Chapter 261: Backstage Confrontation

I'm unstoppable

I'm a Porsche with no brakes

I'm like a Porsche without brakes

I'm invincible

i am indestructible

Yeah I'll win every single game

Yes, I won every game

I'm so powerful

On TV, Link was wearing a bright silver leather armor and dyed his short hair silver. He was accompanied by more than a dozen backup dancers, singing and dancing on the brightly lit stage. The fans in the audience burst into cheers like a mountain and a tsunami. There were many people singing this song along with Link, and the atmosphere was very lively.

drop!

A slender white hand reached over, picked up the remote control on the coffee table, and pressed mute.

On the LCD screen, Link's singing voice and the cheers of the audience disappeared instantly. Through the screen, only Link could be seen opening his mouth, as if performing a pantomime, which was a little funny.

"Scout, how's the poaching plan going?"

The owner of the white palm put down the remote control and turned to look at the young man in the opposite seat, Scooter Braun, who is also the president of SB Projects Entertainment Agency.

Scooter is a 29-year-old white man of Hungarian origin. When he was in college, he filmed a documentary on Nasalites, which earned him the appreciation of the great director Spielberg and earned him his first pot of gold.

In 2002, relying on family connections, he entered the sports and music circles.

His first job was to organize rave parties for celebrities. Many celebrities in the industry, including Eminem, Kanye, Will Smith and others, were his clients.

Because of his outstanding ability, he was appreciated by Jermaine Dupree, the vice president of Def Jam Records, a famous black rapper and gold medal producer, and joined Def Jam Records as the Director of Marketing Department.

In 2007, he left So So Def Records and founded SB Projects Entertainment, which signed Ludacris, Kanye West and others.

Ludacris is a famous rapper and actor. He later became popular as a supporting actor in the "Fast and Furious" series of movies.

Through his strong connections, Scout helped Luda get an advertising endorsement for Pontiac, and also facilitated the cooperation between Kanye West and Adidas. With these two deals, he earned tens of millions of dollars.

In 2008, through the introduction of Usher, Canadian boy Justin Bieber was signed.

Since last year, he has spent a lot of money to promote and market Justin Bieber, allowing him to appear as an Internet celebrity singer at major events such as MTV, the American Music Awards, and the Grammys, greatly increasing his exposure.

At the same time, he also used his connections in the industry to help Justin create his new album "My world 1.0".

His hard work was not in vain.

"My world1.0" was officially released in November last year.

In just over three months, it sold more than 1 million copies worldwide.

If there were no Lana Del Rey, Bruno Mars under Link Music, and Selena Gomez under Disney.

In the second half of last year, Justin Bieber was definitely the brightest star in the music industry.

Fortunately, Justin's new song "Baby" is selling well.

With his vigorous marketing and promotion, this song has become the most popular song at this stage.

Justin Bieber has also become the most popular singer in the current music industry, and his popularity is close to that of Link Baker and Justin Timberlake in the pop music industry.

With this trump card, he and SB Projects also made a lot of money.

But Link Baker has been too popular in the past two years. His peers are enemies. If Link sells one more album, one less album by a singer of the same type will be sold.

With him in the music world, it would be difficult for Justin Bieber to become No. 1 in the pop music world.

Link also became a stumbling block on Justin Bieber's success.

To this end, he found Jay-Z, Kanye, Lil Wayne and others, and prepared to unite them to deal with Link.

Jay-Z served as the president of Def Jam Records from 2002 to 2007, cultivating Kanye West, Rihanna, Ne-Yo, etc. In 2007, he quit and founded Def Jam and founded Roc Nation Records.

Scooter and he are old acquaintances, and now they share the same hatred. Just saying "Kill Link" was recognized by Jay-Z, Kanye and others.

Not long after they reached a consensus, Mr. Kunas Jr., the vice president of Atlantic Records Publishing Company and a member of the board of directors of Atlantic Records, called and said that he wanted to talk to him to discuss how to eat Link Music together.

Scooter was very, very excited to receive this call.

Although his family is also a billionaire, the Kunas family had tens of billions of assets in its heyday. It has great power in American politics, media industry, real estate industry, etc., and is regarded as the first-class wealthy family in the United States.

In addition, little Kunas is from the same ethnic group as him, and they are also the most united group of people in the world. He has no need to doubt that little Kunas has any bad intentions.

With his help, Link is dead.

After chatting with Kunas, their first move was to poach Link Music.

Link Music was founded in early December 2008, with only two major shareholders, Link and Ms. Iwaka.

Link holds 55% of Link Music, Evaka holds 35%, and the remaining 10% is shared by several managers and producers.

K Music did not attract much attention. There are thousands of record companies of this type in the United States.

But in early 2009, after Link released his first album "The Fighter".

