Chapter 89: Riding the Crest of Momentum

Zhao Kang had experience in public relations in Yanjing, so Li Mu assigned him the task of handling PR for the Haizhou Music Radio DJ. Unexpectedly, after just one dinner, he managed to settle everything. At nine o'clock that evening, he called Li Mu and told him to listen to the radio.

Li Mu found his father's radio, tuned it to the right frequency, and after the opening music, a male voice said, "Welcome to the 'I Love Pop Music' program. Today, the first song recommended by Xiao Hu is from the Simple Plan band, which recently won first place in the Southern Su Province band competition. Many listeners may have seen Simple Plan perform this song live on television, but tonight Xiao Hu brings you the official recording. The song debuted on EasyListen at midnight. If you like Simple Plan's music, make sure to follow EasyListen. Simple Plan's second single, 'Sunflower,' will soon premiere globally on EasyListen."

Immediately after, the music of "Li Bai" began to play.

In a prefecture-level city with a population in the hundreds of thousands, at this hour, even if not ten thousand, at least several thousand people were listening by their radios.

Li Mu had listened to the song so many times lately that he was nearly sick of it. He turned off the radio and called Zhao Kang back.

"Nice work, Kang, how did you manage it?"

"Oh, it's nothing. I have a classmate who lives in the same neighborhood as Xiao Hu. That guy's monthly salary is just a thousand. I bought him dinner and gave him two hundred, and it was settled."

Li Mu couldn't help but laugh—it really was that simple.

Zhao Kang chuckled, "I just finished dinner with him and am heading home. The driver's radio was broken. Did you hear it? Are you satisfied?"

"Very good, exactly as expected."

"Great," Zhao Kang said with a laugh. "I bought two phones for my parents this afternoon. Haven’t had time to deliver them yet. I’ll drop them off at home and then come to your place."

"Alright."

After hanging up, Li Mu was about to ask Kong Lingyu about the site traffic when, coincidentally, Kong Lingyu called him.

"Boss, tonight around eight, we hit a new traffic peak. Over 150,000 users were listening simultaneously. Where did you get all this traffic?"

"Just search for 'Simple Plan' and check the search results. Also, you don’t listen to the radio?"

"I don’t have time for that... I’ll search for Simple Plan right away."

"Good." Li Mu was about to hang up, but Kong Lingyu continued, "By the way, boss, as of now, our site has nearly 300,000 unique IP visits, but our registered user ratio is low—less than 5,000."

Li Mu thought for a moment. "Low registered users are common for this type of site. Here’s what you do: buy three phones and three MP3 players, keep the total cost under 8,000. Use them as prizes for a registration lottery. Have the designers create a banner and put it at the top."

"Huh? Why?" Kong Lingyu was puzzled. Most web entrepreneurs were focused on extracting money from users, or at least monetizing their traffic, but he hadn’t heard of anyone spending money on users.

Li Mu understood this marketing model well. In the future, every app would offer subsidies and cash rewards, burning through millions or even billions to attract users. But the current industry wasn’t yet in that fiercely competitive stage, so few understood the value of rewarding users.

Li Mu felt that a modest investment could strongly motivate users to register—why not? To today’s netizens, phones and MP3 players were luxury items. If registering gave a chance to win, the conversion rate would surely be very high.

He didn’t answer Kong Lingyu’s why, but instructed, "Make sure the lottery cycle is long enough, but not too long—let’s say seven days. Every seven days, draw one phone and one MP3 winner, chosen randomly by the system. Every registered user has a chance; winners will be announced on the site.

"Also, during the seven-day lottery cycle, users who sign in daily will have their chances multiplied. If a user signs in and listens for more than an hour, it counts as signing in twice, doubling their odds again. Those who don’t win this time will have their chances accumulated for the next draw."

The core of Li Mu’s instructions was to increase user habits, thereby boosting stickiness. Whether Kong Lingyu understood or not didn’t matter; as long as he carried out the plan and saw the results, understanding would follow.

With uncertainty and amazement, Kong Lingyu took the task and arranged for the designers to work overtime on the banner, planning to buy the prizes the next day at noon.

After hanging up, Li Mu calculated that he would first let EasyListen cultivate a batch of users. In a few days, once the user base reached a certain scale, he could upload his own two songs to test their performance. If users liked them, EasyListen would have another unique content source.

...

When he had some free time, Li Mu also went to practice driving at the school, which gave him a chance to see Su Yingxue. After successfully parking three times in a row, the instructor waved him off: "You shouldn’t compete for practice with others anymore. Go home and wait for the exam."

