New Age Artists

Chapter 20 Ringtones Really Make Money

As the business grew, Santong Entertainment expanded its recruitment.

It gradually moved away from its guerrilla nature and now has thirteen regular employees.

The finance department used to temporarily hire teachers with a finance major, but now we have two full-time finance staff.

The framework of the artist department and the song department has been established.

The manager of the artist department was poached from the first agent Wang Jinghua.

Previously, Xiao Zhao was arranged to be Huang Bo's personal agent, and he still needs training.

Originally, the artist manager wanted to find Li Yu to do the job through Li Bingbing, and left Li Bingbing's contact information when they had dinner together.

Li Yu did not agree, she mainly followed her sister Li Bingbing.

When running a company, Shen Santong is not in a hurry to get all the frameworks in place.

Instead, look for what is needed, solve whatever problems there are, and build the company according to needs.

Shen Santong feels that the film and television industry is very similar to engineering work, and revolves around the project itself.

At most, we can hire some people behind the scenes and then look for them when the crew is called.

When there is no work, the crew disbands and everyone goes their own way.

It is impossible for an entertainment company to recruit hundreds of people for a film and television project and wait foolishly until the project starts.

I don’t know how much money I spend on water, electricity, rent, various subsidies and social security in a day.

"'The Way of Justice' has been downloaded 60 times, and 'Dimples' has been ranked in the top ten of MP3 downloads, ranking at the top of major song charts, KTV singing charts, radio on-demand charts, and the number of ringtone downloads has exceeded one million." Xiao Zhang, the head of the song department, reported.

Xiao Zhang was previously Shen Santong’s assistant. He went on a business trip to the grassland to be the producer of “Green Grassland”.

After the filming of "Green Grassland" was completed, Shen Santong fulfilled his promise and gave him a promotion and a raise.

Now he is the manager of the song department, leading an intern.

It also depends on the follow-up. If the performance is not good, Shen Santong will have to find someone with relevant work experience to do the job.

"Mr. Shen, you are really foresighted."

Xiao Zhang also studied the ringback tone business before developing Shen Santong to be steady, accurate and ruthless in his work.

The company’s first ringtone business was “The Way of Justice”.

Shen Santong operated it himself, and Xiao Zhang was still eating grass on the grassland at that time.

Taking advantage of the fact that there are many SP companies and the fierce competition, company-to-company negotiations can get favorable conditions.

For all businesses, the download data of the operator shall be used as the basis. The payment for songs shall be deposited into the public accounts of both parties, and the money shall be shared when the operator settles the accounts.

This move is very crucial.

Some private music companies, for example, dare to achieve only 10,000 or 20,000 downloads on their own on-demand platforms out of 10 million.

But some singers often don’t know, or don’t think, that this income belongs to them.

If you don't sue, the music company will keep it for themselves.

The payment is even more delayed, and every effort is made to postpone it as much as possible.

"That's more than 800,000 yuan in revenue. Ringtones are so profitable, so we should do this business too." Shen Santong did the math and was shocked.

The charges for ringback tone vary in different provinces.

In some provinces it’s three yuan, in some it’s two yuan, and in some it’s one yuan, which averages out to two yuan.

The operator takes a portion and shares the rest with the SP company.

The SP company takes 60% and he takes 40%, and he can earn about 50 cents for each download.

Shen Santong had already predicted that the ringtone of "Little Dimples" would be a hit.

"Justice" was a complete surprise.

The song is neither magical nor brainwashing.

The main line "The light of righteousness shines upon the earth", combined with Huang Bo's dance clip, is really interesting.

"Is it a bit late for us to enter now?" Xiao Zhang talked about the current situation of the industry.

It was already October 04, and the competition in the ringback tone business was extremely fierce. The original Taihe Maitian had already fallen behind.

"We don't use traditional channels. We serve online singers." Shen Santong thought about future trends and set a direction.

Many online singers have no copyright awareness, and some popular online songs have not applied for copyright in a timely manner.

The SP company took the money and made no money, not a cent was given to the original author.

"We can definitely find the original author, get the agency, and sue the relevant SP company."

Shen Santong analyzed it and found it very feasible.

First file a copyright lawsuit and get the copyright of the song back.

It is easy to get back the copyright if there are records of creation, scrapped manuscripts, uploaded data, etc.

It’s just that some online singers don’t have this awareness.

Once you have the copyright, you can file a lawsuit for infringement and you will win every time.

When the time comes, they will split the profits 30% to 70%, with him taking 70% and the original author taking 30%. It will definitely be a big profit.

"Holding a meeting, our company will focus on this next." Shen Santong recalled, a little excited.

In the next one or two years, ringtones were very profitable.

Immediately recruit people to hold a meeting and use the company's people.

"This business is under Deep Sea Entertainment. Through this business, we can establish our company image and make ourselves different from traditional record companies. We can improve our reputation among online singers and make them take the initiative to authorize their songs to us."

"Is this making us enemies of the record industry?" some people worried.

"If a ringtone of a hit online song is downloaded 100 million times, each ringtone will be worth 2 yuan, regardless of the original author. SP has exclusive rights to it, so if they can take 1.4 yuan, that's 140 million yuan. This is a huge amount of cash. I plan to set up a prize pool for this project, and 30% of the net profit after deducting operating costs will be the project bonus."

Shen Santong listed the rules for distributing the prize pool and broke down many links.

From obtaining authorization from the original author, winning an infringement lawsuit, directly obtaining song authorization, etc., different links have different contribution points.

Very old fashioned sales incentive.

However, the sales team of houses and cars could only receive a few thousandths of a percentage point as reward at most, so he directly took out 30% as reward.

For a moment, everyone's breathing became heavy and their eyes turned red.

Pressure, no pressure.

If you pay enough, you can conquer the whole world.

11 month 15 day.

Half a month passed in a flash.

"The media labeled "Little Dimples" an Internet hit song, and also labeled me an Internet singer and Internet writer?"

Shen Santong looked through the collection of cut reports.

Record companies have a great influence on the media nowadays.

Don’t say that internet singers don’t matter. These days, internet singers just can’t compare to singers who sell albums.

All the fans who listened to the songs were laughed at.

Internet writers are not much better.

Having decided to enter the ringtone business, Deep Sea Entertainment has launched a strong offensive in the past half month, with the incentive of real money and platinum.

He started cooperating with online singers and filed a lawsuit.

The copyright of online songs is very confusing, with multiple people covering the same song.

Yang Bing, the original author of "Don't Say You Don't Care About My Tears", sent the demo to many netizens.

Tell everyone that they can sing casually and just for fun.

The original author of "Mouse Loves Rice" (I Love You Like This) sold the copyright of the song, but when it became popular after being sung by others, he regretted it.

While creating online songs, he also helps online singers to emerge.

Deep Sea Entertainment has offended both the traditional record industry and emerging music companies.

"Are the water army ready, are the manuscripts ready, are the money ready?"

Shen Santong got a definite answer and knocked on the table: "Let's get started."

Start blowing!
(End of this chapter)