Random Entertainment effortlessly captures the public's attention with its innovative approach to entertainment. The live broadcast of the Midsummer Music Festival has attracted even more viewers, boosting the download numbers for Random iWatch.
As dedicated fans of Jiang Juyou's career, they take pride in her achievements.
In their eyes, the domestic entertainment industry is divided into Random Entertainment and other entertainment companies. In the idol industry, this is indeed the case.
Random Entertainment holds a monopoly, and when people think of idols, they can only recall the few groups from Random Entertainment.
Today, the Midsummer Music Festival went live, and those idol groups took turns performing, becoming a hot topic on forums.
The competition between the four groups had already begun before the live broadcast ended.
Yang Siyu sat in her office, scrolling through her phone and reading the forum content. This was her first time visiting the forum since leaving Random Entertainment.
"Xiao Yu, what do you plan to eat?" Li Yao leaned over from the opposite desk, handing her phone over.
Yang Siyu shook her head, "I'm not hungry." After saying that, she remembered something and looked up to ask, "Did those downstairs eat yet?"
Li Yao checked the time, "It's this late, of course they did."
The office was small, with only seven or eight workstations, but it was fully occupied. Everyone sat at their desks, wearing neck pillows, their fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboards, busy with their work.
Most of the people present had come from Random Entertainment. Instead of moving elsewhere, they started their own entertainment company, even recruiting a few trainees who had been eliminated by Random Entertainment.
This setup quickly attracted investment, but the reality was that the road ahead was not easy.
They imitated Random Entertainment's early operational strategies, creating their own variety shows to broaden their artists' paths. The videos had already been posted on several social platforms, but apart from some initial fan support, they quickly faded into obscurity.
Currently, only Random Entertainment and a few major companies in the domestic entertainment industry can successfully operate idol groups.
Zhao Xu, who had been on an errand, finally returned, carrying her bag. As soon as she entered, she said, "I had lunch with a few people from the platform today. They're planning their own music show, and I spent the whole afternoon with them to secure a spot. I'm exhausted."
Zhao Xu collapsed onto a small sofa next to her, exhausted from her day of running around, almost ready to fall asleep on the spot. But because of this good news, she forced herself to stay awake.
But as soon as she sat down, she felt something was off, "What's going on here?" Zhao Xu sat up and looked around, "Why does everyone look so down?"
Li Yao sitting there shook her head, "No, we're fine."
Everyone knew the reason for their lack of spirit today, but no one wanted to say it out loud.
Random Entertainment's Back to Midsummer Night was hotly discussed online, and it was hard to avoid seeing it when you opened your phone.
Back then, they were also part of Random Entertainment.
Yang Siyu put away her phone and glanced at Zhao Xu, "Didn't you say you secured a spot? Let's go downstairs and tell them to practice well... Hey! Didn't you say when the recording starts?" She got up and walked towards Zhao Xu, pulling her out.
When it came to the recording time, Zhao Xu paused for a moment, "...They said it would have to wait until summer vacation."
It wasn't clear if she was upset that summer vacation was still months away or if she remembered that Random Entertainment's group activities were always scheduled during the winter and summer breaks.
Seeing the two of them leave, the people at the workstations turned their attention back to their work.
There are many small companies like theirs in the country. The more rational ones have shifted to the acting industry or directly transformed into short video companies to survive.
Companies like theirs, which form idol groups, either have a passion for it or harbor the beautiful hope of becoming the next Random Entertainment.
Random Entertainment almost monopolizes the fan culture circle. Judging from tonight's hot search and forum topics, there's hardly any room for other artists to appear.
Equals3 performed on the main stage, and although the number of audience members in front of the stage wasn't as large as the other two groups, they still had the advantage of location, with about four to five thousand people in front of the stage.
In contrast, NiGHT didn't fare as well.
As the warm-up act, they performed after Equals3 on the main stage. For some reason, the number of people in front of their stage was far less than that of the just-departed Equals3.
But the performance was unexpectedly good.
NiGHT's nine members, free from the program's audio editing environment, delivered a raw and unfiltered performance that wasn't bad, and those who had debuted based on their looks didn't falter with off-key singing or forgotten dance moves, surprising even their own fans.
They had prepared themselves for criticism after the performance, but the nine girls had earned their fans' respect.
This gave them the confidence to stand up to other fans.
