On the List

The next morning at dawn.

The moment Song Dao opened his eyes, the system notification arrived—

[Host's reputation value has reached three hundred thousand. You may use the lottery function to draw at any time.]

This caught him off guard.

Back in the beginner phase, the ratio of buzz to reputation was one-to-one.

But after the beginner phase, it became one hundred to one!

Though he wasn't sure how the system calculated buzz, it definitely wouldn't be like the beginner phase, where every view counted as one.

There had to be a complex system and algorithm behind it.

That meant the two hundred thousand reputation he'd gained overnight required at least twenty million buzz!

He'd really blown up.

The kind of blowup that breaks out of the niche.

The song See Through Love, See Through You was only decent among Earth's Mandarin pop hits.

It was even a bit obscure.

A lot of people might never have heard it.

So it was a good song, but it had never been this explosive.

Put it in a different era, a different world, and driven by events, it sparked a completely different chemical reaction.

This sudden "explosion" caught him somewhat off guard.

Originally, it was just a song to activate the system and vent for the original owner. Now, it might push him onto a crest he could hardly control.

But since things had come this far, saying anything sentimental was pointless.

He didn't regret singing it.

He just didn't like being disturbed; he didn't care what others thought.

As long as he didn't engage too much with the topic going forward, this ridiculous buzz would eventually die down.

Miao Xiu had indeed treated the original owner terribly—a textbook gold digger. There was no whitewashing that.

The evidence dug up by the all-powerful netizens, much of it couldn't even be found in his own memories.

She'd gotten her punishment.

Though it was harsh, she wasn't innocent at all.

So let it be.

No matter how the internet raged, it had nothing to do with him.

After washing up, he picked up his phone and opened Penguin Music's charts.

He wanted to see if, driven by this level of buzz, the song could quickly climb the charts and bring in more income.

His roommate, who'd spoken up for him, didn't actually know that when the original owner faced betrayal and breakup, he had almost no money left.

Over the past few years, he'd spent recklessly on Miao Xiu!

That was both the self-indulgence of a simp and the impulsive side of a young man spending freely.

Plus, Miao Xiu wanted fame—dreamed of it!

She frantically attended off-campus training classes, networked with all kinds of people, which also drained resources.

Young people don't understand how hard it is to earn money. They think themselves exceptional, naively believing they can earn back whatever they spend.

At this point, his card only had a little over twenty thousand yuan left.

It looked like a decent amount.

But in a place like Beijing, where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, if he couldn't generate income quickly, he wouldn't last long.

Miao Xiu knew this too.

That's why she'd said what she did at the breakup.

In her eyes, Song Dao was just coasting on savings. His four years of college were the peak of his life; there was no future ahead.

Writing songs for money was worse than singing in a bar.

Either way, he couldn't support her anymore.

A woman had to rely on herself.

The moment Song Dao logged into Penguin Music, before he even opened the various charts in the rankings, he saw the song he'd uploaded just last night on the homepage's recommended spot!

Top spot, first on the right!

They'd given it such a big push?

The cover was exactly the photo of him singing on stage at last night's graduation party.

A lean figure, a handsome face.

Sitting on a high stool with a guitar in his arms, his eyes melancholy, his whole body exuding a faint air of sorrow and loneliness.

A goose is a goose!

Whether on Earth or in this world, he always took what he wanted!

Uh, wrong.

Not only was the guy a master at grabbing traffic and riding trends, even the photo he found was damn spot-on and vivid.

Song Dao felt he had been pretty calm last night.

He just needed that state of mind to perform the sad love song.

He never expected to have such a precise image captured of him.

"Not bad, not bad!"

A faint smile appeared on his face.

Everything else was empty; making money was the real deal.

He tapped open the Music Pavilion and entered the rankings, where various charts were displayed.

The Soaring Chart, New Song Chart, Hot Song Chart, Musician Original Chart, Popularity Index Chart.

Below that were the Mainland Chart, Cantonese Region Chart, Treasure Island Chart, English Region Chart, Fusang Chart, and various specialty charts.

They said music was dead, but in reality, a huge number of new songs were born every day and uploaded to major platforms.

But it was hard to be like the old days—

Every month had highly popular new songs, every year was a clash of titans, and even the Heavenly Kings and Queens could trip up if they weren't careful.

