It was Ma Xiang, deputy manager of the production department.

  As soon as he saw so many people in the old general manager's office, he was stunned for a moment, but immediately discovered that they were all familiar faces within the company. He immediately opened his mouth to complain, "Director Zheng, just now Manager Sun called me and asked me to come find you to think of a solution. Sony is refusing to arrange production, saying it will take at least until Friday to start working on our order! Can you believe it? This is choking us! Their own records aren't urgent, they can just pile them up in the warehouse, but they're still producing! Our "Liao Liao" album is almost sold out, but we have to keep waiting! Manager Sun went to their company early this morning, but it was no use. They're stubbornly saying we have to wait in line! Director Zheng, can you please call Sony and...?"

  Zheng Changsheng nodded slowly and sat back down after hearing this.

  Things seem to be getting more and more out of hand, with all sorts of abnormalities and unexpected events popping up one after another. But at this very moment, Zheng Changsheng suddenly became calm.

  At this time, he picked up the delivery notice on the table and shook it, saying: "Now it's not just a horse, but the goods have been sold out!"

  Ma Xiang was taken aback, hastily went over to take the delivery notice, and after a glance, he couldn't help but click his tongue and let out a "tsk" sound, saying: "This is too frightening... I remember it's been less than two weeks since we went public? As far as I recall... Ah, Old Liu, didn't you say during the meeting that the sales of Dongguan Bookstore were about 20 times that of the overall market? Now that Dongguan Bookstore has sold out, doesn't that mean our first batch of 200,000 tapes and 20,000 CDs have also been sold out?"

  Liu Zhongxin nodded, "It should be roughly like this."

  But at this time, Yang Fan interrupted and said: "Actually, I came over not only to deliver the survey results, but also to say something else. Just now in the office, I received calls from four provincial-level distributors asking for goods. According to what they said, they have also started to experience large-scale stockouts. I estimate that today, there will be many more who will make such calls!"

  Everyone looked surprised and then almost simultaneously turned their heads to look at Zheng Changsheng.

  Zheng Changsheng's fingers slowly tapped on the desktop, despite the turmoil in his heart, but his face was surprisingly calm. A moment later, he pulled open the drawer, took out a small humidor from inside, opened the box and took out a cigar.

  Several people in the office stared at him blankly, with different expressions on their faces.

  But Zheng Changsheng was as calm as a normal person, slowly taking out the cigar clipper, cutting off the seal, striking a match, and first slowly burning a circle on the cigar before putting it in his mouth and puffing away.

  The smoke is very big.

  The air conditioner blew the smoke away continuously, but pushed it more evenly to the front of every person in the room.

  The people in the house, mostly old smokers, asked about the cigar's fragrance, not only did they not feel choked, but they also quite enjoyed it. Only Zhao Mei Feng, first subconsciously covered her nose, then coughed twice from being choked.

  Then the room fell silent.

  Obviously, several people were anxiously waiting for something, but not a single person spoke up, so the room was quiet, with only Zheng Changsheng puffing on his cigar and the soft hum of the air conditioner.

  Suddenly, Zheng Changsheng raised his head, seemingly wanting to say something, but instead turned to Zhao Meifeng and asked her: "Meifeng, do you have something on your mind or are you also here for this album?"

  Zhao Mei Feng waved her hand fan to dispel the smoke and said: "I came for this."

  As they spoke, she handed over the newspaper in her hand.

  Zheng Changsheng furrowed his brow, but immediately picked up the newspaper and took a look, and suddenly narrowed his eyes again.

  It's actually the music section of "Artist Weekly", it's actually the headline commentary on the front page, and it's actually an article signed by Xie Jingshun!

  This old man is known as the "Father of Pop Music"!

  In the early days of popular music in China in the 1970s, it was this old man who ran and shouted, finally letting the government start to fully liberalize its control over the music industry, while also opening up the access mechanism for private capital, which eventually led to the wave after wave of prosperity of domestic pop music since the 1980s.

