Image Source @Visual China
Text | Music Herald, Author | Ding Qiwen, Editor | Fan Zhihui
Farewell to 2023, the Chinese music scene is still turbulent.
Since the release of the new song "Christmas Star" in late December, the discussion about Jay Chou has continued to rise, and he has still stood on the trend wave for nearly half a month. The reason is that in addition to the national popularity of "apotheosis" that he has carried for decades, it also stems from the controversy over whether "Zhou Lang is done" every time he releases songs in recent years.
However, the controversy brought by "Christmas Star" this time is not only around whether it is ugly or not, but also set off a "water injection war" between Jay Chou fans and Lin Junjie fans, and even rushed to the forefront of Weibo’s trending topic list.
Subsequently, it evolved into the "base" of the fan group war, and Jay Chou fans pointed the finger at the management of Lin Junjie’s official support club in the comment area of several bloggers, saying that he "issued a task to Lin Junjie fans" to maliciously slander, while Lin Junjie fans believed that this was a "surrounding the forest to save Zhou" drama planned by the "opposite family" to divert unpleasant and Zhou Lang did his best to save public opinion, and the contradiction between the two sides gradually escalated.
Why are the fans of Jay Chou and Lin still arguing about "the only top class in the Chinese music scene" after decades of circling around?
The King of Heaven fights the peak of the Forbidden City
There is no doubt that in this year’s fully liberalized music market, both Jay Chou and Lin Junjie will continue to lead in the "King of Heaven".
Although Jay Chou belatedly released only the single "Christmas Star", he still continued to set a record at the top of the chart. In addition to landing in Taiwan Apple Music, iTunes, YouTube, mainland QQ music in-app seven charts, but also led all past works back to the QQ music Rising Star Ranking, released nearly a week "Christmas Star" is still ranked first in the QQ music station, even to the beginning of 2024, it is still in the top ten of the station.
Compared with Jay Chou, Lin Junjie is more productive, only in 2023 released a solo album "regain _ happiness", "JJ’s coffee tone" two series of cover albums, as well as "curtain call" "In The Joy" "The Show" three singles, of which "regain _ happiness" CD version also set a continuous top the chart in Taiwan’s five gold list Chinese list for four consecutive titles, vinyl version also set a record three consecutive titles.
In this year’s Spotify released the list of singers with the most streaming listenings in Taiwan, Jay Chou continued to rank first, while Lin Junjie ranked ninth, which is also the only male singer on the list who has crossed over from the millennium period to the present. It is also the first and second Chinese pop singers and male singers in Spotify’s world with the most streaming listenings in 2023.
No matter whether it is Jay Chou or Lin Junjie, his past classics still show strong vitality this year.
For example, Jay Chou’s "Fantasy" album released in 2001 continued to sell well in Taiwan’s five major record charts last year, and "Chopin in November" and "The Greatest Works" also entered the top ten albums in Spotify Taiwan with the most streaming listenings this year; Lin Junjie’s past digital singles "Exchange the rest of my life" and "Ask for the day at night" won the top four best-selling digital singles in NetEase cloud in 2023; relying on many classic works, the annual hit list of Apple Music Chinese mainland in 2023 was also swiped by Jay Chou and Lin Junjie, of which Jay Chou was in the top ten of the butcher list, with a total of 55 songs in the TOP 100.
On the other hand, with the recovery of the performance market, Jay Chou and Lin Junjie’s concerts are very popular, and the second space and additional performances are in full swing, but the same cannot help but have similar doubts.
Jay Chou, who sold out all the concert venues in 2023, was accused of singing in Fuzhou, which was about to start singing in mid-May 2024, but opened the pre-sale on December 9, 2023, for half a year. This also caused consumers to be extremely dissatisfied with the long pre-sale time and the high 30% handling fee for refunding tickets. Jay Chou was also ridiculed as "ugly to eat", and many related topics also rushed into the hot search.
Lin Junjie, who is also sold out in 2023, also caused controversy in December. He condemned the spoofing and popularity of the concert hot dance clip by Douyin netizens as "not funny and disrespectful" through IG, and bluntly said "Please don’t come to my concert next time", which also made the consumer market complain, and some netizens said "Don’t come to the mainland to hold a concert since this is the case". Moreover, the two’s overseas concerts such as Malaysia and the United States have generated attendance controversy.
However, in comparison, what was questioned more was the listening data that Jay Chou had brought about.
As mentioned above, the user record of listening to "Christmas Star" for more than 10,000 minutes appeared within one minute of its release, and Jay Chou was also dubbed "water injection". As Lin Junjie’s fans participated in this wave of questioning, Lin Junjie’s old "Jiangnan" was also accused of more than 10,000 minutes of abnormal listening. And this so-called abnormal listening time has also become "evidence" for fans from both sides to argue.
However, according to many netizens, the display of more than 10,000 minutes originated from the personal behavior of QQ Music users to upgrade the "sound power" and occupy the high position of the user’s listening display page.
"Laotan Sauerkraut", who is engaged in brushing, said that with the open user listening to the general list page of the online music platform, the brush business of this mechanism has already formed an industrial chain, and a few cents can buy the listening time of designated songs in Xianyu, Taobao, and Pinduoduo."The basic 260 minutes is usually relatively cheap without specifying songs, most of which are 0.7 yuan.More than 10,000 minutes of the deluxe version can specify songs, and the price is around ten yuan. Many fans will come to buy the duration in order to pursue the top ranking. "
However, he also stressed that this kind of swiping will not affect the fluctuation of song popularity, "at most it will affect the ranking of the user himself on the song listening page". This is because, even if the listening time can be controlled, the QQ music daily listening statistics rules are not based on the listening volume to count the popularity of songs, but to prevent the swiping of the list.
