Chapter 683: Listening to Daddy Sing

The recording studio was ringed with all manner of professional music gear—countless cables snaked together, linking the mixing console, audio processors, audio interfaces, and more.

The whole space was both bustling and meticulously orderly.

Before a microphone stand with a metallic sheen, a sensitive microphone hung suspended.

Fang Hong wore monitor headphones and, swept up in a grand, surging melody, lifted his chin toward the mic and belted out at the top of his lungs.

"How lonely, how lonely it is to be invincible, how empty, how empty it is to be invincible. Alone at the summit, the cold wind keeps on blowing—my loneliness, who could ever understand me?"

Beside him, Liu Tianxian, Xing Ye, and Shen Teng all wore monitor headphones, swaying their bodies to the music, looking thoroughly delighted, mouthing along as if they were really enjoying the song.

Shen Teng was waving his arms and legs about, with a touch of the absurd.

Liu Tianxian was just there to join the fun—she had nothing to do anyway, so she came to play; she liked to have fun, and she liked to sing.

Unlike the three inside who were lost in the beauty of the music, in the control room a middle-aged sound engineer was frantically working the mixing console.

Seeing the singing inside pause for a moment, he finally had time to wipe the sweat from his brow—the Principal's singing really was too much to bear.

"How lonely, how lonely it is to be invincible, how empty, how empty it is to be invincible—hiding at the edge of the sky, can she hear me pour out my heart? My loneliness, an endless loneliness."

Fang Hong finished the last section, the music stopped, and he gave a dashing snap of his fingers: "Perfect!"

The song only had a few lines like that; the whole thing was just over a minute long—very short.

Xing Ye and Shen Teng couldn't help but burst out laughing, "Ha ha."

Liu Tianxian patted his shoulder—he really knew how to pat himself on the back. Without a million-dollar sound engineer, it would have been unlistenable; the poor engineer must have worked himself to death.

"Sung well—thank goodness I wasn't the one singing." Shen Teng's words carried a note of humor and teasing.

"Are you putting me down?" Liu Tianxian could tell at once it wasn't sincere.

"No, no—if I were the one singing, it definitely wouldn't be as good as the Principal's. My singing would be lethal." Shen Teng put himself down, in a joking tone.

Liu Tianxian couldn't help but laugh, thinking this fellow was quite something.

"Still pretty good—want to run through it once more?" Xing Ye said with a smile.

"Run through it again?" Fang Hong said.

"Once more—I think it could be a touch more perfect." Xing Ye said it with perfect seriousness.

The few exchanged glances, then couldn't hold back a great "ha ha ha" of laughter; Shen Teng let out that bewitching "heh heh heh" cackle.

Liu Tianxian laughed until she rocked back and forth—she didn't even know why she was laughing; put these people together and it just felt hilarious.

Even a casual exchange of words somehow struck her as funny.

"Tianxian, your belly… you're pregnant?!" Xing Ye paused, noticing Liu Tianxian's swollen belly.

The moment she moved with any big gesture, it showed.

"Yes, five months along." Liu Tianxian stroked her belly, not hiding it.

"Oh dear… my oversight, my oversight—you've got to take care." Shen Teng's expression immediately turned serious, no longer as carefree as before.

The man really knew how to handle people—upon hearing she was pregnant, he instantly became concerned.

"It's fine, I feel alright." Liu Tianxian gestured that moving around and such posed no problem for her.

"Still, be careful." Shen Teng said.

Xing Ye also nodded seriously in agreement.

"Mm, I pay attention normally—it's just that staying home alone gets too stifling, so I came out to get some activity. And this way the baby gets to hear his daddy sing, right?" Liu Tianxian teased.

The mood lightened again, and they switched back into singing mode—still Fang Hong singing, while the other three kept the atmosphere lively.

This scene would be edited into an MV, to be used as a movie promo clip.

The only one suffering was the sound engineer, in for more torment.

Amid the surging tides of the era, time rolled into February; this year's New Year's Eve fell on the 7th—just a few days away.

The Spring Festival Slot saw several films locked in fierce competition. The Mermaid's promotional model still carried over from the previous life: "You owe Xing Ye a movie ticket."

That slogan gave netizens a guilty conscience for freeloading.

From Vegas to Macau 3 played the nostalgia card. Although it was a Bona production and on the Principal's side, it was still a competitor—the two sides belonged to different companies.

As things developed later on, it was perfectly normal for films from the same camp to compete; later Alibaba was exactly like this, often fighting itself.

Then there was Monkey King 2, which focused on big stars, big lineup, big special effects.

Since there was no room to adjust this slot—only a week or a few days could be staggered, and the release had to be on the first day of the New Year—few big films ended up competing.

Just as the few films were jockeying in the shadows, Fang Hong's song "Invincible," as a promo clip, was posted on Douyin, Bilibili, Chang'e Video, and other platforms for publicity.

The MV had been edited—it was footage of Fang Hong, Xing Ye, Shen Teng, and Liu Tianxian in the recording studio.

Naturally, the edited version looked different from the live scene; comedic artistic touches had been added, and the clips of the four laughing at each other had been spliced in.

Their clowning around had been spliced in too.

So the MV was still a lot of fun. Netizens didn't quite know why it was funny—seeing the MV, seeing the people in it, just made them laugh.

"Wow, Xixi's in it too!"

"They're so funny—seeing them just makes me laugh, ha ha ha!"

"Principal, when are you going to let Tianxian and Xing Ye co-star in a movie? A comedy—I'd really look forward to that!"

