Picture source@visualchina
Text | Music Herald, author | Ding Qianwen, editor | Fan Zhihui
Farewell to 2023, the Chinese music scene is still in turmoil. Since
released his new song "Christmas Star" in late December, the discussion about Jay Chou has continued to increase, and it has still been at the forefront for nearly half a month. There is no other reason. In addition to the decades-long national reputation of being a god, it also stems from the controversy over whether Zhou Lang has exhausted his talents every time he releases a song in recent years.
However, the controversy caused by "Christmas Star" this time is not only about whether it is unpleasant or not, it has also set off a "watering war" between Jay Chou fans and JJ Lin fans, who even took to WeChat. Top trending searches on Bo.
subsequently evolved into a "base" for fandom wars. Jay Chou fans even pointed the finger at the managers of JJ Lin's official fan club in the comment sections of several bloggers, saying that they "issued tasks for JJ Lin fans" to maliciously slander. JJ Lin's fans believe that this is a "surrounding the forest to save the Zhou" plot planned by the "opponent" to divert unpleasant public opinion, and the conflict between the two parties has gradually escalated.
Why on earth has it been that after decades of wandering around, now that fans of Jay Chou and JJ Lin are still arguing over "the only top performers in the Chinese music scene"?
The King of Heaven battles at the top of the Forbidden City
There is no doubt that in the music market that has been fully liberalized this year, both Jay Chou and JJ Lin continue to lead the top echelon of "Kings of Heaven".
Although Jay Chou belatedly released only the single "Christmas Star", he still continued to set a record of dominating the charts. In addition to ranking first in seven charts on Apple Music, iTunes, YouTube and Mainland QQ Music in Taiwan, it has also led all past works to return to QQ Music's soaring chart. "Christmas Star" is still ranked first on QQ Music nearly a week after its release. , even at the beginning of 2024, it is still firmly in the top ten of the entire site.
Compared with Jay Chou, JJ Lin is more prolific. In 2023 alone, he released two series of cover albums, "Regain_Happiness" and "JJ's Coffee Tune", as well as "Curtain Call" and "In the Joy". "The Show" has three singles, among which the CD version of "Regain_Happiness" has also topped Taiwan's top five Chinese charts for four consecutive years, and the vinyl version has also achieved three consecutive crowns.
In this year’s list of the most streamed singers in Taiwan released by Spotify, Jay Chou continues to rank first, while JJ Lin ranks ninth. They are the only two men on the list who have made the leap from the millennium to the present. Singer, he is also the No. 1 and No. 2 Chinese pop singer and male singer with the most streaming listens on Spotify in 2023.
Whether it is Jay Chou or JJ Lin, their past classic works still show strong vitality this year.
For example, Jay Chou's "Fantasy" album released in 2001 continued to be a best-seller on Taiwan's top five album charts last year, and "Chopin in November" and "The Greatest Work" also entered Spotify Taiwan's most streamed records this year. The top ten albums; JJ Lin's past digital singles "Exchange the Rest of Life" and "Night Asks the Day" have taken the top four best-selling digital singles on NetEase Cloud in 2023; relying on many classic works, Apple Music's annual hot song list in mainland China in 2023 The list was also dominated by Jay Chou and JJ Lin, among whom Jay Chou even topped the top ten, with a total of 55 songs entering the top 100.
On the other hand, with the recovery of the performance market, Jay Chou and JJ Lin's concerts are very popular, and the Second Sky and Extra Shows are even more popular. However, there are also similar doubts.
Jay Chou's concerts in 2023 were all sold out. It was pointed out that the Fuzhou concert, which was about to start in mid-May 2024, started pre-sales on December 9, 2023, which lasted for half a year. This has also made consumers extremely dissatisfied due to the long pre-sale time and the high 30% handling fee for refunds. Jay Chou was also ridiculed for being "ugly", and many related topics also became hot searches.
JJ Lin, who also sold out every game in 2023, also caused controversy in December.He used ig to denounce the concert dance clip that was spoofed by Douyin netizens as "not funny and disrespectful" and even said bluntly, "please don't come to my concert next time." This also caused complaints in the consumer market, and even Some netizens said, "In this case, don't come to the mainland to hold a concert." Moreover, the two's overseas concerts, such as the Malaysian and American concerts, have caused controversy over attendance.
However, what is more questioned is the listening data brought by Jay Chou.
As mentioned above, less than a minute after the release of "Christmas Star", user records of more than 10,000 minutes of listening appeared, and Jay Chou was dubbed a "water injection". As JJ Lin's fans participated in this wave of questioning, JJ Lin's old work "Gangnam" was also accused of abnormal listening for more than 10,000 minutes. This so-called abnormal listening time has also become the "evidence" for fans from both parties to argue.
However, according to many netizens, the display of more than 10,000 minutes is due to the behavior of QQ Music users to upgrade their "sound power" and occupy a high position on the user listening display page.
"Laotan Sauerkraut" who is engaged in proxy brushing said that with the online music platform making the user listening list page public, the proxy brushing business of this mechanism has already formed an industrial chain, and a few cents can be used on Xianyu, Taobao, Pinxiang, etc. Duoduo buys the listening time for specified songs. The "basic version is 260 minutes and usually does not specify songs and is relatively cheap, most of which are 0.7 yuan. The deluxe version of with more than 10,000 minutes can specify songs, and the price is also around ten yuan. Many fans come to buy time in order to be ranked at the top."
However, he also emphasized that this kind of proxy brushing will not affect the popularity of the song. "At most, it will affect the ranking of the user on the song listening page." This is because, even though the listening time can be controlled, the QQ Music daily listening statistics rule does not count the popularity of songs based on the listening volume, but stipulates that one account is one listener in order to prevent chart manipulation.
