Chapter 428: You're Right, But Eight Hundred Million Westerners Are Listening

If the person saying this weren't Zhou Jianhui, Zhou Yi would very likely have hung up the phone immediately.

After Zhou Jianhui recounted the entire sequence of events in meticulous detail, Zhou Yi immediately fell into thought.

Obviously, he and Zhou Jianhui were now bound to the same boat. Their cooperation over the past two-plus years had been very pleasant; this man knew exactly how to run a company well.

He was willing to concede profits, without the slightest hesitation or muddling.

"The contract I estimate Brunsmann is willing to offer will be more generous than the one Warner is willing to open for you. After all, as he said, Warner Records is currently in turmoil internally; even a diva of Madonna's caliber couldn't escape the fate of fighting over contract terms..."

Zhou Jianhui, standing completely on Zhou Yi's side, was explaining the situation at Warner's headquarters to him.

Madonna, a truly diva-level figure in the world music scene, renowned globally.

Back then, to keep Madonna, Warner directly co-founded a subsidiary named Little Cow Records with her, operated by Warner, while Madonna simply enjoyed revenue sharing.

But now, with Little Cow Records posting losses for two consecutive years, Madonna gradually began to grow dissatisfied with Warner. She believed Warner wasn't mismanaged, but rather that corruption, fake accounts, and other issues had turned Little Cow Records into a loss-maker.

Because of this matter, this undisputed number-one female star of Warner was on the verge of a public fallout with Warner Records behind the scenes.

Warner was already engaged in internal infighting; now, with the addition of a top-tier diva like Madonna, who was reportedly secretly gathering evidence to sue Warner next year, the chaos of Warner's internal strife had reached a new level.

Even though he had been mentally prepared, Zhou Yi still didn't know what to say about this chaotic scene inside Warner...

"The fact that Warner has survived until now without going bankrupt is truly good fortune."

Zhou Yi, unable to offer any further commentary, could only muster this one sentence after holding back for a long time.

When Madonna stopped trying to hold things up, Linkin Park's blockbuster album suddenly emerged, becoming the new pillar of Warner's global market.

Of course, the new pillar of Warner's global market now was him.

"My probing with him was basically just to the point. Whether to join depends on your decision. Time Warner might not even sell Warner Records. Your contract has a year and a half left; no rush."

Speaking to the end, Zhou Jianhui obviously didn't want to put pressure on Zhou Yi, comforting him: "Anyway, you aren't the one stepping forward this time—"

However, before Zhou Jianhui could finish speaking, Zhou Yi interrupted him: "I'm actually quite interested in this proposal, if it's a partnership model."

The so-called partnership model is actually a unique method record companies use to bind their top-tier artists.

Distant examples include the company co-founded by Michael Jackson and Sony Records; closer examples include Madonna and Warner's Little Cow Records.

Once such a contract is presented, it basically signifies that the record company is willing to make enormous concessions; to a large extent, it functions like buying a horse's skeleton for a thousand gold, purchasing a stabilizing pillar.

Of course, due to the special circumstance of the Chinese region being far from the emperor, once the partnership system is established, Zhou Yi would not choose to open a new company—he knew all too well what a mess the domestic music market would become in the future; opening a company would be purely losing money just to make noise.

Zheng Donghan, the current Asian President of EMI, would in the future choose to become EMI's China partner; he was also the first person domestically to become a partner of an international record giant. The result was that the newly integrated company, Gold Typhoon, declined day by day and eventually faded into obscurity.

Being a small shareholder of Warner, using Warner as a big tree to hedge against losses brought by an unfavorable future market environment; he would just need to earn a tiny bit from album sales and concert ticket revenues.

Maintaining channels costs money.

Let Warner suffer the hardship; I will take the blame.

In 2004, if Warner Records played its cards right, simply copying Zheng Donghan's future operations at EMI, becoming a small shareholder by leveraging the China region partnership system when it was acquired would be no problem at all.

Of course, the premise for doing this is that the people responsible for the China region must be acquaintances of his, such as Zhou Jianhui, who could also rise to become a partner.

Once Warner's new owner opens the partnership system to him, Zhou Jianhui, as the Asian President who discovered him, naturally deserves to upgrade his position and take shares.

With the loss of Madonna being a foregone conclusion, Warner's new owner absolutely cannot afford to lose Zhou Yi as well.

Losing two pillars at once; do they not care about their stock price?

"Are you sure?"

"Of course, Uncle Hui, haven't we always cooperated very pleasantly? If I change employers, I won't find someone as good and as responsible as you."

"... In that case, A-Yi, I understand."

Zhou Jianhui took a deep breath, and a look of confident smile immediately appeared on his face: "Defying public opinion to sign you and Yanzi back then was truly the most correct decision I have ever made in my life, without exception."

"Leave Yanzi out; what level is she, to be listed alongside me? She does nothing but slack off and loaf around all day; she's the standard template for a treacherous, lazy, gluttonous, and slippery person."

?

Before Zhou Jianhui could even feel puzzled, a roar from Sun Yanzi on the other end of the phone, like a groundhog, erupted: "Ahhh! What do you mean, you surnamed Zhou?"