  And it was this old man who first discovered the Flying Music Band, then made Liu Mingliang famous, and later Feng Fei Fei... Oh, right, he is also Zhou Pin's mentor! It is said that back then, Zhou Pin pestered him for over a month, until the old man finally agreed to produce an album for her, and thus made Zhou Pin famous!

  To this day, this old man has long since retired from the music scene and no longer participates in any production. In recent years, he has almost stopped creating lyrics and melodies, but the entire domestic music industry still regards him as the number one promoter of popular music! According to industry rumors, the total sales of various albums produced by him have already exceeded 100 million copies!

  Undoubtedly, this is the true North Star of China's music scene!

  It is said that even after he announced his retirement, there were still people waving checks asking him to help review their works or albums, and some even directly offered 300,000 yuan for a commentary, but the old man never spoke easily.

  However, he is now writing a signed article on "Artist Weekly" to highly praise the first album of a newcomer!

  Although he is not directly responsible for this matter, Zheng Changsheng can still know that based on his company's position and connections in the industry, as well as the few people in the publicity department, it is impossible to invite this old man out of retirement!

  So, they simply just liked and appreciated this album!

  Zheng Changsheng held the newspaper in his hands, hastily scanning the content, and got a general idea. He couldn't help but look up at Zhao Meifeng, "Wow! This old man is really... this layout looks like it's two or three thousand words? That's six or seven hundred thousand!"

  Zhao Mei Feng nodded and said, "I was just startled when I saw it too. I really didn't expect the old man to be so supportive! Um, shouldn't there also be newspapers on the publicity department's side? Xiao Wang should have some too, right? You haven't seen them before?"

  She said this, and Liu Zhongxin and Yang Fan from the Propaganda Department suddenly felt a bit awkward.

  But at this time, Zheng Changsheng waved his hand and said indifferently: "This is not their fault, everyone knows that my cultural level is low and I don't like reading newspapers, so they slowly stopped sending them to me! Just the other day, Old Liu asked Xiao Wang to give me a newspaper and let me read an article, but I just glanced at it and threw it aside! The music critics... To be honest, everyone knows that they are just doing lip service, they understand more than ordinary people, but how many people actually buy records after reading their reviews?"

  Zheng Changsheng was originally just casually commenting, but as he spoke, he slowly came to a stop and furrowed his brow tightly, as if thinking of something difficult.

  At this time, Zhao Mei Feng continued: "It's true that the music critics' influence is limited to industry insiders and has little impact on fans, but it can't be completely denied. There are still many people in the critical circle who have a good grasp of market trends. For example, this retired old man wrote an article that I read several times carefully, and I must admit that when I was working with Liao Liao on this album, I really didn't expect songs like "Devotion" and "Wildflower" to be so popular! Fortunately, I didn't stop Liao Liao...

  She was muttering to herself, it's unclear whether she was blaming herself or boasting about her achievements, but before she could continue, Zheng Changsheng suddenly raised his hand and interrupted her. "Hold on, hold on, Mei Feng, you can stop for now, there will be plenty of time for self-reflection later! I...I think I've caught onto something..."

  As they spoke, his eyes suddenly lit up, and he looked up at Liu Zhongxin and said: "Old Liu, you and Yang Fan go find me all the music reviews related to this album from newspapers and magazines over the past two weeks, since Liao Liao's record went on sale!"

  Liu Zhongxin and Yang Fan exchanged a glance and turned around to leave.

  Not long after, both of them returned with a stack of things in their hands and put them on Zheng Changsheng's office desk.

  Magazines are stacked together, newspapers are piled up. Obviously, these things have been sorted out long ago, and even the pages with comments are turned over.