The purchase of listening time also gives fans the "privilege" of being a die-hard fan and having a highly visible account. They can even become a "big fan" of the artist, a blogger and have fans to follow them. "In fact, some of them often repurchase The regular customers also want to raise their accounts to become expert accounts on the QQ Music site, or to have the same identity as a Weibo celebrity and maintain a big fan profile."
In addition, the battle for kings, which has spread from new songs to concerts, has also caused many top bloggers in the music industry to join in, further intensifying conflicts among fans. For example, the bloggers "music_data" and "livemusic live" each took sides and posted several Weibo posts to solidify the "king's argument". Their comment areas once became the main battlefield for fans of both sides to denounce each other.
Similar scenes have been played out frequently since the turn of the millennium. As for "who is the real top king in the Chinese music scene", no one can convince anyone in this smokeless fan war.
But as Tao Zhe said after facing the popularity of Wang Leehom, Jay Chou and other juniors, "King Zhou? Good music, Wang Leehom? Good music, why can't there be more? I also like their music very much, this market is not My market belongs to everyone."
Why did the "Zhou Lin" war last for many years?
Looking back at the fight between gods in the millennium, there are both the first Chinese R&B person and the creative genius who emerged from nowhere. In the eyes of most people, the "Four Heavenly Kings" in Taiwan who once led the Chinese music scene are nothing more than It’s Jay Chou, Tao Zhe, Wang Leehom, and JJ Lin.
In 2004, JJ Lin, who had just won the 15th Taiwan Golden Melody Award for Best Newcomer, released the album "Second Heaven" and officially joined the "king" competition among popular singers such as Tao Zhe, Wang Leehom, and Jay Chou. Even though Wang Leehom and Tao Zhe also have recognized creative abilities and many highly popular representative works, among them, Jay Chou and JJ Lin, who have relatively similar routes, have become the default competing products.
Since then, the debate about who is the top player in the Chinese music scene, Jay Chou or JJ Lin, has never stopped. can arouse endless discussions from the perspective of creation, singing skills, character, reputation, etc. Melee.
But on the other hand, this competitive relationship has become more and more intense, so much so that it has now become a vigorous online battle. It also reflects the changes in the ecological environment of the entire industry behind the channel shift in the Chinese music scene from the traditional record era to the Internet era.
The most obvious thing is that musicians have gone from producing and polishing the music works in a record for hot sales, to now a digital single can be sold for a fee; and the way the public listens to music is no longer like CD or MP3 With a certain "stand-alone" feel, digitization in the streaming media era also allows everyone to comment and communicate and consume music "painlessly". The biggest change in
is that the quality and sound of the music are no longer the key issues that determine whether a singer is popular or not. Instead, the changes in the influence of algorithms, traffic, and channels have also made music standards more stratified, and different people have different opinions.
Just like now, "Christmas Star" has been accused of having straightforward lyrics and not as good as Jay Chou's in his early years. "The Show", a collaboration between JJ Lin and European and American musicians, has also been criticized for being featureless, funky, etc. The quality of the music is It was also judged from a professional perspective, but was cut into pieces by netizens in the war between fans and blackmailers. This also reflects the contradictory aesthetic system of the public - the contradiction between the white snow in spring and the lower-class people.
To put it bluntly, this is also a change in the voice of the music world, that is, from record companies, producers, musicians, and professional music critics to every netizen with a smartphone.
Of course, as the saying goes, aesthetics is subjective, and the battle between fans and audiences is also a lingering battle between genres and creative dimensions in the Chinese music world.
Under the impact of the popularity of short videos, the decentralization brought about by market segmentation has also made the exposure channels and voice channels sink further. As the differentiated aesthetics become more obvious and the generational faults in the music world have also made the "third generation" The terms “king of heaven” and “number one in the Chinese music scene” are becoming increasingly vague. The preferences of thousands of people can always define the number one or king in the hearts of different audiences.
After all, in today's era when "Subject Three" has become a popular representative of cultural output, the right to speak in professional awards and lists in the traditional recording industry era has long since lost its baton in the rise of the sinking market.
With the rise of y2k, the 90s and 00s generation listeners who grew up in the millennium era and are now the main consumers have also brought the Chinese music scene back to the retro trend. In addition, a steady stream of new audiences have joined, and the "battle of kings" has also begun. New interpretations continue to emerge as generations change. For example, nowadays, the battle between the kings has already moved from the dimension of healthy competition to the end that is swayed by the fandom culture, such as mutual support, trolls, and brainless siding with rival fans.
On the other hand, it is precisely because of the tolerance of the fan circle that the kings of the Chinese music scene who have spanned more than ten years have also fallen into doubts about the economy of resting on their laurels and consuming fans at a time when music cannot transcend the times and IP products harvest fan consumption. . Just as mchotdog hot dog said in response to the new song's suspected diss about Jay Chou "resting on his laurels" and "treating fans as cash machines", "I'm scolding everyone, not just Jay, I'm scolding myself too."
Perhaps today, the public is still happy to see fans of Jay Chou and JJ Lin quarreling over the title of top king. After all, they still hope to see "magic masterpieces" again in this era of great diversity and inclusiveness. "Breaking out of the ground under heavy pressure, recreating those years when gods fought.
Conclusion
From the millennium to the present, the showdown between Jay Chou and JJ Lin has also been regarded as the battle of the century in which the public and fans have participated.
Looking back, as the battle between Jay Chou and JJ Lin has been going on for several years, what we can see is that it is difficult for the Chinese music industry to have a new era of superstars, and more of them are fleeting meteors, or even short-lived hits. Hard to convince the public.
In other words, this is an era that does not need kings, and the top of the Forbidden City of the kings is just a floating cloud.