"Come on, it's seven o'clock, dinner time, let people eat, the audience also needs to eat and drink."
"What's with the 'raw voice'? Tell me, which idol isn't raw?"
"Who are you pretending to be a passerby for? Which passerby can name them?"
With AIcho and Timetrain as comparisons, NiGHT was ridiculed to the extreme, with only their fans pretending to be passersby in the forum.
This time, Jiang Juyou didn't attend the music festival in person but was having dinner with several platform executives, discussing how to expand the idol showcase platform and make the idol industry thrive domestically.
The private room was filled with laughter, and the round table, besides Jiang Juyou, also had several heads of Random Entertainment's operations team, the head of Random iWatch, and a few people from the platform.
The dinner lasted almost four hours, with not much deep conversation but a lot of industry gossip.
Jiang Juyou had initially accompanied Cheng Yuan to such dinners, but now she led her team, transitioning from initial nervousness to now being able to engage in banter with ease.
"He Zhiguo said he's done with his work, I'll call him over!" the executive sitting across from Jiang Juyou announced.
The others immediately showed dissatisfaction, "Sister Luo! We agreed not to talk about work today!"
"That's right, Sister Luo, you said that yourself when you came in!" another person chimed in.
"Oh, Xiao He said he's nearby, so I'll just call him over for dinner, meet some people. He's been wanting to meet Jiang Juyou for a while, and it's not a big deal to have him come over. Our program is set anyway," Sister Luo said, sending a voice message to He Zhiguo in front of everyone, "...Come over, I'll send you the location."
Jiang Juyou across the table smiled helplessly, "Come on, everyone, let's call Wu PD and Zhang PD too. Let's just settle everything today. I can't keep up with these endless dinners. I've gained a few pounds recently."
"Stop it, where have you gained weight!" Sister Luo said, giving her a look that showed genuine concern.
The others echoed, "Exactly, if you've gained weight, what are we?"
"Hey, don't drag me into this, I'm in normal shape!" Sister Luo defended herself.
They always arrange these dinners for a few reasons: to have Random Entertainment's artists exclusively participate in their platform's programs, to sign an exclusive agreement.
The music show is secondary; what they really want is Random Entertainment's group IPs. Once the agreement is settled, they can use the program as an excuse to produce merchandise and reap profits from fans.
Jiang Juyou doesn't want to sign exclusivity and doesn't want to alienate these platforms, so she has to navigate this delicate balance.
Ever since Jiang Juyou hinted at wanting to collaborate with other platforms to produce a music show, media companies and production teams have been eagerly anticipating.
In these two months, the production teams of various platforms have been assembled, waiting for the program to start recording.
The four-hour dinner wasn't enough, and after the others arrived, Jiang Juyou and her team sat for another two hours. The evening rush hour had passed, and their dinner finally ended.
After seeing off the guests, Random Entertainment's team finally relaxed.
"The world is finally quiet." Someone said this, causing others to laugh and nod in agreement.
Jiang Juyou, with her hands in her pockets, also relaxed and called out to them, "You all worked hard today. Take a taxi back, the company will reimburse you."
A few of them shouted "Long live Jiang Juyou!" and Jiang Juyou was amused by their childish behavior.
Her assistant stepped forward and whispered, "Should I send you home or to the company?"
"Home, I'm really tired. I've been sitting all afternoon, my butt hurts," Jiang Juyou replied, which resonated with the girls, some of whom even rubbed their buttocks and said, "I just went to the bathroom to rest for a long time, my butt is really getting stiff from sitting."
"I didn't expect a dinner without alcohol to be so hard to endure."
"I ate all afternoon, I'm about to throw up."
"The car's here! I'm leaving first, bye everyone! Bye Jiang Juyou!"
"Bye—"
-
Ling Cheng used her annual leave to go to Zhuhai for a music festival and also took a trip to Macau with her friends.
Although she only took five days off, returning to the company felt like she had fallen out of sync.
"What?"
"What's going on?"
"What's the situation?"
She arrived in the afternoon and missed the morning's excitement, unable to join in the conversation once she sat down.
A colleague next to her handed her a box of yogurt and said, "Didn't you check Weibo?"
Ling Cheng looked into her colleague's eyes, took out her phone from her pocket, and before even looking at the content, just hearing the word "Weibo" gave her a bad feeling.