The availability of listening time also allows fans to obtain the "privilege" of being an iron fan logo and high exposure of the account, and even become the "big fan" blogger of artists and have fans to follow. "In fact, some regular customers who often buy back are also in order to become the talent number in the QQ music station for the owned account, or to be on par with the Weibo big V identity and maintain the big fan profile."
In addition, this dispute between the king of heaven, which spread from new song listening to concerts and other fields, also caused many leading bloggers in the music circle to "end" to join, further intensifying the contradiction between fans. For example, the bloggers "Music_Data" and "LiveMusic Live" stood on one side, and posted several Weibo to consolidate the "king of heaven argument". Its comment area once became the main battlefield for fans on both sides to denounce each other.
Similar scenes have been played out frequently since the turn of the millennium, and the fan war about "who is the real top king of the Chinese music scene" will never convince anyone.
But just as Tao Zhe said after facing the popularity of Wang Leehom, Jay Chou and other younger generations,"King Zhou? Good music, Leehom Wang? Good music, why can’t there be more? I also like their music very much. This market is not mine, it belongs to everyone."
Why did the "Zhou Lin" war last for so many years?
Back in the millennial era, there are not only the first Chinese R & B person, but also the creative genius who emerged. In the eyes of most people, the "Four Heavenly Kings" in Taiwan who once led the Chinese music scene are nothing more than Jay Chou, Tao Zhe, Wang Leehom, and Lin Junjie.
In 2004, Lin Junjie, who had just won the 15th Taiwan Golden Melody Award for Best Newcomer, released the album "Second Heaven", officially joining the "King of Heaven" competition among popular singers such as Tao Zhe, Wang Leehom, and Jay Chou. Even though Wang Leehom and Tao Zhe also have recognized creativity and many representative works with high singing degree, among them, Jay Chou and Lin Junjie, who have a similar route, have become the default competition relationship.
Since then, the debate about who is the peak of the Chinese music scene between Jay Chou and Lin Junjie has never stopped.From the perspective of creation, singing, character, word-of-mouth, etc., it can cause endless chaos.
But on the other hand, the intensification of this competitive relationship has now become a vigorous online connection, reflecting the changes in the ecological environment of the entire industry behind the channel transfer of the Chinese music scene from the traditional recording era to the Internet era.
The most obvious is that musicians have gone from producing and polishing the music works on a record for the hot sale of records, to now a digital single can be sold for a fee; and the way the public listens to music is no longer a CD, MP3, such as a certain "stand-alone" way. The digitization of the streaming media era also allows everyone to comment on communication and consume music "painless".
The biggest change is whether the quality of music is good or not. It is no longer the key issue that determines whether a singer is popular or not. Instead, it is the algorithm and traffic. The change in channel influence has also made music standards more hierarchical, depending on the opinion.
Just as now, "Christmas Star" is accused of having straightforward lyrics that are not as good as Jay Chou in his early years, "The Show", which Lin Junjie collaborated with European and American musicians, has also been rated as "uncharacteristic", "earth hi dance" and so on. The quality of music is also judged from the professional dimension. Instead, it is cut in many ways by netizens in the powder and black war. This also reflects the contradictory aesthetic system of the public – the contradiction between sun spring and white snow and the people of Xialiba.
To put it bluntly, this is also a change that has the voice over the music industry, that is, from record companies, producers, musicians, and professional music critics to every user with a smart phone.
Of course, the so-called aesthetic is subjective, and the war between fans and listeners is also a tangle of genres and creative dimensions in the Chinese music scene.
Under the impact of the popularity of short videos, the decentralization brought about by the segmentation of the market has also made the exposure channels and voice channels more depressed. With the increasingly obvious aesthetic differentiation and the generational fault in the music industry, the terms "the first king" and "the first in the Chinese music industry" have become increasingly blurred. The preferences of thousands of people and thousands of faces can always come to the definition of the first or king in the hearts of different audience groups.
After all, in today’s era when "subject three" has become a popular representative of cultural output, the professional awards and charts of the traditional recording industry era have long lost their baton in the rise of the lower-tier market.
With the rise of Y2K, the 90th and 00th generation of listeners who grew up in the millennial era and are now the main consumers have also pulled the Chinese music scene back to the retro trend. Coupled with a steady stream of new audiences joining, new interpretations of the "King of Heaven" continue to emerge in the succession of generations. For example, today, the King of Heaven dispute has long since moved from the dimension of healthy competition to the ending of being carried away by the fangirl culture, such as mutual stepping, the navy and the army are black, the mindless standing in line or reaching the point of "human flesh" against fans.
On the other hand, it is precisely under the tolerance of the rice circle that the kings who have spanned the Chinese music scene for more than ten years have also fallen into the question of eating old money and consuming fan economy at a time when music cannot cross the era and IP products harvest fan consumption.As the MCHOTDOG hot ** when the new songs are suspected of Diss Jay Chou "eating old money" and "using fans as cash machines", "I am scolding everyone, not just Jay, I am scolding myself".
Perhaps today, the public is still happy to see Jay Chou and Lin Junjie fans fighting for the top-class king name. After all, they still hope that in this era of diversity and inclusiveness, they can see "divine work immortals" break through the ground under heavy pressure and reproduce the years when immortals fought.
conclusion
From the millennium to the present, the showdown between Jay Chou and Lin Junjie has also been regarded as a battle of the century in which both the public and fans participate.
Looking back, with Jay Chou and Lin Junjie’s dispute over the heavenly king lingering for several years, what we can see is that there is no new era of superstars in the Chinese music scene, and it is more of a flash of meteors, and even a short-term explosion is unconvincing.
In other words, this is an era that does not require Heavenly Kings, and the top of the Forbidden Heavenly Kings is just a floating cloud.
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