His single "Unstoppable" ranked first on the Billboard singles chart, and eight songs including "chasing the sun", "Fire" and "never say never" successively entered the top 100 of the singles chart.

And within a month, the sales in the United States reached platinum.

The fierce momentum and blockbuster made everyone know Link and the small record company Link Music.

Last year, Link released two albums in succession and sold well, with a total global sales of nearly 20 million copies.

This result is too dazzling.

It makes countless musicians envious and jealous.

But the shock Link Music has brought to the music industry is far more than that.

Since October last year, they have successively launched three singers of different types, Lana Del Rey, Bruno Mars, and Wiz Khalifa.

In fact, when Link Music first launched these three people, no one paid much attention to them.

The reason is very simple.

Lana Del Rey, a musician who failed in her debut.

The sales of her first album were less than 1,000 copies. She has released many songs online and failed to become an Internet celebrity, which shows that her songs have no market in the music industry.

The probability of such a singer releasing an album successfully is not high.

Bruno Mars is also a loser.

He was first abandoned by Motown Records and then traded by Atlantic Records. He has no figure and no looks. He is neither black nor white. Except for his voice and some creative ability, he has no other characteristics.

There are many musicians like him under the five major record companies. Whether such people can become popular depends entirely on fate.

And Wiz Khalifa, who was originally a signed singer under Warner Records. The sales of his first album were average, and his second album was cut by Warner. It can be seen that he is not a capable singer.

But

Last November, Lana Del Rey released her first album "Young and Beautiful", and the main singles "Young and Beautiful" and "Video Games" successively rushed into the top ten of the singles chart, sold more than one million copies worldwide, and sold platinum.

In December, Bruno Mars released his first album "It's Better If You Don't Understand", and the main singles "Nothin' on You", "Lighters" and "I'm the one" successively rushed into the top ten of the singles chart. "Nothin' on You" became the champion of the singles chart at the end of December.

This album was released for eight weeks and sold 787,000 copies in the United States, with global sales of platinum.

There is also Wiz Khalifa. Although his new album has not been released yet, he became the top streamer in the rap world last year with "see you again" and "I'm the one".

And his new single "Black and Yellow" also rushed into the top ten of the singles chart this week.

It can be predicted that the sales of his new album will not be bad.

In this way, after signing with link music, three losers have become famous one by one.

This situation has also won the praise of countless musicians.

Even Rolling Stone magazine commented at the beginning of the year that Link Music is very good at shaping singers, saying that Link Music is the Midas Touch in the music industry, has the ability to turn decay into magic, and is also the most anticipated label in the music industry in the next ten years.

Link Music's reputation in the circle has skyrocketed.

As a result, many musicians who are not appreciated for their talents want to try their luck at Link Music.

If this situation continues, Link Music will become more and more powerful and become a towering tree in the music industry, and Link will earn more and more US dollars with this company.

This is the result that Scooter, Jay-Z, and Little Kunas do not want to see.

After Little Kunas' plan to invest in Link Music failed, he contacted Scooter to start a poaching plan.

The first step was to poach three signed singers under Link Music, Lana Del Rey, Bruno Mars, and Wiz Khalifa.

Scooter arranged for his agent to talk to the three singers separately, and was willing to sign them with big contracts. He also promised that after they signed with the new record company, he would arrange for several gold medal producers to tailor new albums for them, and promised to pay for their breach of contract.

Their conditions were very sincere, and the three contract quotes were also very high, but Lana Del Rey and the other two had no intention of negotiating at all, and they didn't seem to care much about money.

This made Scooter very helpless, and he swung the hoe at producers such as Graeme and David Kahn.

In more than a month, seven or eight songwriters, production assistants, sound engineers, etc. were poached, but none of the core members were poached.

Because they all came from big record companies, they knew what the production department of big record companies was like. There were too many talents, serious workplace struggles, extremely fierce internal competition, and fighting for resources, and the work pressure was also high.

And now link music is on the rise. If you stay here, you can not only make a lot of money, but also become famous. Only a fool would change jobs at this time.

"Not ideal!"

Scout sighed softly and talked about the progress of the poaching work.

Little Kunas took a puff from a slender cigarette, squinted his eyes and saw Link exiting the TV, and asked in a low voice:

"How is the competition for the charts going? Are you sure you can beat Link in the music market? Can you beat his record sales?"

"We have this confidence, but Link is not an ordinary singer, and it will be more difficult to deal with him."

Scout shrugged his shoulders and talked about the arrangements for the rankings in March and April.

Currently they have three cards prepared.

The first card is Justin Bieber, whose sophomore album will be released in early March.

Justin's first album has sold more than 700,000 copies in North America.

The lead single "Baby" from the second album is a hit in North America. The second album is expected to sell more than one million, and there is a chance of selling two million or even three million.

Justin and Link are both pop singers.