The person at the opposite desk, with bright eyes and a straw in her mouth, leaned over and said, "We're the main push for the first issue!"
Between Weibo and the main push, Ling Cheng felt even more flustered. She had been away for just a week and felt completely out of touch with the company's business.
"No, I didn't see it!" Ling Cheng checked the Weibo hot search and didn't find any related terms about Equals3.
"It's dropped off," the person next to her turned her chair around and used her own phone to search for it, "Look, it's this one."
Ling Cheng leaned over to look, "Idol New Museum Recruiting Performance Groups..." Her eyes lit up, "A comeback stage?!"
It was only then that she understood what her colleagues meant by "main push."
Ling Cheng looked apologetic, "Sorry, I haven't opened it either, so I don't know what's special about it... Wait, I'll go ask, okay?"
The few girls in front nodded obediently, and before Ling Cheng could leave, they heard a series of exclamations from the back of the queue.
"Wow――"
"Ahhhh Random Entertainment you!"
Those in front also turned back to look, and Ling Cheng also stood on tiptoe to look back.
That area had already been surrounded, and they couldn't see anything inside.
"What happened?" Ling Cheng carried the box over, and the people around made way for her.
As soon as she entered the circle, Ling Cheng cursed, "Holy shit!"
The girl had originally intended to use a flashlight to check the surface of the card for scratches, but after the flashlight shone on the card, it reflected a beam of light.
The image of the character on the card was projected onto the ground, and that projection――was 3D.
A miniature Sang Mo, about ten centimeters tall, sat on the ground holding a snowboard, with snow reflected under his buttocks, wearing a ski goggle on his head, smiling brightly.
Ling Cheng's heart pounded loudly, so loud she felt everyone around could hear it.
A single card drove all the fans around crazy, Ling Cheng was still in shock and hadn't come back to her senses.
She didn't know if she was hit by the card's technology or Sang Mo's smile, Ling Cheng stood there covering her mouth, not speaking for a long time.
"Random Entertainment, are you crazy? Such a good thing, you put it here?!"
"I can't even imagine if this thing was put into our album, our sales wouldn't break a record?"
"I'm getting goosebumps, what is the principle behind this? What is the principle?!"
All of Random Entertainment's tech cards would elicit such exclamations.
Even Ling Cheng, a Random Entertainment staff member, was shocked. She had thought this card would be extraordinary, but she had never thought of this.
A mini figure was projected in holographic form, proportionally restored, and the color tone remained unchanged. If not for the fact that the projected person was really small, it could almost be said that a real person was standing in front of them.
Some fans tried to raise the card a bit to make the figure larger. The figure did get larger, but it became distorted, looking unclear.
Only when the projected figure was about ten centimeters tall was it most authentic.
Before they arrived, there was no news online about this, probably because no one had discovered the special feature of this card.
Now that they had discovered it.
Well, no one would sleep tonight.
At six in the morning, the fan circle was stirred up by Equals3 fans, not only posting online but also sending to their fellow fans on WeChat.
"Crazy, you don't know how crazy we were for this card on site."
"Wake up! Ahhhh!"
"Someone behind me is selling Jiang Wangran's card, wake up!"
"Forget it, you don't have tens of thousands, go back to sleep."
The chaos caused by the cards didn't subside until they entered the venue. Equals3's three members went on stage early, but the fans below were still whispering, their attention not on the three of them.
Sang Mo and Chen Wu were a bit flustered, thinking the fans who came in weren't theirs, while Jiang Wangran adjusted his microphone and directly asked, "What are you talking about?"
The fans below were like baby birds fighting for food, babbling for a long time, but the three on stage didn't understand a word.
Chen Wu even took off his earpiece and took a few steps forward, the other two also took off their earpieces, looking serious, wanting to hear clearly.
The fans in the audience waved their small cards and continued to chatter noisily. Seeing that the three of them were still bewildered, a fan shouted at the top of her lungs, "The small card can project in 3D!"
Those words were heard, but none of them understood what it meant.
The three of them tilted their heads, "Huh?" Their actions and expressions were identical.
The fans in the front row continued to explain, but since they couldn't take out their phones, they could only gesture with their hands.
Jiang Wangran, understanding the fans' meaning, said to the staff beside the stage, "Could you please get my phone for me, thank you."
The on-site staff were also curious, with some asking the soon-to-be-off-duty Group A if the fans had shown them anything during the shoot.