Li Mu didn’t have time to go to the driving school every day, so he let Su Yingxue and Zhao Kang down.

The store's renovation was progressing well; Li Mu checked the site every day and saw significant changes daily. The huge billboard he hung outside had an effect—many young people in Haizhou already knew that the local Metersbonwe store was being renovated, and the place was large and looked upscale.

Unlike the lowly King Guo who would go on to play internet celebrities in 2015, the current King Guo was still very influential.

The renovation was expected to finish around August 15th. Li Mu needed to time his order with headquarters carefully. According to official pricing, the stocking cost for summer was about 800 per square meter, winter was 1,000 to 1,500. Li Mu’s store was 165 square meters, and with spring and autumn approaching, the cost should be about 1,000 per square meter—not even twenty thousand, easily manageable.

EasyListen was also doing remarkably well. With the launch of the registration lottery banner, registered users exceeded 300,000, making Kong Lingyu greatly admire Li Mu.

Now, radio stations across the province were playing "Li Bai" on repeat. This was partly due to PR, partly to the song’s own appeal. In any case, the song was a hit, at least in Southern Su Province.

On the third day of Xue Guilan’s detention, "Li Bai" finally debuted on Shanghai Music Radio, immediately sparking a frenzy among young listeners. Simple Plan, along with "Li Bai," broke into the major city, and EasyListen followed—its daily traffic exceeded 500,000, and the marketing team was flooding every corner.

Li Mu called Kong Lingyu, telling him he had found a new singer and would publish his work on EasyListen. He asked for a custom banner to be placed right after Simple Plan’s, reading: "EasyListen Exclusive: Muzi’s Single 'Zebra, Zebra'—A Folk Singer’s Confession, World Premiere."

No photo, just a blurry back view of someone playing guitar, facing away from the camera.

Li Mu, since his rebirth, had never thought of becoming a celebrity. He published his songs under the stage name Muzi, simply to add some stickiness for EasyListen’s users.

He wasn’t very confident in his two recordings—they were somewhat niche folk songs, and the recording quality was rough. Still, they were unique content on the web; uploading them could only do good.

Kong Lingyu was overjoyed. EasyListen was growing rapidly, and he was even happier than Li Mu, who, as a reincarnated veteran of the internet, was much calmer.

Muzi’s "Zebra, Zebra" didn’t instantly become a hit. Li Mu analyzed EasyListen’s user behavior and found most listeners came for Simple Plan, then searched for popular artists like Jay Chou, Fish Leong, Nicholas Tse, Yu Quan, and others.

But Li Mu was unconcerned. He’d let it ferment and grow over time.

Zhang Kexuan had been following EasyListen closely, especially the data for "Li Bai." Within a few days, the play count had exceeded a million, much to the surprise of everyone in Simple Plan.

Opening the site as usual to check the numbers, Zhang Kexuan accidentally noticed the banner for Muzi’s "Zebra, Zebra." He paused, remembering Li Mu had recorded a song by that name, and out of curiosity, clicked to listen—it was indeed Li Mu.

But Li Mu didn’t use his real name, only Muzi, which made Zhang Kexuan curious.

"Hey, Kexuan."

Li Mu was inspecting the store’s renovation when he received Zhang Kexuan’s call.

"I saw 'Zebra, Zebra' on EasyListen. Why not use your real name?"

Li Mu replied, "I don’t want to be famous."

Zhang Kexuan said, "Actually, fame isn’t so bad..."

Li Mu laughed, "I’d rather focus on my own business. The entertainment industry is too flashy—not for me."

Zhang Kexuan chuckled, "If Muzi becomes famous, you’ll be famous anyway. There’s no wall that can keep secrets nowadays."

Li Mu said, "Only you four in the band and Sister Wan know Muzi is me, so you must keep it strictly confidential. If it gets out, you four will be responsible."

Zhang Kexuan quickly promised, "Don’t worry, I’ll tell them right away and won’t let slip a single detail!"

"That’s more like it."

After hesitating for a moment, Zhang Kexuan said, "By the way, we’re planning to head to Yanjing two days early for the finals, to get acclimated."

Li Mu checked the time. "That’s tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah," Zhang Kexuan said. "We really hope you could come with us, but I guess you won’t be able to."

"Indeed, I’m really busy these days—can’t get away."

Zhang Kexuan said earnestly, "Don’t worry, the four of us won’t let you down. Wait in Haizhou for our good news!"