  Zheng Changsheng picked it up, one by one. Perhaps Liao Liao's status in the music scene was not enough to warrant people writing comments specifically to criticize him, so these comments were almost all praising the album "Liao Liao", some praising Liao Liao's singing skills, others hailing the return of folk songs, highly praising "My Hometown", someone shouting slogans for light rock, almost wanting to lift "Devotion", "Wildflower" and "Cheers, Friends" to heaven, of course, there were also people who strongly praised the Chinese style of "Unfinished Love", thinking that this was the ultimate direction of Chinese music!

  Of course, there are also a few songs like "That Summer" that have been propped up, but the number is small.

  Zheng Changsheng hastily flipped through about twenty copies, then put everything down, looked up at the crowd and said: "Xiao Wang, Mei Feng, Lao Liu, Yang Fan... all of you come, one person per stack, help me categorize these articles. I want to know how many copies there are in total, what aspects they are praising, and how many each... let's get started!"

  With a swoop, the boss said one sentence, and everyone was caught up in the draft.

  About twenty minutes later, Secretary Wang collected everyone's data and merged it. After completing the statistics, he actively reported to Zheng Changsheng, who was standing by the window looking out: "Director Zheng, the results are out. There are 43 reviews in total, all of which are positive. 16 of them focus on praising the quality of the entire album, saying it's a rare masterpiece in recent years. Among them, 7 articles specifically praise Liao Liao's singing skills. In addition, there are 27 single song reviews, including 8 for "Devotion", 6 for "My Hometown", 5 for "Wildflower", 4 for "Unfinished Love", 3 for "Cheers, Friends" and 1 for "That Summer".

  Zheng Changsheng turned around and stared at Liu Zhongxin with piercing eyes, asking: "How many pieces did you buy in total?"

  What they call "buying" is actually articles written by music critics who have been bribed with company money. Liu Zhongxin was familiar with the matter and replied, "There are four in total. However, you also know that there are many famous music critics and professors. Although we won't give them money, when sending trial CDs, we will add some small gifts."

  Zheng Changsheng slowly took a puff of his cigar and slowly exhaled it.

  Success!

  The mist has cleared, and many things have become more or less clear!

  There are approximately 39 music critics who, without being paid by the company to do PR, were willing to write reviews for "Liao Liao" and all of them were positive reviews, which shows that this album is highly appreciated by professionals.

  Secondly, from the survey results of the investigation company, nearly half of the fans who bought this album were recommended by friends through word of mouth, and the direct influence of the company's propaganda was not as strong as this reputation spread.

  Thirdly, whether from the analysis of survey results or from the number of comments made by music critics, it is clear that the true influence of this album lies in "My Hometown", "Devotion", "Wildflower", "Cheers, Friends" and "Unfinished Love".

  Things are clear to this extent, if you still don't understand what's going on, then you can hang yourself from a tree branch.

  In a daze, he suddenly recalled the scene where Liao Liao brought in five songs that day and was severely scolded by him, almost unable to bear it and wanting to terminate the recording directly.

  Now thinking about it, I suddenly feel a bit scared!

  If I hadn't endured this back then and directly destroyed this record...

  Now looking back at it, those 400,000 flowers were really worth it!

  He thought of this and suddenly remembered Liao Liao's persistence with those few songs back then.

  Yeah, when Liao Liao comes back this time, we'll definitely have a celebration party. Should we tell Liao Liao to invite that high school student over too?

  It's still early!

  Liao will be back soon, but we still have to wait for a while!

  But thinking about it this way, the thoughts in my heart gradually became smoother.

  It's not that they were preparing for a rainy day, but rather they had been preparing for many years. Until now, regarding Liao Liao's future and Chang Sheng Records' future... Zheng Changsheng suddenly felt like he had grasped something essential!

  ***

  I have written 5,000 words so far, but the things I want to write in this chapter are not yet finished, and the time has arrived! So I had to cut off these 4,000 words into one chapter first.

  If you're still unsatisfied, just cast more recommendation votes! I'll post the remaining half tomorrow.