"Got the idea, but the two styles don't really seem to mesh—Tianxian's never done a comedy."

"When is Lucy releasing? Been waiting forever."

"Go Xixi, we believe in you!"

"."

Netizens' comments were full of joy—people said all sorts of things.

In a special interview program, Xing Ye answered a netizen's question: "If there's a good script and the chance comes up, I'd really look forward to working with Ms. Liu. Ms. Liu is an actress with real acting talent."

In other words, he wasn't saying whether they'd actually collaborate or not.

Liu Tianxian still didn't show her face in full—only a few glimpses on camera. Mainly because she was feeling too cooped up.

As "Invincible" spread wildly, some Wangyi got creative and re-edited Fang Hong's song into a ghost-style video, pairing it with those pretentious quotes.

"I'm not interested in money. I've never touched money."

"Even with a telescope, you can't find a rival!"

As the various clips spread, more and more Wangyi learned of it, and Fang Hong naturally ascended to become the "King of Pretension"!

Since he had ascended to the new "King of Pretension," he ought to receive the treatment that came with it. Some Wangyi took the song "Invincible" that Fang Hong and Lao Wang Zong performed at the Wanda annual gala,

along with "Blooming Life" sung by Jack Ma at the Alibaba annual gala, and "Wolf Legend" sung by Tony Ma at the Tencent annual gala,

and edited those songs sung by these big shots into one video, titled: "The Smell of Money!"

"The big shots have sung out the helplessness of how money ought to be!"

How those people fight each other, the Wangyi don't really care, but whenever these big shots come out to show off their talents, the traffic is bound to explode — that's normal, everyone has a voyeuristic streak.

Especially what these rich people normally do — people are still curious about that.

Actually, everyone is different; everyone has their own way of life. Some rich people are extravagant, some are ordinary, some keep a low profile, some are flashy.

You can't pin the majority's behavior onto any single individual — everyone has their own way of living.

Just as some ordinary people, suddenly rich, like to show off and flaunt it everywhere; some become at a loss, not knowing what to do.

Some go on revenge spending sprees, buying everything they hadn't dared to buy before, everything they couldn't afford — whether they actually use it is another matter, but they have to have it.

So everyone's mindset and way of living is different. Whether rich or ordinary, at first they might feel proud, but as time goes on, their hearts settle down — it's just that one thing.

It's just that compared to ordinary people, they have less financial pressure, less material pressure — that much is true.

But given the national conditions, keyboard warriors can freely curse them as rich but heartless.

Have you ever heard of a celebrity suing for being cursed? Have you ever heard of a rich person suing for being cursed? No — they can't be bothered to deal with you; if they bothered, they'd lose.

The year-end was approaching, and apart from the necessary on-duty personnel, all other unrelated staff at Jade Rabbit were basically given leave.

Chang'e Technology, being in an explosive growth phase, had most of its employees and coders still at work, except for those who needed to go home for the New Year.

Since Douyin's traffic was exploding now, with over a million videos uploaded every day, the content could be called a sea — to store it, the bandwidth costs were unimaginable.

And those million-plus videos also needed basic review, to keep the content from being too negative — operating costs were growing exponentially.

Fortunately, the Data Center built earlier had been completed and put into use, easing some of the pressure.

Now Chang'e Technology had huge traffic, and to price and sell that traffic, Zhang Lidong designed a plan to sell traffic to enterprises and advertisers.

That was the "JuliangEngine" platform — the general logic was bidding-based advertising, where advertisers set goals, chose audience targeting, and bid against each other for traffic.

The billing was based on thousand-impressions, single-click, and optimized thousand-impressions pricing.

For example, a beauty brand placing Information Flow Advertising, targeting women aged 18-30, with a single-click cost of about 0.5 to 2 yuan, could achieve a 1:5 return on investment.

It was essentially putting a clear price tag on traffic and selling it to those brand merchants.

This plan was unanimously approved at the partners' meeting — currently it was being urgently developed, to get this plan launched as soon as possible.

Otherwise, if traffic kept exploding, Chang'e Technology couldn't hold up — and they still had to expand and acquire that company in the United States.

That was what Zhou Shouzi had suggested earlier — trading capital for time — so there were many places that needed money.

Fortunately, the live-streaming integration was now underway, connecting the live-streaming channels of Bilibili and Douyin.

The idea was that no matter which platform you streamed on, the other platform could see it and get exposure — this caused streamers in lifestyle, gaming, outdoor, talent, entertainment, and other categories to see their traffic surge all at once, overjoyed.

It also caused streamers' gift revenue to surge accordingly, creating a batch of overnight-wealthy internet celebrities.

Now was already the era of live streaming — live streaming was the trend to ride. The reason Xiao Wang could be so arrogant was that Panda Live had over ten million monthly active users, with gift revenue and ad revenue in the hundreds of millions — his sense of achievement was off the charts.

Douyin had a unified standard for live-streaming tips: the platform only took 50%, no more; taxes were on you; if you signed with an MCN, deal with the MCN — Douyin didn't sign any internet celebrities.

Even if you got famous and went to stream on another platform, that was fine — since we could make you, we could make someone else.

Some platforms take 70% — Douyin is still lower.

This was set by Fang Hong: the platform only acts as referee, it can't show favoritism or bias — whether you can make money in this wave depends on personal ability.

Of course, everything was still being rolled out. Live streaming wasn't just about tips — there was also knowledge, local life, advertising, etc., and the revenue-share standard was different for each.

(End of this chapter)