"No, we didn't," Group A's staff replied, equally puzzled.
Everyone became curious, and their drowsiness was dispelled. Random Entertainment's small cards were famous even among industry insiders, but they only knew that these cards were expensive and special, not exactly sure what made them so special.
After Jiang Wangran got his phone, he followed the fans' instructions to turn on the flashlight and handed the phone to the fans in the front row.
The other two also squeezed over, and the three of them squatted in front of the stage, with the surrounding staff also leaning in to take a look.
Under the gaze of so many people, the fan used the flashlight to project a 3D figure onto the ground from the small card.
"Wow————"
Both the on-site staff and the three on stage exclaimed, and even the fans who had already seen it couldn't help but marvel again at the sight.
Jiang Wangran's reaction was the most intense, as the projected figure was himself.
In the small card, Jiang Wangran was leaning against a streetlight pole, wearing a smoke-gray tracksuit, a dark gray scarf, and Martin boots, standing in the snow with a bunch of pink roses in his arms.
Jiang Wangran picked up the microphone and recalled, "No wonder they asked for a full-body photo. I sent several and none were approved. This one was taken downstairs on the spot, and the flowers were borrowed from our staff's desk."
"Indeed, our company entered the entertainment industry just because of our passion," Sang Mo joked beside him.
Chen Wu chimed in, "Thanks to the company's generosity."
"If we were to sell these directly, we'd have made a fortune long ago," Jiang Wangran said, glancing at the three of them and laughing as they covered their faces.
The stagnant second-hand market was once again heated up. While they were recording the show, people who had just woken up had already seen the video posted online.
Just as the fans in line had shouted, no one could sleep now.
Seeing the scenes displayed in the video, everyone's drowsiness was gone in an instant.
"A walking fortune of tens of thousands."
"Global limited to three hundred... Each of the three's small cards is worth tens of thousands. I can't even imagine how terrifying the price of the five androids' cards would be."
"It's time for the lucky ones to change their fate. Unlike me, both poor and unlucky."
"I remember seeing this principle in a physics experiment, but the carrier was much thicker, not as thin as this, and the projection was more greenish."
"Without this small card, some of my good virtues... will be destroyed!"
"I won, nothing more to say, just waiting for Pei Luming's small card next week, hehe!"
Jiang Liuxing, who didn't get the recording slot, woke up at noon. She lay in bed, scrolling through Weibo, and soon realized something was off.
She clicked on the video that had been forwarded on her homepage and was immediately met with the projection of Sang Mo's eyes.
"Ahhhhhhhh——"
Jiang Liuxing sat up abruptly, holding her phone to confirm for a long time before she dared to believe it was a 3D figure projected from the small card.
She had so many things she wanted to say, to share the news with Liu Yue and Zhou Keke, and to beg her sister for a backdoor card. Just five minutes after waking up, she had exhausted all her energy for the day.
It was also around noon when Random Entertainment's small cards officially hit the trending list.
It was the first time netizens had seen small cards trending, with the tag marked as "explosive."
Just how powerful were these small cards to spark such discussions?
Those who entered with this thought were the same people who later knelt down and begged Random Entertainment to send them one.
Even though the entertainment industry had been quite lively recently, with Random Entertainment's continuous production and planning, it was the appearance of the small cards that truly made them feel the fan circle come alive.
"Random Entertainment is indeed here to harvest the crop. Without it, the fan circle would be boring."
Aliali: 67567d42bd5e46c308c70fee
"These small cards, they give them away! They give them away for free!"
"Actually, it's not entirely free. You have to spend a certain amount at Galaxy to have a chance to win."
"Are you guys in the fan circle doing research?"
"Thanks to Random Entertainment, let us say thanks to Random Entertainment. Starting this month, most of the fan-made products in the domestic entertainment industry will be produced by Random Entertainment. Finally, I get to enjoy it too!"
"First time entering Random Entertainment's second-hand circle... Is your circle this terrifying? How can any random card be worth a few thousand?"
"Does that mean all the artists appearing in this show will get one? My bias is an actor but has also released songs. Can they get one?"
"Can my bias, who was an idol a few years ago, get on this show?"
"If I ask my bias to release a song now, can they get on this show?"
"A collector's hell, a card flipper's paradise—Random Entertainment."
Other fans: Can they get on? If so, I'll immediately ask my bias to brave the CPOP world.