Chapter 458 New Album Leaked
Bang, bang, bang!
When he returned to the villa, Link seemed to hear someone shouting, "Link is back."
As he stepped into the hall, there were sudden bursts of gas explosions all around him. It felt like he was ambushed by enemy gunmen when he entered the door. He subconsciously hugged Ivaca beside him.
Immediately afterwards, a piece of cool hops fell from the sky like a heavy rain, and ribbons and confetti poured down from the top of his head, drenching him and Eva in his arms.
“Surprise!”
Selena, a little round-faced girl, jumped out from behind the door holding a large bottle of Ace of Spades champagne, shouting surprise and squirting at him, with an excited smirk on her round, rosy face.
“Link, Surprise!”
“Congratulations on your triumphant return, Link! You are so awesome!”
“Link, I’m proud of you!”
There are also Catherine, Ms. Mandy, little sister Anne, Emma Stone, Paul Walker, Casey Affleck, Tobey Maguire, Jennifer Lawrence, Alexandra Daddario, Emma Roberts, Gram 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 and many more.
There are also Evaka’s sister Tiffany, Taylor’s brother Austin, the Scott Stubers and his wife next door, Elon Musk and his wife, Megan Ellison, David Ellison, etc., more than a hundred people.
Most of the relatives and friends from inside and outside the circle came.
“Scared me, haha, what a big surprise.”
“Thank you. If you need your idol’s autograph, please come quickly.”
Link laughed and glanced at Ivaca in his arms. Knowing that this must be her arrangement, he carried 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 get the gold medals based on luck to add excitement to the party.
Hearing what he said, everyone cheered excitedly, and the party became more lively and noisy, especially when they were spinning the bottle to win the gold medal. The shouts almost shattered the glass windows of the hall.
—
After the party, the place was in a mess.
While Link was sorting out the bookshelf, Selena staggered over, holding half a bottle of fruit wine in her hand. Her little round face was red, and she walked with a shaky step, like a little drunk cat.
“Link!”
Selena tugged at his clothes.
"What are you doing? Go to bed when you are drunk. What are you doing here?"
Link took off the wine bottle from her hand, picked up a cold wet towel and wiped it on her dirty face to wake her up.
"Hate!"
Selena pushed his hand away and pouted, "I didn't get the gold medal, I didn't transfer."
“That’s because you are unlucky, tell me why.”
Link continues to sort out the messed up vinyl record collection box.
“Can you give me a piece?”
Selena pulled his belt and shouted, her voice sweet and greasy, not at all like her screaming when she was angry.
“Tell me what good things you have done recently. If I am satisfied with what you have done, I will consider giving you a piece.”
"I?"
Selena tilted her round face and thought for a moment, then said enthusiastically, "I have been recording songs recently, and I also wrote two new songs. Taylor said they are very good, and I also signed up for UC, and from now on I will be a College students, hehe, I also went to Nashville to see Alexander and Cynthia. They are so cute, as cute as I was when I was a child. They will definitely be big stars that everyone loves when they grow up. Is this okay? "
“Think about what I missed.”
Link nodded her forehead.
Selena blinked her big, misty eyes and shook her head, "No!"
"No? Last time you called me the devil and called on all your fans to surround me. Have you forgotten?"
"Yeah! I just said it casually to scare you, and I didn't really ask the fans to scold you. Do you still remember this matter after so long? You are too stingy for a grown man, and Taylor also said that you are very stingy. No, huh! Cheapskate!"
Selena folded her arms and turned to look to the side, her mouth raised high.
Link smiled lightly and picked up a gold medal and a silver medal.
“Pouty girl, here is a gold medal and a silver medal, which one do you want?”
Selena quickly turned around, staring at a yellow-orange-orange gold medal and a shining silver medal with her big round eyes, and her pupils also turned into one gold and one silver.
"all I want!"
“You think beautifully.”
Link hung a gold medal around her neck, patted her shoulder and asked her to play.
Selena looked at the gold medal, took a small bite with her little tiger teeth, and left happily.
—
After returning to the United States, Link had no time to rest and joined in the promotion of "Captain America".
Because the movie’s box office is related to your share of the remuneration.
As long as the issuer has promotional activities, he will try his best to participate.
In the ten days since its release, "Captain America" has grossed US$162 million at the North American box office and US$146 million overseas, for a total box office of 308 million US dollars.
The results are pretty good, and it is the fastest movie of its type to hit 300 million.
But the decline was huge, reaching more than 52% year-on-year last weekend. The main reason is that the quality of the movies is not as good as that of movies such as "Harry Potter 7", "Transformers 3", "Shrek 3", and "Pirates of the Caribbean 3".
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, the film was screened in fewer overseas 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" still exceeded the expectations of Paramount Pictures and many professional media.
Originally, Paramount’s marketing department predicted that the film’s global box office would be around 360 million.
At present, the total box office in the ten days has 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.
Complete Cinema believes that the main reason for this difference lies with Link.
More than half a month before the movie was released, Link was a name mentioned every day by 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.
It’s just that I didn’t wait until Paramount Pictures changed their posters on a large scale.
News came that Link had won successive championships at the 14th World Swimming Championships.