"What do I mean? I mean exactly what I said—Holy crap!"

After that came a series of "beep-beep" busy tones.

Zhou Jianhui instinctively looked out the window at the pitch-black night and the clock on the wall, silently calculating the time in his mind...

At this hour domestically, it should be past seven in the morning, right?

…………………………………

"To be precise, it's seven-thirty."

Eating buns and fried dough sticks bought by her assistant, occasionally sipping a bit of soy milk, Yanzi wiped her mouth and pulled Cheng Hao aside to complain: "As soon as I woke up, I found out he was badmouthing me."

Cheng Hao, chewing noodles in small bites, had a somewhat strange expression: "Did you two stay together last night?"

"Yeah, right. Not just me; Jielun, Shaohan, Elva, and the others all slept at Zhou Yi's house."

Sun Yanzi nodded: "Last night's gathering went too late, so everyone simply slept at Zhou Yi's house since it was close and had many rooms. I woke up this morning to the sound of them getting up and leaving; then as soon as I went out, I saw Zhou Yi glance at me and deliberately badmouth me right in front of me."

"..."

Cheng Hao sighed helplessly in his heart, then couldn't help but find it amusing.

Clenching the meat bun as if it were Zhou Yi's head, Sun Yanzi took a vicious bite to vent her anger, then her gaze fell on the newspaper folded in the corner of the dining table, where the photos of their bar party last night were clearly visible.

Sun Yanzi, who had always maintained the image of a good girl in front of Cheng Hao, suddenly blinked her eyes.

Thanks to the powerful influence of the three women uniting, Virgin, Fom, and Warner Records immediately issued statements to the outside world, declaring that the gathering of the three women in the Imperial Capital was not a so-called job-hopping; those were all rumors, and it was simply because China Mobile used its money power to invite them to shoot endorsements.

At the same time, China Mobile officially began warming up for its new brand, M-Zone, releasing four consecutive announcements, stating that they had signed the three women plus Zhou Jielun, and also mentioned in the announcements that they had requested two songs from Zhou Yi.

While the heat of the event instantly rose, the warm-up publicity work for M-Zone, leveraging this hot topic, began to gradually become known to the public.

"Zhou Yi specially customized a song for the three women? And wrote another song for Zhou Jielun? Holy crap, is it custom-made?!"

"Is China Mobile that rich? For the movie 'Hero', didn't rumors say Old Zhang's song cost tens of millions?"

"Zhang Shaohan's 'MVP Lover' is so good to watch; her new drama 'Dolphin Bay Lover' is reportedly about to air..."

Even in Taiwan, the news that the current popular stars had been swept up by a Chinese enterprise with a 'China' prefix was enough to cause a shock in public opinion.

Under the ghostly filters of those ancestral forums, many fans surged forward, each beginning to discuss how much money Mobile had spent to gather these four people together.

Consequently, Zhou Yi's popularity on the island began to rise again; Yi-fans even had minor clashes with the fans of Pan Weibo, who was known as "Little Zhou Yi," nearly driving the other side to pull out their keyboards offline.

As for why Zhou Yi's brain-dead fans are called Yi-fans, the origin of the term is untraceable; the current mainstream explanation is that this group of fans only fantasize that their idol is number one in the world, plus Zhou Yi's surname "Yi" sounds like "Yi" (meaning), so it directly became Yi-fans.

"Sigh, if only Zhang Shaohan's English name could be changed to start with an H; I really don't like SHE, those three who only cover songs."

A SHE-hater followed up with a comment, which directly resonated with many people.

As Taiwan's most successful female group recently, after two years of growth, SHE had finally carved out a space for themselves.

Coincidentally, Sun Yanzi's English name Stefanie starts with S, Xiao Yaxuan's Elva starts with E, but only Zhang Shaohan's Angela didn't match.

Some even claimed that the SEA trio was merely imitating the Warner Heavenly Palace to form the Mobile Heavenly Palace, destined to fail, and that even Zhou Yi couldn't save them.

This struck the vital spot of Zhou Yi's die-hard fans.

As everyone knows, those who can still remain active on the island's internet nowadays must be the crystallized fans among Zhou Yi's crystallized fans—

"What do you mean even Zhou Yi can't save them? The Warner Heavenly Palace wasn't Zhou Yi's responsibility; it was Chen Ze Shan's, okay?"

"Does Zhou Yi's strength need to be questioned? The record of eight hundred million people listening to 'On the Father's Theme' across all European and American radio stations is unstoppable, do you know? Still questioning Zhou Yi's strength? That's a joke. Even Ning Hao, the director of 'On the Father's Theme,' was made famous by Zhou Yi."

"Eight hundred million listeners? Really? What is the total population of Europe and America?"

"If I were lying, I'd be a puppy, okay? It's the real deal; I heard Zhou Yi is about to be named one of the Top Ten Musical Geniuses, and the only one from Asia on the list."

"You're right, but 'On the Father's Theme' is a miraculous song listened to by eight hundred million people across Europe and America, created by Zhou Yi, one of the world's Top Ten Musical Geniuses..."

(End of this chapter)