Scenes where big shots lost to newcomers were common, nothing surprising.

Nowadays, it was extremely difficult for a song to break out!

Throughout the entire year, only a handful of songs were remembered, let alone classics.

Although classics needed time to settle and accumulate, the problem was that current songs were lucky to stay hot for three months.

So on these charts, almost all of them were old songs from over twenty years ago dominating the rankings.

Of course, there were new songs too, but they were basically pushed up by the singers' companies using their own resources through chart manipulation.

"See Through Love, See Through You" could be listed on three charts: the Soaring Chart, New Song Chart, and Musician Original Chart.

The Hot Song Chart and Popularity Index Chart were no-go.

Those two charts not only required massive data support but also a long time to accumulate.

They couldn't be climbed in a short period.

He first opened the Soaring Chart. Since it only showed the top one hundred, he chose to look from the bottom up.

Scrolling the screen, he found either timeless classic songs or ones that had been revived after being covered by some top-tier internet celebrity.

Song Dao scrolled from the bottom all the way up to the fifties without finding his song.

He thought to himself, Could it be that it didn't make the chart?

Had the terrifying heat from that video failed to radiate here at all?

Or were the all-powerful netizens slacking this time and hadn't discovered it?

That wasn't right. The penguin had given him a homepage recommendation, and his handsome photo was clearly displayed there. How could it not be found?

He continued scrolling up and finally saw "See Through Love, See Through You" at number twenty-seven!

This view didn't show specific download data; to see that, he needed to log into the Creator Platform.

But this ranking already surprised Song Dao.

After all, he was fighting solo as an independent musician.

Without this wave of heat, just making it into the top one hundred in such a short time would have been impressive.

Those ranked ahead were almost all works by the hottest current singers, backed by large entertainment companies.

They usually charted without regard for cost, only caring about heat and fan attention.

With heat, they could get endorsements, hold fan meetings, run variety shows, take on gigs, and even act in films and TV dramas.

They didn't care about the paltry money the music itself earned.

He opened the New Song Chart.

At first glance, the top twenty included quite a few English songs.

Nowadays, the Xia Kingdom had become a world superpower, with a large number of Western singers coming to develop their careers.

In the original host's memory, there were plenty of good foreign new songs.

It was like injecting a bit of fresh blood into this stagnant music scene.

This time, he chose to look from the top down.

Soon, he found his song at number twenty-three.

Behind it, the singer's name—

Song Dao.

Duration: 4:38.

The album field was empty.

He checked the Original Ranking—ranked nineteenth!

"Hoo!"

Song Dao let out a sigh of relief.

A look of joy spread across his face!

Let the storm rage on, then.

It's okay!

This was just one night.

No company, no team, no agent!

To have achieved this, Song Dao was inwardly thrilled, even a little incredulous.

Under normal circumstances, this song would slowly ferment over time, get picked up by various internet influencers for covers, and then, in the current environment, it might still climb the charts.

But it was niche after all, and probably hard to get a good ranking.

Yet here it was, just one night—to be precise, seven or eight hours—and it had already achieved such absurdly good results.

Honestly, he had to thank that video that hit the trending searches last night!

Thank this wave of overwhelming traffic!

Then he noticed the comment section under the song.

He tapped it open and was instantly speechless.

In other singers' comment sections, the topics either revolved around the song itself or the singer.

Praise or hate.

Then the two sides would tear into each other.

But here? Most people were just here for the gossip, like melon-eating weasels!

A minority wrote heartfelt essays from shared experience.

There were some praising the song's quality, but not many.

"Come pay respects to the ultimate good man who dropped a million on a girlfriend he never even slept with (dog head)!"

"Up close and personal with this year's top-ranked contestant on the tragic love leaderboard (funny face)."

"I'm curious—how are you this handsome, willing to spend money, and still got dumped without even sleeping together?"

"Little bro is so handsome! Can we get to know each other?"

"Why can't I get the point of this song? Can someone tell me what's so good about it?"

"Congrats, OP. Not getting it means you're too young. This song isn't for you. Go home and watch In the Night Garden."

"Goodnight, Makka Pakka."

"Is that gossip for real? Brother Dao really spent over a million on his ex-girlfriend? And never slept with her?"

