It was almost ten o'clock in the evening, and the Shibuya office was still brightly lit.

It had already passed the end of work, but Ye Zhao and the staff were still in the office, waiting for an important fax overnight.

I can't wait for the next morning, everyone present wants to know the sales of this week for the first time.

In terms of the success or failure of the rankings, it has long been determined that the winner is Ye Zhao. Therefore, what made them wait all night was by no means the title of the champion of that week, but something more important.

That is, the first week of the single's final calculation.

Everyone, including Ye Zhao, cares not about winning the weekly championship and winning the showdown with the globe, but about this single...... Did you break the record?

When he was not prepared, as the sales of singles soared due to the excitement of the showdown and various other reasons, he also unknowingly had a new "opponent".

That's the record of the first million.

Nowadays, the record of the initial movement of the single is held in the hands of Mr. Child, with a score of more than 1.2 million copies, which is the only group in history, and the singers can't break the initial movement of one million even if they choke their necks, let alone more than 1.2 million.

I can't do it when my dream comes true when it's the most popular, and I can't do it when Imie Amuro is the most popular. B'z can't do it, and neither can Chuck and Asuka. Glay, Kid who gushed out later...... No one can do it.

The initial million hits, until the AKB came along, was a somewhat fantastic record.

And when AKB continued to refresh the record of one million at the beginning of the year, and when this record became a one-person list exclusive to the 48 series, it was already more than ten years later.

One of the most important reasons why they were able to play this originally fantastic record so slippery is that in the era of shrinking physical markets, they sell not only the CD itself, but also the handshake tickets that come with it.

But then again, with the ability to shake hands, there is no point in denying them on such a thing. If luck is part of strength, then the business law that succeeds in them can be regarded as a kind of ability.

Now that the Oricon charts recognize their sales and records, and the Record Association has given them the certification of millions of singles over and over again, they have their own value.

In the context of the shrinking market environment, many rules are changing, and it cannot be said that there are no compromises made by all parties in the music industry in this result.

However, since the establishment of the music market, the rules have changed all the time, and certain compromises have been made at each time.

Taking 10,000 steps back, even if the people who buy it are all moving boxes, these sales are all "bubbles", but before that, the money of the house is also hard-earned money, and it is the same hard-earned money as people who buy records of other singers.

Even if it's a bubble, it's a bubble that is blowing up all over Japan.

Returning to the matter of "support", AKB's success, in addition to commercial law, the satisfaction of watching ordinary girls step by step to the top is also a weapon to attract fans.

In the new millennium, the times are developing rapidly, and when they do not come to their senses, as ordinary people, they may have been discarded under the wheels and ruthlessly crushed by reality.

Life and society are full of all kinds of unstable things, and because of this, idols have a meaning to exist.

Watching idols grow up and helping idols realize their dreams is still the capital behind it even if it manipulates all this, but the satisfaction generated in this process is enough to soothe people's hearts.

If idols themselves have no attraction, it is impossible to sell millions of records just by shaking hands.

However, it is still very far away for AKB to brush up on the record of the first million, and now, the topic of this duel has sent Ye Zhao out of the difficult line of the first million, and is impacting towards Mr. Child's record.

Time passed slowly, finally

"Oh...... It's coming, it's coming!"

With this sentence, everyone who was still a little bored cheered up.

"The first week sales of the new single are ......"

When it came to the most important thing, everyone in the audience straightened their backs and waited for the number with blazing eyes.

"One million three hundred and sixty thousand!"

"Oooh"

At the same time that the number was announced, a cheer erupted in the conference room.

"The record is broken!"

"It worked!"

Cheers like this rang out one after another in the conference room, and even Ye Zhao himself clenched his fists, applauding this newly achieved record in his heart.

In the Heisei period, after the golden age of record sales, among the various records that have to be refreshed almost every year, the record of more than 1.2 million created by Mr. Child is the most difficult to shake.

No matter what kind of popular singer it is, it's all standing there.

But now, this most difficult record, an almost impossible task, has finally been broken by Ye Zhao.