If his album enters the pop music market first and drains fans' wallets, Link's album sales will inevitably be affected.

The second card is Usher's sixth album "Raymond Vs. Raymond".

Usher is a top singer in the rap and blues world.

In 2004, Usher released his fourth album "Confessions", which sold 1.1 million copies in the United States in its first week, breaking the single-week sales record for an R\u0026B male singer's album. It topped the Billboard album chart for 9 consecutive weeks with the single "Yeah!" ” topped the Billboard singles chart for 12 consecutive weeks.

His status in the music world is no lower than Kanye's.

The new album contains 23 songs and was jointly created by 12 gold medal producers.

The album is expected to sell 10 million copies and become a diamond record.

Released at the same time as Link's third album, it will definitely affect Link's album sales.

The third card is Drake the Duck’s new album Thank Me Later, which is expected to be released in mid-April.

In December last year, Drake released his first mini-rap album "So Far Gone", which ranked sixth on the Billboard album chart in the third week. He also won the Juno Award for New Artist of the Year and Rap Recording of the Year.

The lineup of producers for his new album is equally strong, including Jay-Z, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Alicia Keys, Jay Jenkins, Nicki Minaj and other top names in the rap industry.

During the listening session of the album, thirty industry insiders gave it a favorable rating of 8.8 points, and it is expected that sales in the United States will not be less than 1.2 million copies.

As for Link's third album, due to confidentiality reasons, they have not yet found out the name of this album.

Judging from the song "all of me" that was circulated last year, it may be a love-themed album. This type of album is too mainstream. It happens every year and every famous singer has it. Although there is a market for this kind of album , but it’s difficult to sell well.

Using three ace albums to pursue Link's love album, Scooter is absolutely confident that he will beat Link on the sales list.

What's worrying is that Link is no ordinary singer.

This guy is a master of hype.

Just because Kanye said something bad about him in the media, he caught him and made a lot of breaking news, and almost caused a major social incident.

This kind of publicity method also impressed him, a marketing expert.

Link is also a very capable guy, known as the 'Music Genius'.

He first engaged in pop music, and then crossed over to rap. With two bad songs, he made all the singers in the rap industry unable to lift their heads.

To say that you can win 100% against such a person is to deceive yourself and others.

Therefore, when answering Mr. Kunas Jr.'s question, Scout did not say anything, saying that he was confident of defeating Link, but there would be surprises.

"Do your job and leave the rest to me."

Little Kunas leaned on the sofa, holding a cigarette between his fingers, and said in a calm voice.

"I understand, Mr. Kunas."

Scout nodded seriously.

"Call me Red, we're friends, Scout!"

Little Kunas said with the corners of his thin lips raised.

"Okay, Red!"

Scout nodded and smiled.

Little Kunas crossed his legs and looked at the awards ceremony that was going on on TV and said, "Guess how many awards Link can win at this Grammy Awards?"

Scout also looked at the TV. Children's albums were being awarded on the stage and thought for a moment.

"Of the four comprehensive awards, Link won two out of four. The remaining Best Male Pop Singer will most likely be him. "Give me reason" and "See you again" are very influential. Link also The probability of winning the Best Rock Song, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Collaboration awards is also relatively high, I guess 5 to 6.”

"I guess two."

Little Kunas raised the corner of his mouth with an inexplicable smile on his face.

"two?!"

Scout looked at him in surprise, then turned to look at the TV.

——

At the Staples Center, after Link's performance, he returned to the arena locker room to change clothes and reply to a few messages on his cell phone.

After receiving the Best Production of the Year Award, my phone received dozens of congratulatory text messages from Emma Roberts, Kristen Stewart, Paul Walker, Joaquin Phoenix, etc.

Even Elon Musk sent a message, congratulating him on winning the Grammy Award for Best Record, saying it was amazing, and saying he wanted to ask him to be the spokesperson for Tesla cars.

Link also responded enthusiastically to Elon Musk. If he wants to get more Tesla and even SpaceX shares, he needs to start from Musk.

And Musk is young and smart. This kind of person can be made as a long-term business partner.

In addition, Musk has extensive communication in the business circle. For example, the two founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are also his friends and are angel investors in Tesla.

Through Musk, you can make friends with more business leaders and secure more investment opportunities.

The benefits are many.

Boom! Boom!

"Please come in!"

Link said as he put on his belt.

Squeak~

The door opened, and a golden skirt floated in. She was wearing high heels, stockings, and her legs were round and slender.

Link raised his head in surprise and saw the hot-looking Beyoncé walking in and locking the door behind her back.

"Come to drink with me again? Are you afraid of being seen?"

Link said helplessly.

Beyoncé didn't say anything, she stretched out her hand and pulled, and the hem of her skirt fell gently to the ground like a golden parachute.

"What do you mean, welfare?"