"True, didn't you see his roommate's leak? Total sucker. But this song might let him earn it all back and get famous too. Not a bad deal, hahaha..."

"Support Brother Dao's simp awakening and counterattack against his ex-girlfriend!"

Facing all kinds of teasing, Song Dao twitched the corner of his mouth in exasperation.

But there were also plenty who truly resonated, leaving messages about the betrayals they'd suffered.

Scrolling down casually, he found a flood of emotionally charged text.

These were his real "target customers"!

Song Dao couldn't be bothered to read those essays.

Poverty and love make a bitter pair—when you're broke and powerless, don't meet someone too dazzling.

That street charlatan in Dying to Survive said it well: There's only one disease in this world—poverty!

He exited Penguin Music, opened the creator dashboard, and looked at the data with eager anticipation.

The smile on his face instantly grew even brighter.

With a hint of awe.

The data was unexpectedly good!

According to platform rules, for the vast majority of ordinary audio sources, unless the copyright holder demands it, there's no need to pay to listen—anyone can hear it.

But that's just to ensure their user base.

Anyone who loves music knows that kind of audio quality isn't much different from the videos on the site.

If you want your ears to be comfortable, you have to buy a membership.

If you want to download songs to a professional player, or listen to the highest-quality audio to make your ears even happier, you have to buy a premium membership!

In short, it's all kinds of money-grabbing.

Of course, that's from the consumer's perspective. For the platform and creators, it maximizes profits.

Generally speaking, people who like listening to music, as long as their finances allow, will spend a few hundred bucks on the highest-tier membership.

That way, whether they listen on the platform or download it to another device, they can enjoy the best sound quality at a relatively discounted price.

For non-members who want to hear the highest-quality songs, there's only one option—pay directly!

The purchase price is also relatively high: one yuan per song.

The membership data hasn't come out yet, but the non-member purchase data updates in real time.

It's already exceeded five thousand people!

That might not seem like much compared to the tens of millions of hype, but in reality, it's already impressive!

When non-members pay to buy a song, it basically means the vast majority of them don't usually use Penguin Music to listen to music at all!

Song Dao also found evidence in some of the recent comments.

A lot of people said this was their first time contributing to Penguin.

The reason was that after hearing this song, they felt it deeply and came to support poor Brother Dog.

Brother Dao, dog—no mistake there.

"No wonder they gave it a front-page mega feature."

Song Dao suddenly understood.

Catching traffic is one thing, but generating a large number of new users and actually producing economic benefits is more important for the platform!

After all, the endgame of traffic is monetization.

Although as the hype fades, the number of people choosing to buy and download will drop off a cliff.

But as long as a song like this breaks out, there will always be people listening to it at any time!

Because every day, there are people going through breakups, and every day, there are people whose memories are stirred by a few lines of lyrics.

With a steady trickle over time, plus various ad revenue splits and incentive policies from the platform, in Song Dao's view, it's no problem for this song to bring in over a million in platform revenue alone!

Looking at it that way, what the netizens said made some sense.

His ex-girlfriend spent a million of "his" money over four years, and then he used a song about his ex-girlfriend... to earn it all back.

"It almost feels like fatalism..."

"Good songs really do make money, no matter the era!"

In his world, first came Two Butterflies and Mouse Loves Rice, then Guangdong Love Story—all breakout "killer songs."

They raked it in big time!

If he were willing to ride this wave of hype and join some variety shows or do commercial performances, even if he couldn't live off one song forever, he'd definitely make a killing in the short term.

But that thought was quickly dismissed.

Song Dao didn't want to take gigs by cashing in on relationship gossip while his wings were still weak.

Besides, they might not even want him—going to be a background prop and letting people mock him would just be asking for trouble.

He had three hundred thousand prestige points in hand right now—plenty rich!

And as time passed, they kept increasing.

Even if the system screwed him over, sixty draws should still net him a few decent "pop" songs, right?

Even though he didn't agree with the system's song classification, one thing was certain: the songs it gave out were never low quality!

So he'd just take it step by step and go slow.

After all, he was still young.

Just graduated from university.

In the prime of his life!

--

Thanks to Yu for the Alliance Leader tip, thanks to Xiao Yu for the ten-thousand tip, and thanks to all the brothers.