webnovelfull Chapter 518
Chapter 518
A solid fan base ensures that no matter how this album turns out, it will have a stable minimum price.
Judging from the intro to the title track and the full track of the sub-title track "If I Can Shine," the quality of this album can't be too bad.
Indeed, this was the case. Before that day, Lu Qingfeng's fans had spontaneously mobilized multiple times to try and boost sales on various platforms, as a grand gift for his nineteenth birthday.
His nineteenth birthday is on the 26th of this month.
The various versions of the album were also revealed a couple of days ago.
There are two versions being released this time: a digital album on major music platforms, which is the most basic version.
With the widespread adoption of smartphones and increasingly faster mobile network speeds, traditional music listening devices have been relegated to the dustbin of history. Last year's statistics, according to the Global Music Market Report, showed that streaming revenue accounted for more than 60% of total revenue.
The figure is even higher in China, reaching 70%.
Meanwhile, traditional physical media, CDs continued to decline, and were even overtaken by vinyl records.
Vinyl records are popular among some music lovers due to their unique collectible value, sound quality, and retro trend. People mainly buy them for collection purposes.
So another version is a vinyl record, which includes a thousand collector's editions.
We didn't prepare much because in the current market environment, it's considered quite remarkable if a physical album can sell 10,000 copies, and even top singers only manage to sell 100,000 or more.
Because it is intended for collection, the packaging design of the physical album becomes very important.
This version is a cube-shaped box made of acrylic. The exterior features a gradient from mint green to ice blue, paired with embossed white lettering and silver lines outlining the outer edge, creating a refreshing visual effect.
The box opens by flipping it from both sides. In addition to the vinyl record, the contents include a folded poster, sheet music for all the tracks, one large and one small postcard, three small cards of different styles, a special bookmark, and a keychain.
The collector's edition features a violin-shaped design and, in addition to the aforementioned contents, includes a limited-edition certificate of authenticity, a character standee, and a custom figurine.
Since his debut, Lu Qingfeng hasn't released much merchandise, leaving many fans eagerly anticipating his arrival. They've been gearing up ever since the announcement.
At exactly 12:00 noon, the album "Summer" was released on time.
The digital album of twelve instrumental tracks, including "Summer" and "If We Can Shine," is priced at 30 yuan. The regular vinyl record edition is priced at 268 yuan, while the collector's edition is priced at 580 yuan.
The digital albums are available on the four major music platforms: Tencent, NetEase Cloud Music, Coolcat, and Migu, while the physical albums are available on JD.com.
When it was released, 1,000 limited edition physical albums sold out instantly. While many fans complained, they still rushed to buy the regular version.
As for digital albums, since Penguin Music holds the largest market share, we can get a general idea of the market response from here. Within three minutes of the album's official release, sales reached gold record status.
In Tencent Music's sales certification system, the levels are divided based on sales revenue. The basic gold record requires sales revenue of 25, based on an album price of 30.
That means approximately 8,000 people placed orders during this period, and the actual number was definitely higher because Tencent offered member discounts and the like.
This certification changed again very quickly, and within about an hour and a half, it reached the Diamond Record level with sales of 500 million.
Then the speed began to drop.
Tencent Music has an album bestseller chart, which is divided into four categories: daily, weekly, yearly, and total sales, and is updated every five minutes.
The album that first topped the daily and weekly charts was an album by a South Korean boy band. It had been released for less than a week and had sold around 70,000 copies so far, earning a gold record certification due to its price.
With the release of Lu Qingfeng's album, it was pushed down and dropped to the top spot in the first chart update.
Then, after refreshing the page every five minutes, we saw a surge in sales, with over 100,000 units sold in a short period of time—an astonishingly rapid increase.
This is the norm in the music market. First-week sales account for 70-80%, or even 90% of total sales. Albums that can sell for a long time are becoming increasingly rare, except for a very few artists, and they also need to have excellent music quality.
Lu Qingfeng's sales figures were in line with external predictions. They felt that even with the album achieving double platinum status with sales of 1500 million, the audience for instrumental music was still not as large as that for pop music.
But this conclusion was overturned that very night.
As fans and some casual listeners purchased the album and listened to the music, the first batch of feedback emerged.
[I was really looking forward to the album's title track when it was being promoted. On my way back from my hometown, I bought it on Tencent Video for 30 yuan, and this was the first song I listened to. I have to say it was worth the money. As soon as the upbeat melody started, it felt like summer was flying out of the music. Even while I was still on the road, I was already thinking about the mountains and rivers of my hometown.]
It evokes a sense of childhood nostalgia, sitting at the doorway of my house, eating watermelon chilled with well water.
You can always trust Xiao Lu's compositions; they're incredibly good.
……