Chapter 458 New Album Leaked
Bang, bang, bang!
When he returned to the villa, Link seemed to hear someone shouting "Link is back."
When he stepped into the hall, there were bursts of explosions around him. It felt like he was ambushed by enemy gunmen when he entered the door. He subconsciously hugged Evaka beside him.
Then a piece of cool beer foam fell from the sky like a heavy rain, and colorful ribbons and colored paper poured down from the top of his head, soaking him and Eva in his arms.
"Surprise!"
The round-faced Selina jumped out from behind the door holding a large bottle of Spade A champagne, shouting surprise and spraying it at him, with an excited smirk on her ruddy round face.
"Link, surprise!"
"Link, congratulations on your triumphant return! You are so awesome!"
"Link, I am proud of you!"
There are also Katherine, Ms. Mandy, younger sister Annie, Emma Stone, Paul Walker, Casey Affleck, Tobey Maguire, Jennifer Lawrence, Alexandra Daddario, Emma Roberts, Kristen, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Kesha, Lana Del Rey, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Morales, Mars Gomars, Ariana Grande, Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Michelle Rodriguez, James Franco, Mario, Franco Duvall, De La Hoya, Simon, etc.
There are also Eva Ka's sister Tiffany, Taylor's brother Austin, Scott Stuber and his wife next door, Elon Musk and his wife, Megan Ellison, David Ellison, etc., more than a hundred people.
Most of the friends and relatives in and out of the circle came.
"You scared me, haha, it's a big surprise."
"Thank you, come quickly if you need an autograph from your idol."
Link laughed and glanced at Evaka in his arms, knowing that this must be her arrangement, so he took her into the crowd and accepted everyone's congratulations.
He took out three gold medals on the spot and asked everyone to draw lots and win the gold medals by luck to liven up the party.
When they heard him say this, everyone cheered excitedly, and the party became more lively and noisy, especially when the wine bottles were turned to grab the gold medals, the shouting almost shattered the glass windows of the hall.
——
After the party, the ground was in a mess.
When Link was tidying up the bookshelf, Selena staggered over, holding a half bottle of fruit wine in her hand, her little round face was red, and she walked with three steps, like a drunk cat.
"Link!"
Selena tugged at his clothes.
"What are you doing? If you're drunk, just go to sleep. Why are you hanging around here?"
Link took the bottle from her hand and took a cold wet towel to wipe her dirty face to sober her up.
"Hate it!"
Selena pushed his hand away and pouted, "I didn't get the gold medal. I didn't turn."
"That's because you're unlucky. Why are you telling me that?"
Link continued to sort out the messed up vinyl record collection boxes.
"Give me one, please?"
Selena pulled his belt and shouted, her voice was sweet and not like her screaming when she was angry.
"Tell me what good things you have done recently. If I am satisfied, I will consider giving you a piece."
"Me?"
Selena tilted her round face and thought for a while, then said excitedly, "I am recording songs recently and wrote two new songs. Taylor said they are very good. I also went to UCLA to register. From now on, I am also a college student. Hehe, I also went to Nashville to see Alexander and Cynthia. They are so cute, just like me when I was a child. They will definitely be big stars that everyone loves when they grow up. Are these okay?"
"Think about it, is there anything missing."
Link tapped her forehead.
Selena blinked her misty eyes and shook her head, "No!"
"No? Last time you called me the big devil and called on all fans to attack me, have you forgotten?"
"Ah! I was just talking casually to scare you, and I didn't really ask fans to scold you. It's been so long since this happened, do you still remember it? You are a grown man, but you are too stingy. Taylor said you are very generous, not at all, hum! Stingy!"
Selena crossed her arms and turned her head to look to the side, her mouth raised high.
Link smiled lightly and picked up a gold medal and a silver medal.
"Pouting little girl, here is a gold medal and a silver medal, which one do you want?"
Selena turned her head quickly, staring at a yellow-orange gold medal and a silver medal with her big round eyes, and her pupils also turned into one gold and one silver.
"I want both!"
"You wish."
Link hung a gold medal around her neck, patted her shoulder, and let her go play.
Selina took the gold medal and looked at it, took a small bite with her canine teeth, and left happily.
——
After returning to America, Link did not have time to rest and joined the promotion of "Captain America".
Because the box office of the movie is related to his share of the film salary.
As long as the distributor has a promotional event, he will try to participate.
"Captain America" was released for ten days, with a North American box office of 162 million US dollars, an overseas box office of 146 million US dollars, and a total box office of 308 million.
The results are good, and it is the fastest movie of the same type to break 300 million.
