Mayday, from music crafts to traffic goods

Text/Blue Whale Finance Li Qian

The cooperation between A Xin and Jay Chou has become one of the most surprising eggs for fans in Jay’s new single "Say No Cry" MV.

Compared with their performance in music itself, the loving interaction of "Friday Group" on social platforms and a series of social topics derived from it have become the most impressive highlight of this cooperation.

Interaction and related topics of "Friday Group" on social platforms

A work of art lacking surprises & a successful commodity

Like Jay Chou, Mayday, represented by A Xin, is also the existence of the "heavenly king" commercial influence of Chinese music today. Returning to the music itself, their style changes from their debut to the present also have some similarities.

Mayday, who debuted as a rock band, also inherited the creative style of traditional rock’s social reflection, criticism and remolding. In his first album, Long Live Love and Sea of Life, most of the themes expressed are complaining about the world, dissatisfaction with society, and confusion about feelings and the future. These three albums are collectively called "Blue Three" by fans because their covers are all in blue tones.

Times have changed, and the once fledgling alternative singers have now become the king of pop culture. They don’t need to prove anything-awards, word of mouth, popularity, masterpieces and commercial achievements.

Although we can still feel the continuity of Zhou’s style in Say Good Don’t Cry, and their Do not forget your initiative mind in music creation in Mayday album Autobiography, it is difficult to realize their "originality" and "avant-garde" in their early works. In other words, rather than creating a musical work of art with innovative style and depth, they are more willing to create a precise handicraft that is more acceptable to the public and may resonate with the audience.

Making music that the public wants to listen to and satisfying the emotional needs of more listeners is the original intention of Mayday, which A Xin once emphasized. There are few singers (bands) who are more dedicated and successful than Mayday in making music an emotional commodity that the public needs. As Zou Xiaoying, a senior music critic, said: "The success of Mayday is largely attributed to the collective chorus of A Xin’s personal literary temperament in the commercial field."

Show! Let more people hear their favorite "pop rock"

When I debuted on May Day, I sang almost all the LiveHouse, Pubs, music restaurants in Taiwan Province, and even the opening ceremony of the fried chicken restaurant. I wanted to invite the orchestra to play gongs and drums. The rich experience of underground performance not only enables Mayday to hone his musical skills, but also enables them to have a deeper perception of social reality and the joys and sorrows of ordinary people, all of which constitute the realistic source of their powerful empathy in music works.

"Sea of Life" was written in 2001, when the unemployment rate in Taiwan Province was the highest, the export trade repeatedly hit a record of recession, and the industrial structure was out of balance. In the lyrics, "I know that there must be a tide after the ebb and flow, so what’s the big deal" sang the beautiful yearning under the difficult life.

In June 1998, Mayday was favored by Jonathan Lee, the godfather of Chinese music, and joined Rolling Stone Records. At that time, the global record market had fallen into the situation that the sales of physical records continued to decline, and "the record is dead" became a melancholy cloud hanging over everyone’s heart.

Under such a realistic background, choosing live performance as the main direction of future development has also become the trend of Mayday’s debut. On July 7, 1999, Mayday, who joined Rolling Stone Records, released his first album, The First Creative Album. In order to cooperate with the album release, Mayday held a street concert of "Occupy Ximending" in Ximending for four consecutive weeks, which was the first public performance since Mayday debuted.

After the signing of "The First Creative Album" was held in Ximending in May, Ximending became a must-see place for artists to sign albums.

Facts have proved that Mayday did not live up to expectations, and the concert scene has exploded from 300 people in the first game to 2000 fans in the fourth game. A month later, they successfully held the "168th concert" in Taipei City Stadium, creating a miracle of holding an outdoor concert for 20,000 people on the first release. As a result, Mayday started the wave of street signing in Taiwan Province, and formed a performance promotion model from the street, to the campus, and then to large-scale concerts.

This model is also applicable in the process of opening up the mainland market. On the one hand, they chose to carry out the popularity and popularity to the end, and created a series of songs such as Love ing, Content and Stubborn, which are highly sung in lyrics and melody. On the other hand, they aimed at the mainland campus market and started a free tour of colleges and universities. China Renmin University, Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Jinan University, Sun Yat-sen University, Chongqing University … They have traveled all over the country.

In 2004, Mayday, which was not well-known in the mainland, performed in the "Unknown Highland".

When the low threshold represented by "Stubbornness" and "Love ing" and soft music became brainwashing tracks that were played in the streets and lanes, Mayday’s music, together with their whole image, entered the hearts of mainland listeners and became a kind of spiritual totem.

On April 29th and 30th, 2012, the Bird’s Nest Stadium with an audience of 100,000 people announced that the concert tickets were sold out in only three minutes on May Day. Xie Zhifen, Mayday’s agent, once said proudly: "Mayday is willing to spend time from one city to another to introduce his songs to the students of the school. Now, the students in those days are already at work, and many of them are the elites of the society. They have the ability to watch the concert on May Day. So the accumulation at that time was worthwhile. "

In 2012, "Noah’s Ark" Bird’s Nest concert site.

To some extent, Mayday is like a preacher who learns from the scriptures. They use pop rock as a carrier to spread their thoughts on such unavoidable topics as love, dreams, faith, birth and death, and confusion. While resonating with the audience, actively lead them to find an exit that can lead to a better life.