Relying on his own words alone, to achieve such an extent, it is always so bad, and a considerable part of the credit for this successful breakthrough is due to the topic created by the duel with Tetsuya Komuro.

Since 1996, the two names have been mentioned together from time to time, and there has been an indirect duel between the two masters during the period, who is better, and there are not a few people who want to know the answer.

And now, the two sides have finally decided to go head-to-head.

It was this showdown gimmick that led their supporters to focus their buying desire on the week, coupled with the overwhelming publicity, in addition to the support of his fans for his debut single after independence.

And the small business method of Ai Hui using the armband for the first time also made Ye Zhao's supporters more determined to believe that they could not lose.

All aspects are combined, and of course, there is the most important point: his popularity is at its peak, and he has not been shaken by this series of events to get the current result.

After the excitement, Ye Zhao, who had cooled down a little, finally had the spare time to set his eyes on Tetsuya Komuro's globe.

The second place on the weekly list is undoubtedly undoubted, and it has become a fact that he lost to him in the sales list for a while. Counting the previous indirect duels, it can be said that between the confrontations with Tetsuya Komuro, the winner is always him.

However, although Tetsuya Komuro lost in the duel, he is also the winner in terms of the results of this single.

The single's first-week sales were 1.07 million copies, the highest first-week single since their group's formation, and even higher than the cumulative results of some singles.

With the results of these two singles, the singers who have passed the threshold of one million at the beginning are no longer only Mr. Child, and the potential of the record market is once again surprising.

Harvest a single that has made a million moves for the first time, and leave a name on this record with extremely high gold content. Even if he lost to Ye Zhao in this duel, his results and rankings were lost, but it was not a loss for him at all.

Again, it's a perfect win-win.

If there was no excitement of the showdown, Ye Zhao would not have broken Mr. Child's record, and Globe would not have been able to get such a result as the first million, and their respective record companies have also gained countless gold dollars and topics because of this showdown.

When Ye Zhao got the sales list of the single, Ai Hui must have received this result.

In addition, the media has also received feedback from the ORICON sales list.

On November 25, Ye Zhao and Komuro Tetsuya faced off head-to-head, and the final winner was Ye Zhao. This single released after his independence broke the record held by Mr. Kid and became the highest-moving single in the history of Japanese music.

This news will be reported in a big way tomorrow.

Even if he is independent, even if he embarks on a new path, Ye Zhao has not messed up, he is still the strong and the strongest.

The next morning, headlines such as "Komuro Defeated!", "The Highest Single in History Is Born!", "Miraculously the Strongest King!", and so on dominated the newspapers, and the Morning News reported on them.

Not only that, but in the following week, every time there was an informational and talk-like music program, this matter was specially mentioned to continue the topic of this showdown.

Entering the second week, the two singles are still like glue, but the situation of mutual pressure has ended as early as the first week, and for the entire following week, Ye Zhao firmly pressed Tetsuya Komuro and did not give him a chance to turn over.

Not only that, but it seems to confirm the small detail that Ye Zhao discovered last week, this week, the momentum of Globe's single continues to be the "abnormal" of the first week's weekends.

Compared to the sales trend of the second week of the previous single released by Globe, the performance of this single in the second week can be said to be very substandard.

Originally, it was expected that pushing the public's desire to buy to the first week would bring such side effects.

But the anomaly is the anomaly, the second week of the globe this time, is not only as simple as "declining", this trend, in terms of their status in the rivers and lakes, can be said to be "defeated".

What does this mean?

This sends a hidden signal: the global is becoming less attractive to passers-by, and the first version of the business law gathers not only the public's desire to buy, but also the majority of their sales.

On the other hand, the results of the second week of Ye Zhao's singles are even more demonic than the first week, but compared with the second week of the previously released singles, the overall trend is very stable.

Considering that the matchup has shifted a significant portion of its purchasing power to the first week, it can be said that he and Globe are in the opposite situation: his appeal to passers-by is increasing.

When he realized this, Ye Zhao could finally be sure that the several duels between him and Komuro Tetsuya had finally really decided the winner.

He was the one who won.

And what he won was not the ranking of the sales charts, nor the sales of records.

It's the future.