But the decline is huge, with a decline of more than 52% compared with last weekend. The main reason is that the quality of the movie is not as good as "Harry Potter 7", "Transformers 3", "Shrek the Monsters 3", "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" and other movies.
Another reason is that "Captain America" is the first film in the series. It does not have a fixed fan base and its influence is not comparable to those popular series of movies.
In terms of overseas box office, due to restrictions on subject matter, there are fewer overseas screening areas.
As a result, the total overseas box office is not as good as that of North America. The North American box office of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" released during the same period was 380 million, but the overseas box office was nearly 1 billion. The North American box office of "Thor" was 180 million, and the overseas box office was 260 million. .
Despite this, the box office data of "Captain America" exceeded the expectations of Paramount Pictures and many professional media.
Paramount's marketing department originally predicted that the film's global box office would be around 360 million.
At present, the total ticket sales in the ten days have exceeded 300 million U.S. dollars. The total box office is expected to be around 480 million U.S. dollars. There is a high chance that it will exceed 500 million U.S. dollars, which is more than 100 million U.S. dollars higher than originally predicted.
Total Cinema believes the main reason for this difference lies with Link.
For more than half a month before the movie was released, Link was a name mentioned every day in the American media, and he was also a very controversial and topical figure.
This kind of exposure has also brought great popularity to "Captain America".
At first, Paramount Pictures was not sure whether the popularity was good or bad. When promoting the movie, they did not dare to mention Link's name. The movie poster also changed to a still of Link playing Captain America with his face covered, or the U.S. Cartoon image of the captain.
The purpose of this is to prevent Link's negative press from dragging down the movie's box office.
I just didn’t wait until Paramount Pictures changed their posters on a large scale.
News came that Link won successive championships at the 14th World Swimming Championships.
The mainstream media in the United States were also forced to adjust their publicity plans from criticizing Link to praising Link.
After breaking into a cold sweat, Paramount Pictures quickly followed the mainstream media to promote and hype Link and the World Championships. The fame of Link and Team America skyrocketed instantly.
As Link won his fifth gold medal, almost all mainstream media in the United States were reporting on the relevant news, praising Link and calling him Miraculous Link, Incredible Link, the strongest and fastest man in the world.
"Captain America" was also released in a harmonious atmosphere. Its premiere box office exceeded expectations, its first week box office exceeded expectations, and its ten-day global box office also exceeded expectations.
And exceeding expectations also shows that the key to the box office success of "Captain America" lies with Link, not Paramount Pictures.
In this public opinion situation, Link's appeal at the movie box office has also been infinitely amplified.
He was rated as the 'post-80s actor' with the strongest box office appeal in 2011 by the Hollywood Reporter and other media. He is also the most cost-effective actor. If you invest 1 dollar in him, the producer can get 23 dollars in profit.
Including "Midnight in Paris", "Bridesmaids", and even "The Secret Fan", which had average box office results, achieved box office results that exceeded expectations because of his participation and his recent exposure.
This has also led to Link's film appointments doubling, most of which are leading actors in commercial blockbusters, with a salary of more than 20 million.
It's just that he still has "Avengers" and "The Expendables 2" in his hands, and his time is limited, so he hasn't decided which movie to take yet.
"Why don't you take some time off before you get busy? You haven't had a good rest since the beginning of the year."
In the office, Ivaca came over and gently held his shoulders. The air was filled with fragrance.
"You haven't had any rest either. Do you feel tired?"
Link smiled softly, holding a signature pen, and drew dragons and phoenixes on the cover of the deluxe edition album.
"I just sit in the office and read documents every day. When I'm tired, I go shopping and have a beauty treatment. But every day you are either training hard at the training ground or flying around the world busy working and competing. Will your body collapse if you continue like this? ?”
Ivaca said worriedly.
"Don't worry, I'm in good health. You can't pretend to be dead for at least one hour tonight."
Link touched the jade hand on his shoulder.
"I won't."
Ivaca rolled her eyes at him charmingly and raised her red lips slightly, "After we finish working on the movie and album, how about we go to Hawaii for a vacation? You can go to other places as well. You can choose any place and I will accompany you. "
"It's okay, but after finishing the album, I have to go to France to shoot a movie, two boxing matches, and the company also has three new movies released, so you have to be busy too.
We can't play for a few days, so why not find a place closer to us and take a short vacation? At the end of the year, we can put down all our work and go to Hawaii or other places to have fun for a month. "
"Okay, it's settled."
Evaka hugged his neck behind her and kissed the side of his face with her soft red lips.
When he stretched out his hand to carry her, Ivaca smiled softly, stepped forward with her long legs, nimbly avoided his clutches, and returned to her desk to continue working.
——
There's a girl but I let her get away
The girl I once loved, I let her pass by
It's all my fault cause pride got in the way
My pride is at work. Everything is my fault.
