesses the world's number one beauty, she doesn't seem very keen on showing her amazing beauty in front of the camera. If it's not a very important occasion, she doesn't even wear makeup.

This also led to her not having many exquisite portraits that can be called art photos.

Although she is as beautiful as poetry and painting with a casual shot, compared with those photos taken by professional photographers, there is still a not small gap.

And Universal Music this time specifically collected all high-quality portraits of Miss Luo Quan since her debut, optimized the image quality, and printed them out as extra content for the commemorative version of the record.

That extra 25 US dollars is basically expensive here.

It sounds very ridiculous, but after the news came out, the comments were all "I'll buy it this time," and basically you couldn't see anyone scolding Universal Music for "cutting leeks."

In the past, Universal Music didn't have this kind of operation. Although record releases would also produce multiple versions, it was nothing more than adding a few selected old songs to the original album songs. The price wouldn't be too expensive, and they wouldn't use the singer's portraits as a selling point.

However, since Gao Liang became famous, the marketing vice president—Seifert—who has studied the fan marketing of China, Japan, and South Korea, proposed a sales plan using singer portraits as album selling points.

Tried it once, the effect was explosive, and then it got out of hand.

Of course, this trick can only work on stars with god-like appearances like Gao Liang and Miss Luo Quan. As long as they are as beautiful/handsome as these two, fans are willing to pay nearly double the price for a few photos for no reason, and will even praise Universal.

As for the limited version, it sells even more expensively. It is said that the pricing is 1,000 US dollars, but how expensive it can sell hasn't been completely decided yet. We have to wait and see how the commemorative version sells before making a choice.

Although the price hasn't been set, the content and printing volume of the limited version have been decided.

In addition to all the content of the commemorative version, there are quite a lot of videos uploaded by Miss Luo Quan on Bilibili.

These are to take care of Miss Luo Quan's fans abroad. Most of these people don't know that Miss Luo Quan will post these life videos on Bilibili. As the content of the limited version, it is still very valuable and worth watching.

Of course, these are not the main event.

The most valuable thing is the autograph of Miss Luo Quan randomly attached behind the portrait.

This "random" doesn't mean it randomly appears in the limited version of the album. Every limited version of the album has a portrait with Miss Luo Quan's autograph, but the portrait signed is random.

The reason why this is the focus is because Miss Luo Quan's current autograph is rare and sells very expensively.

Because the debut time is too short, Miss Luo Quan has only signed in three places so far: once outside the Nirvana Bar with Hoshino Sakura, once at the "Spring Water" release conference, and once at the fan appreciation festival.

Adding up, there are about 2,500, which is not many, but not few.

However, these are all signed in Japan, and Japanese fans' obsession with Miss Luo Quan has reached the point of near madness. Currently, there are almost no autographs that have been resold. Although the purchase price of Miss Luo Quan's autograph photo has always been high, it has always been in a state of having a price but no market.

Miss Luo Quan herself is also a homebody. Whether in the United States or China, she hasn't held any activities, so that fans in China and the United States want Miss Luo Quan's autograph photo very much, but they have no chance at all.

Want to buy from Japanese fans, but they don't bird them at all.

And now the new album is released, Universal spent a lot of effort to get Miss Luo Quan to agree, and signed 999 portraits. Once the news came out, fans in China and the United States were boiling, claiming that no matter how expensive it is, they must get one.

It is worth mentioning that because they have to take care of American fans, Miss Luo Quan's signature, besides her own Chinese name, also has to think of an English name.

Before, "Izumi" in Japan was considered a stage name, not an English name, and basically could only be used in Japan.

Generally, international artists have to think of a unique English name. What Chris, John, Tony—obviously they are all street-style titles in the West, but when placed in China, they can be praised by a group of fans, feeling that this is international style, high-end.

In Miss Luo Quan's view, it's just a soil dog letting out a foreign fart.

Chinese people should use Chinese names. Why bother with so many fancy things?

So after her Chinese name, she wrote the Chinese pinyin "LuoQuan," and also very thoughtfully standardized it with Romanization on it, trying her best to ensure that fans can call her name, even if there is no tone.

These 999 signatures took Miss Luo Quan a whole afternoon. In order not to make her handwriting look like ghost symbols, Miss Luo Quan wrote relatively slowly.

This is also the reason why she has always hated adding these fancy gifts to the album. The album should be for selling songs and MVs. If you want to buy photos and autographs, you should buy a portrait book.

However, considering that she won't release an album for a long time, she still agreed to this request of Universal.

It's just that I don't know if these are considered a kind of welfare for her fans. Anyway, the news that Miss Luo Quan's limited edition autograph photo is about to be released came out, and fans at home and abroad were quite happy.

Interestingly, many Japanese fans who already have an autograph photo also threatened to buy another one, but were scolded by Chinese and American fans for being greedy and not knowing how to be satisfied.

And with the help of media hype, Miss Luo Quan's album is already the focus of attention, hailed as one of the best pop albums of the new century.

The next assist from "Time" magazine made Miss Luo Quan's fame reach its peak.

In the latest issue of "Time" weekly, Miss Luo Quan became the cover character of the weekly, possessing as many as six pages of interview content, with the article title "Miss Luo Quan—The Musical Angel Who Fell into the World."

When Miss Luo Quan saw this title, her whole body was getting goosebumps.

I always thought that Japan's title party was the best in ancient and modern times, despising China and foreign countries. I didn't expect that the American title party was also not inferior in terms of exaggeration.

However, although Miss Luo Quan felt cheesy, there were not many opposing voices on the internet, and many fans even complained that this title belittled Miss Luo Quan, saying that she shouldn't be an angel, but a goddess!

Miss Luo Quan was stunned when she saw it. She didn't expect her status to reach this point now.

After flipping through it carefully, it turned out that these netizens all had Japanese nicknames, so it was not surprising.

But no matter what, this assist from "Time" magazine was a big help to Miss Luo Quan, whether it was for fame or for the album about to be released.

And three days after all ten songs of the album were released, the physical record of Miss Luo Quan's first English album "Love" was finally put on the shelves globally.

The ordinary version and the limited version were sold at the same time, the former printed 1 million copies, and the latter printed 300,000 copies.

Less than ten minutes after the sales channel was opened, both the ordinary version and the limited version were sold out!

These were just retail goods supplied to fans. The wholesale orders placed by retail manufacturers hadn't even had time to be printed yet!

However, even so, it was still in short supply.

Seeing this, Universal, while celebrating, immediately notified the printing factory to work overtime at night, and also released the news of the sale of the limited edition album.

"'Love' limited edition is about to be put on the shelves, content includes all content of the commemorative version, and one exclusive autographed portrait of Miss Luo Quan!"

Once the news came out, the fans instantly fell into a carnival. ===== CHAPTER 206 =====