Ye Yunping, a judge of the Taiwan Golden Melody Awards who wrote many comments and interviews for Mayday, put it this way: "In fact, in the current pop music, many people use it, such as’ blood’,’ chasing dreams’ and’ sticking to ideals’, and everyone has no feeling of using it. But when these words appear in the lyrics of Mayday, people always feel different. Because Mayday’s practical power is particularly strong. Since their debut, they have set goals for themselves, whether they are making works or concerts. They will really show you what they want to do at a certain time in May. The so-called dream-chasing, other singers may just shout slogans, but Mayday is really for you to see step by step. In this era, such an attitude is very moving for young people. "

Concerts and events held in Mayday since its debut.

Make the concert the ultimate handicraft

In May, 2006, Tian made an important choice in performing arts: with the former Rolling Stone executives Chen Yongzhi and Xie Zhifen, he set up a brand-new music label "Believe in Music" and became a shareholder of the new company.

Faced with the unsustainable physical record market, Believe Music began to develop new music content market, and from the beginning of the company’s establishment, it established a development strategy focusing on concert production, hosting and marketing, while exploring audio-visual products and pop culture book publishing, star commodity design and manufacturing.

Mayday itself will also participate in the concert planning. When planning the concert of Noah’s Ark, I believe that the music has been going on for half a year. They attended all the meetings and constantly overturned and created new ideas. The track arrangement, visual production, and VCR of the series all have their own ideas.

During the years when Taiwan Province’s record industry shrank by more than 80%, Mayday’s record sales curve showed a U-shaped reversal, which still maintained the high level during the boom of the record industry in the late 1990s.

Mayday is the singer who has been on the top five record charts in Taiwan Province for the most times in a row.

The Mayday concert tends to be a dream factory with precise and mature technology. From the complete story theme, track arrangement, beautiful dance design, auditory effect and high-tech application, all the elements are designed to the point where they can arouse the audience’s emotions at an appropriate time. Ye Yunping, a senior music critic, once compared the Mayday concert to a very well-made Hollywood movie with a great plot and excellent picture effects.

The concert "Life Unlimited Company", which started in 2017, actually started thinking, conceiving and designing an infinite cycle production meeting more than one year ago in May, and even started the hardware contracting of stage, lighting, video, sound and giant devices as early as half a year ago. In order to achieve the perfect requirement of Mayday’s self-breakthrough in various stage facilities, lighting and video, as soon as the design direction was determined six months ago, the production team overcame all difficulties and found an Australian manufacturer halfway around the world, and bought the "Extreme Zenith" which was enough to carry 60 tons by air at a bid of NT$ 60 million.

When A Xin finally knelt on the stage, the LED screen behind him showed the image of "Infinite Cathedral".

Apart from the first-line planning and production, the biggest success secret of Mayday concert: unparalleled sense of ceremony. At the concert site, fans will wear uniform clothes-either the official theme T-shirt of the Mayday concert or the individual clothing brand of the team. Everyone shouted Mayday at every possible interval. This tradition came from A Xin’s habit of directing the audience to shout the name of the group during the early Mayday performance, and then developed into the spontaneous behavior of today’s fans.

The "blue fluorescent sea" common at the Mayday concert site

Mayday always emphasizes the participation of fans in concerts. Every time A Xin performs, he will emphasize that "we will finish the concert together, not you will come to my concert."

Concert movies, commodity logic in the age of traffic?

Unlike Jay, Mayday rarely participates in variety shows, including the popular music variety shows in recent years. Although they are often seen on the hot search list of Weibo, they are basically information related to concerts. In this era of traffic first, it seems that they can’t feel the "commercial atmosphere" corresponding to their huge commercial value.

The hot search in Weibo on May Day is basically related to concerts.

Mayday has actually made many cross-border attempts. Taking advertisements, publishing books and making movies, all these fashionable attempts to develop music derivative content have not fallen behind. Among them, concert movies have long been a routine operation in the mode of "releasing new albums-opening large-scale tours-launching concert movies" customized by music for Mayday. From Mayday’s first concert movie "Mayday Dreaming 3DNA" in 2011, to Mayday Noah’s Ark in 2013, and then to Mayday Life Unlimited Company released in May this year, it has performed better than similar artists’ concert movies in box office and word of mouth.

"chasing dreams in Mayday 3DNA" has a box office of 23.26 million yuan and a douban score of 7.7.

"Noah’s Ark in Mayday" has a box office of 20.84 million yuan and a douban score of 8.4.

Mayday Life Unlimited Company has a box office of 49.23 million yuan and a douban score of 8.7.

However, from the perspective of input-output ratio, the box office receipts of these three films are lower than the production cost of the films themselves, which is an out-and-out loss in the music market. In this regard, I believe in music, who knows the high profit threshold of concert movies. When I launched "Chasing Dreams 3DNA", I said that at present, I am only testing the water in the field of concert movies, and the propaganda role is greater than the profit role.

Compared with concerts which are limited by the region, the number of tickets and the ticket price, concert movies with the ticket price of tens of dollars make it easier for fans to realize their dreams of being close to their idols. More importantly, a well-made concert film is of inestimable value to Mayday’s own publicity and word-of-mouth maintenance. Under the propaganda of the movie "Chasing Dreams for 3DNA", the tour of "Transformed DNA World Concert Unlimited Amplified Edition" was held for 44 times, with an audience of over 1 million. It is reported that the final benefit was about 210 million. After the film "Life Unlimited Company" was released, many fans began to buy Mayday’s past albums, and joined the domestic station of "Life Unlimited Company World Tour" to grab tickets.

Whether it is a concert or a concert movie, for the music market, it is a continuous exploration of commercial forms with Mayday music as the content. As A Xin himself once said: "The pop music system is not just making music, but selling the image of an artist. The image building is nothing more than enhancing the audience’s sense of identity with the orchestra … As for the criticism of others? I just want to fly high and far, beyond all this noise. "

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