Chapter 460: After the Long Holiday

Chapter 460: After the Long Holiday

The Chinese public has always held a contentious attitude toward athletes crossing over into the entertainment industry, especially for active athletes. Even though there is now more tolerance, and it’s no longer like before when an athlete dabbling in entertainment would immediately be accused of cashing in, as soon as an athlete’s performance fluctuates or results are poor, regardless of the underlying reasons, everything is still blamed on their crossover into entertainment.

Not to go too far back, there have been several in recent years, like Zhang Jike, like Da Bai Yang, like Guo Ailun, and so on. No matter what caused the poor results, netizens always mock them for neglecting training due to participating in variety shows and the like.

Of course, competitive sports ultimately rely on results on the field, but attributing everything to an athlete’s crossover into entertainment doesn’t seem entirely reasonable either.

That said, Meng Fan releasing a single is also a crossover into entertainment, and the public has certainly been contentious about it. Not to mention music; even before this, during the Olympics, when Meng Fan held a manga signing event, some people said he was neglecting his proper work. Nitpickers always exist, and keyboard warriors who spout nonsense without knowing the facts are everywhere.

Even if you tell them that Meng Fan’s main job is as a manga artist, they instantly become selectively deaf. Try reasoning with them? Hah, they’ll just accuse you of cashing in on popularity. Say anything more, and they’ll directly ask, “Why aren’t you training properly? Have you abandoned national honor? Is personal interest greater than national interest?”

Of course, in this matter of Meng Fan releasing a single, the proportion of nitpickers and trolls is very small, just slightly larger than at Meng Fan’s manga signing event in Japan. Most people who know Meng Fan are also aware of his background—after all, his experiences are too worth chatting about over tea. To be honest, Meng Fan should be considered as crossing over from the manga world to the sports world, and as for his further crossover into the music circle, most people take a delighted attitude. After all, Meng Fan can really sing!

Talking about cashing in?

If someone has the skill to cash in, who can stop them?

How well does Meng Fan sing? Anyone with ears knows. You might not like Meng Fan’s voice, or you might not like his style—after all, tastes differ—but you can’t deny his vocal ability. It’s like Teacher Gong Linna; you might not appreciate her style or like her divine songs, but you can’t erase the fact that her singing skills are remarkable.

Within just one hour of its release, “Dreaming” shot to the top of the Penguin Music New Song Chart, and it also ranked first in daily plays. Within three hours, it entered the top three of the weekly popularity chart, and by the fifth hour, it was directly number one.

Meng Fan’s popularity goes without saying. Not to mention Penguin Music’s homepage recommendations and various pop-up promotions, a single Weibo post can attract a huge number of clicks—this is the power of so-called traffic.

Nowadays, Meng Fan is naturally considered a super-level traffic star. Traffic has a very big characteristic: strong explosive power but poor endurance. Whether it’s songs or other works, the first-day debut is especially terrifying, but after a few days, the data will relatively decline. For example, the first-day sales of some traffic star’s new album are all driven by fans going all out. If you check a few days later, the data will be absolutely dismal.

In the end, it’s still about strength not matching popularity.

There’s no need to mention Meng Fan’s strength in manga, dubbing, and sports. Nowadays, many people want to see how Meng Fan’s staying power in music is.

This song “Dreaming” is indeed widely praised. The lyrics and music are top-notch, the singing is top-notch, the production is top-notch—it’s hard to find faults. As for how widely it will spread in the future, that’s hard to say. There are plenty of good songs that don’t spread widely, and it has little to do with who sings them; there’s a lot of randomness.

Take the earlier example of Shi Shiwu’s “Drunk Red Cliff.” It was released for ten years and sank like a stone, then inexplicably became a hit because of some app. No one can predict how something will spread.

After Meng Fan’s single was released, aside from liking Wu Tong’s “fat” comment on Weibo, the most common thing people said was asking when Meng Fan would release an album, with very high expectations.

In the blink of an eye, the National Day holiday ended. People returned to work or school. Many struggled in bed against their blankets, ultimately defeated by reality, forced to get up, and then were late. Of course, for some people, holidays don’t exist—like Kun Ye.

In the past, Kun Ye would shamelessly give himself a holiday during the National Day break. Generally, how many web novel writers dare to say they have holidays? But Kun Ye was different—why wouldn’t he use such a reason to stop updating?

But this year was different. Although he still stopped updating with a hehehehe, he was busy every day, busier than updating. Normally, writing updates took two or three hours or even less, but these days he was working at least sixteen hours straight. Busy with what? Of course, busy with the post-production of the “Underground Spirits” animation. He couldn’t help with the professional aspects, but he took on all the miscellaneous tasks.

Well, in the end, he was proactive about everything except updating.

On the afternoon of October 8th, the post-dubbing work for the first season of the “Underground Spirits” animation was all wrapped up. In the evening, good news came from Jin Xiaowen—the music and score were all completed. As for other aspects of post-production, they had also been gradually finished during this period.

For the “Shanhai Animation Studio,” what remained now was distribution.

When distribution was mentioned, heh, the entire team was dumbfounded.

Not to mention Meng Fan and Kun Ye; the five-person team had only been responsible for production and had never dealt with distribution. As for the major streaming platforms, they had no connections at all.

“Shouldn’t this be a small problem? Didn’t we register the studio’s official Weibo? Just put the news out there, and I think some platforms will take the initiative to contact us, right?”

“That’s true, but isn’t it a bit weird?”

“I think this approach is feasible. The outside world has high expectations for this work of ours.”

“The key issue is that even if a streaming platform comes to us, we still know nothing about the relevant details. How do we negotiate?”

As they talked, everyone turned their gaze to Meng Fan. Seeing this, Meng Fan said, “Alright, don’t worry about this problem. Let professionals handle professional matters. I’ll find a professional.”

Who is professional?

Meng Fan didn’t know, but he knew Hu Yijing would definitely know.

He made a phone call, and as luck would have it, Hu Yijing happened to be in Hangzhou with Su Qingcen for a recording. After the recording session, they quickly came to the Shanhai Animation Studio.

After hearing the gist of the matter, Hu Yijing quickly gave advice: “Two options: one is to set up your own distribution company, and the other is to license to another distribution company.” After a brief pause, she added, “Given your studio’s current scale and content production speed, I think licensing to another distribution company is more reasonable. As for distribution companies, I can help you ask around.”

(The End)