And I'd be lying if I said I was ok
In the second week of the release of "Captain America", Link's fourth album "Love Is Gone" began pre-release promotion work.
The first promotional single "That Girl" was also released globally on August 1.
The first week sales volume was 3.88 million copies, easily winning the US Billboard singles chart, and also winning the singles charts in 21 countries including the UK, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Japan, and South Korea.
This song is of high quality, and with Link's affectionate interpretation, it is more pleasant to the ear, more infectious, and extremely popular. Almost on the day the song was released, several shopping malls in the Santa Monica area began to play the song.
There are also many singers who promote the song online. Selena even announced that this is her favorite song this year, and asked Link to write another song of the same type for her.
Link shrugged his shoulders, indicating that he was powerless.
The "That Girl" MV video released by link music on YouTube has been played 120 million times in one week.
This MV was starred by Link himself, and the heroine is supermodel Erin Heatherton.
Once released, the MV became popular on major video websites around the world.
There is also a "Captain America" version of "That Girl" whose playback volume is not inferior to the original version.
This is a video released by the official video account of Captain America. The main plot is the love story between Captain America and Agent Carter. From the plot point of view, it is more touching than the original MV.
The number of views exceeded 100 million in ten days.
In addition to the good sales performance of the song in the first week and the high number of views of the MV, the media also gave a very high evaluation of this song. More than 30 professional media such as "Rolling Stone", "Village Voice" and "Billboard" gave a score of more than 85, and other media scores were also above 70 points, with a comprehensive score of 81 points.
"Rolling Stone" magazine gave a high score of 92 points, which is also the sixth song with a score of more than 90 points given by the magazine this year.
The evaluation of this song is the freshest song of all Link's songs. The tone is sentimental but not sad, like a young boy who has just experienced his first love and tastes the bitterness of a broken heart.
It is also said that it is rare for Link, a playboy, to write such a song and interpret it with a fresh and natural taste. If it were not known that his scandals were true, it would be easy to suspect that the media was framing him.
Since the first promotional single had good reputation and various data, the media predicted that Link's fourth album had a great chance of exceeding the third album in North America sales, and there was a high probability that it would catch up with Adele's "21", with annual sales exceeding 5 million copies, and won the annual album sales chart for two consecutive years.
The situation was very good.
However, at this time, something bad happened.
Less than three days before the official release of the fourth album, the digital album sound source was leaked.
The 20 songs in the album were released on the iTunes free download channel by a hacker group called Swagsec.
After the group released the sound source, it also stole Britney Spears's Twitter account and sent a tweet "It sounds good, all good songs, I regret doing this, hhh".
Attached to the tweet was a link to download the song for free.
After receiving the news, Link Music immediately notified Twitter and iTunes Music Store, requiring the two platforms to immediately delete the link and free sound source.
Although the two platforms were not slow in their actions, it was later shown that the songs in this album were downloaded for free up to 358,000 times between 11:24 p.m. and 0:12 a.m.
Based on the price of $19.9 per copy of this digital album, Link and Link Music lost more than seven million U.S. dollars.
"Why is this happening? I told you to protect the security of the album's sound source, why did this happen?!"
In the office of the chairman of Link Music, Ivaka sat behind her desk with a cold face and looked at several company leaders angrily.
"Chairman, after the hacking incident at the beginning of the year, we immediately strengthened the security management of the online music library and completely disconnected the Internet and the intranet. The network in the recording studio was not connected to the company network, and there was no Internet connection there. I consulted a network security company. In this case, hackers could not have invaded our music library."
Link Music President George Kapar explained while wiping his sweat.
"But the sound source has been leaked. If the hackers did not invade the company's music library to steal, would the sound source have run away by itself?"
Ivaka asked with a frosty face.
Link Music executives such as George Kapar, Bob Harrison, Graeme Goodall, and Scooter frowned and remained silent. Several executives began to sweat after being stared at by Ivanka for a while.
Link watched from the side for a while and said to Ivanka: "Let the hacker company investigate. We should find a way to recover the losses and try to minimize the losses."
Ivaka's expression gradually eased when she heard his words, and she arranged work for the heads of various departments with a cold face.
The publicity department promoted the new album as planned.
The legal department contacted the police and the FBI to investigate the audio source leak incident. After the investigation is clear, they will investigate the responsibilities of all parties according to the situation.
At the same time, they also monitor various music platforms and websites, and investigate the legal responsibilities of those who spread and buy and sell this free digital album at will.
"Okay, Chairman!"
Hearing Ivaka's announcement of the task, all executives breathed a sigh of relief, quickly took the task, and hurriedly left the office.
