FTM’s first anniversary commemorative album received widespread attention and caught the notice of numerous music critics and music review UP creators.
After all, this was a music group’s debut album. Many people bought it to sample with a “let’s see what they’ve got” attitude. 21 yuan wasn’t expensive anyway—buy it to listen, and if it’s bad, they could criticize it later.
UP creators in the music review and entertainment gossip sections didn’t want to miss this wave of traffic, so they all purchased and sampled it immediately, then edited various recommendation and criticism videos.
On Bilibili, there was a UP creator called “Sister Qing’s Good Song Recommendations” with over a million followers, a well-known music review UP creator.
She made monthly “New Song Recommendations” videos and annual “Best Songs of the Year” summary videos at year-end. Many people followed her recommendations to add songs to their playlists.
In this episode, she specifically recommended FTM’s new album.
The UP creator’s voice was mechanically processed, but her excitement and joy were audible: “I’ve been following FTM for a while. They’re quite different from other boy groups—they debuted under the music group banner, wanting to take the music route, and their previous three songs all performed well.”
“The theme song ‘For the Music’ had an extremely popular cover contest, with over 3 million saves across all platforms.”
“The second single ‘Secret Garden’ didn’t break out as much, with 1 million saves; the third ‘Blazing’ won the ‘Music Billboard’ weekly championship and currently has 2 million saves.”
“All three broke a million saves. Compared to other boy groups’ singles, these three songs’ mainstream breakthrough is already next level.”
“For this first anniversary celebration album, I purchased it immediately and listened through from start to finish, then… was very pleasantly surprised!”
“FTM’s new album quality undoubtedly ranks in the top three of all albums I’ve heard this year, with absolutely no half-hearted effort!”
“First is the title track ‘Sunny Coast.'”
The UP creator’s video showed edited clips from the title track’s MV with voice-over commentary: “A relaxed, lively vacation song, and the MV is great too—blue skies and white clouds, beaches and ocean, absolutely beautiful scenery.”
“The MV was filmed with great care, especially the summer carnival group dance scene with at least a hundred extras. The set was particularly beautiful with balloons and streamers, so colorful and pleasing to the eye!”
“I want to go to the scene and dance with them.”
“However, what I want to focus on recommending today isn’t the title track, but this album’s dark horse ballads—’Night Scene’ and ‘Prayer Under the Moonlight.'”
“I’ve already added these two songs to my annual playlist!”
A flood of bullet comments scrolled across the video.
“Holy crap, really? They can make it into the annual playlist?”
“Sister Qing’s annual playlist isn’t something you can just get into, are these two songs really that good?”
“Listened to them, really good, strongly recommend ahhh!”
“The UP creator has similar taste to me, I love ‘Moonlight’ so much”
The UP creator continued: “‘Night Scene’ as the album’s sub-title track also has an MV. Gentle romantic night scenery paired with their beautiful voices can calm your mood.”
“This song is perfect for listening quietly alone with headphones in the deep of night, very atmospheric.”
“Compared to those pretentious lovey-dovey ballads, ‘Night Scene’ is very gentle and fresh.”
“Next is ‘Prayer Under the Moonlight.’ This song’s biggest feature is the five members’ harmonized round singing—you sing a line, I sing a line. The vocal tone contrasts are obvious, but they harmonize beautifully together.”
“The alternating harmonies are absolutely exquisite for the ears, giving me goosebumps all over!”
“No exaggeration, these two ballads can make it into my annual playlist rankings, and rank in the top few.”
“There’s also ‘Love Contract’ and ‘Happy Dialogue’ which are good too—two songs with relatively cheerful melodies that make you want to fall in love.”
“Then there’s ‘Where Dreams Begin,’ a very positive energy song; and the relatively unknown ‘Don’t Cry,’ which is actually quite good too—comforting heartbroken friends not to cry, very gentle style.”
“For a 10-song album, finding three particularly good songs already makes it a qualified album.”
“But FTM’s album—every single song is good!”
“Lively and cheerful, passionate and inspiring, gentle and quiet… the entire album has varied styles. Listening from start to finish never gets boring, each song brings surprises, and after finishing you want to keep listening.”
“This album is really conscientious. Don’t miss it if you’re passing by—everyone with spare money should buy a copy to support the music group.”
“Organic recommendation, Sheng Yao Media hurry up and pay me!”
The UP creator finally extracted the climax parts of each song from the album and played them all from start to finish.
All the essence of the entire album was in this compilation.
After listening, audiences flooded the screen with bullet comments.
“UP creator, you really look like a paid promoter hired by Sheng Yao~”
“Taking the UP creator’s recommendation, going to add to my playlist now”
“Really good, I bought a copy too”
“I love ‘Happy Dialogue’ so much, any fellow fans?”