American mainstream media 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 Championship. 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 news, praising Link and calling him Amazing 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 global box office in the ten days also exceeded expectations.
The exceeding expectations also shows that the key to the box office success of "Captain America" lies with Link, not Paramount Pictures.
Under 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 due to his participation and his recent exposure.
This has also resulted in Link's film appointments doubling, and most of them 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.
“How about you take some rest 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 lightly, holding a 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 don’t know how.”
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 for a month of fun. "
“Okay, it’s settled.”
Eva Ka 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 up her long legs, nimbly avoided his clutches, and returned to her desk to continue working.
—
There'sagirlbutIlethegetaway
The girl I once loved, but I let her pass by
It'sallmyfaultcausepridegotintheway
Honest pride, everything is my fault
ˆ AndI'dbelyingifIsaidIwasok
In the second week after the release of "Captain America", Link began the pre-release promotion work for his fourth album "Love Is Gone".
The first promotional single "ThatGirl" was also released globally on August 1.
Sold 3.88 million copies in the first week, easily taking the top spot on the Billboard singles chart in the United States. It also topped the singles charts in 21 countries including the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Japan, and South Korea.
The song is of high quality, and Link's soulful performance makes the song more pleasant, more contagious, and extremely popular. Almost on the day the song was released, it was sold in several shopping malls in the Santa Monica area. Start playing the song.
There are many singers recommending songs online. Selena even announced that this was her favorite song this year and asked Link to write another song of the same type for her.
Link shrugged his shoulders, expressing his inability to do anything.
The MV video for "That Girl" released by Link Music on YouTube reached 120 million views within one week.
This MV is performed by Link himself, and the heroine is supermodel Erin Heatherton.
Once the MV was released, it became popular on major video websites around the world.
There is also a version of "Captain America" called "ThatGirl" that is no less played than 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 song's good sales in the first week and the high number of MV plays, the media also spoke highly of the song. More than 30 professional media such as "Rolling Stone", "Village Voice" and "Billboard" gave it a rating of 85 or above, and other media The score is also above 70 points, with a comprehensive score of 81 points.
"Rolling Stone" magazine gave it a high score of 92 points. It is also the sixth song that the magazine has given a score of more than 90 points this year.
This song is the freshest among all Link's songs so far. The tone is sentimental but not sad, like a young boy who has just experienced his first love savoring the sourness of lovelorn.
He also said that it is so commendable that Link, a playboy, could write such a song and perform it with a fresh and natural taste. If it were not known that all the scandals about him were true, it would be easy for people to suspect that the media was framing him.
Due to the good reputation and various data of the first promotional single, the media predicts that the sales volume of Link's fourth album in North America has a high chance of surpassing that of the third album, and there is also a high probability of catching up with Adele's "21", with full-year sales. With more than 5 million copies, it continues to top the annual album sales list.
The situation is excellent.
But at this time, something bad happened.
Less than three days before the official release of the fourth album, the digital album audio source was leaked.
20 songs from the album were released on the iTunes free download channel by a hacker group called Swagsec.
After the group released the sound source, they also stole Britney Spears' Twitter account and sent out a tweet, "It sounds great. They are all good songs. I regret doing this, hhh."
Attach a link to download the song for free after the tweet.
After receiving the news, Link Music immediately sent notices to Twitter and iTunes Music Mall, requesting the two platforms to immediately delete the links and free music sources.
Although the two platforms did not move slowly, it was later revealed that between 11:24 and 0:12 midnight, the album's songs were downloaded for free up to 358,000 times.
Based on the price of this digital album of US$19.9 per copy, Link and Link Music have lost more than US$7 million.
"Why is this happening? I told you to pay attention to the safety of the album sound source, why does this happen again?!"
In the office of the chairman of Link Music, Ivaka sat behind her desk with a cold face and looked angrily at several company leaders.
"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 from the intranet. The network at the recording studio was not connected to the company network, and there was not even an Internet connection there. I have consulted with cybersecurity companies and there is no way a hacker could have breached our music library in this case."
George Capal, president of Link Music, explained while wiping his sweat.
“But the audio source has been leaked. If hackers hadn’t invaded the company’s music library and stolen it, would the audio source have escaped on its own?”
Ivaca asked with a frosty face.
Link Music executives such as George Capal, Bob Harrison, Graeme Goodall, and Scooter frowned and remained silent. Several executives were stared at by Ivanka for a while, and their foreheads began to Sweat.
Link watched for a while and said to Ivaca: "The hacker matter should be left to the network security company for investigation. Now we have to find ways to recover the losses and try to control the losses to a minimum."
After hearing what he said, Ivaca's expression gradually softened, and she arranged work for the heads of departments with a cold face.
The publicity and distribution department will promote the new album as planned according to the original plan.
The Ministry of Justice will contact the police and FBI to investigate the leak of the audio source. After the investigation is clear, all parties will be held accountable depending on the situation.
At the same time, we are also monitoring various music platforms and websites, and pursuing legal responsibility for those who spread and buy and sell this free digital album at will.
“Okay, Chairman!”
Hearing Ivaca's announcement of the task, all the executives breathed a sigh of relief, quickly accepted the task, and hurriedly left the office.
(End of this chapter)