“The title track didn’t do it for me, I prefer ‘Night Scene'”
“Agree with the UP creator, the five-person alternating harmony section in ‘Prayer Under the Moonlight’ is so beautiful”
“Supporting this little unknown group, at least they dare to sing and dance with live mics—it’s not easy to make it out!”
“Strongly recommend this album, those who haven’t listened go listen now!”
Besides Bilibili UP creators, many people on Xiaohongshu also spontaneously recommended the album after purchasing it.
Users who bought the album on various platforms left comments and reviews, with the total album review count unknowingly surpassing one million.
On the country’s largest third-party music rating platform, the number of people rating FTM’s first anniversary commemorative album “Forever FTM” was rapidly increasing, with a large number of five-star reviews appearing.
It hadn’t yet reached the minimum number of ratings and time required for scoring, but judging from the proportion of five-star reviews, this album’s rating would very likely exceed 8.5.
FTM’s new album quality was beyond question. Even compared to all music albums released this year, it held its own completely.
This album had so many good songs!
Each song, taken individually, was at the level that could serve as a title track for a second-tier album. Such quality was almost unbelievable—this was actually an idol boy group’s album?!
This was comparable to professional singers!
This wasn’t fan circle-limited idol music with screaming and shouting, but truly high-quality songs that could make people calm down, listen seriously, and play on repeat.
More and more people added this album to their playlists.
After a night of public opinion fermentation, the new song charts on major music platforms were almost entirely dominated by FTM’s new album songs.
This week’s new song chart and this week’s rising chart—
First place: FTM “Sunny Coast”
Second place: FTM “Night Scene”
Third place: FTM “Prayer Under the Moonlight”
…
Sixth place: FTM “Love Contract”
…
Ninth place: FTM “Happy Dialogue”
Tenth place: FTM “Don’t Cry”
Industry peers were about to drop their jaws.
Holy crap, this was a complete chart sweep!
The kind of treatment only top-tier singers in the industry get when they release songs!
Having one hit song from an album was already considered successful; having two to three made it an excellent album.
FTM’s album actually had 6 new songs breaking into this week’s rising chart… this was beyond ordinary impressive.
That evening after returning to the hotel, Fang Yinnian opened his phone and looked at the long list of FTM names on the rising chart, excitedly saying: “Mo Xun, our new songs are performing really well—we completely swept the charts.”
He was particularly happy and ran over to hug Mo Xun.
Mo Xun: “…”
When people are excited and thrilled, they share their joyful feelings by hugging friends. Fang Yinnian’s hug was actually quite innocent.
Mo Xun was suddenly embraced by him, his spine stiffening slightly, his heart nearly jumping out of his chest.
Fang Yinnian didn’t notice Mo Xun’s stiffness and said with a smile: “We occupied six spots in the top ten of the rising chart. There are quite a few singers releasing new songs during summer vacation recently, so this result should be pretty great, right?”
Mo Xun’s mind was in a light, dizzy haze from this proactive hug. After hearing Fang Yinnian’s voice, he came back to his senses and casually circled Fang Yinnian in his arms, saying quietly: “It really is great. Besides the title track, several ballads also made the charts.”
Fang Yinnian said happily: “It’s wonderful that our new songs can get recognition.”
Mo Xun smiled slightly: “Mm, really wonderful.”
After calming down, Fang Yinnian suddenly noticed something was wrong—he had just run over to hug Mo Xun in his excitement, and Mo Xun’s two arms were gently circling his waist.
Their legs were almost touching.
Fang Yinnian’s heartbeat suddenly went haywire. Like being electrocuted, he stepped back, his ears slightly red: “I, I was just too, too excited.”
Mo Xun’s arms suddenly felt empty, and his heart felt somewhat disappointed.
But he quickly adjusted his emotions and showed Fang Yinnian a straightforward smile: “It’s fine, I’m excited too. The new album’s performance is good, which shows we chose the right path with our ‘music group’ route.”
Fang Yinnian nodded: “Mm, I hope this album’s sales can keep up too.”
Mo Xun said: “They definitely will.”
The next evening at 8 PM, exactly 24 hours after FTM’s new album went on sale, the 24-hour sales statistics from major platforms finally came out.
The forum entertainment group’s discussion thread had actually been pushed to 1000 floors, with a deep red “HOT” tag, becoming the most popular post recently.
Such a high skyscraper? Was this a flame war or what? Many people curiously clicked in to see what they were discussing, only to discover…
It was all boomerang face-slapping scenes!
5F: “With ID purchase limits, can this group sell 100,000 copies?”
8F: “Laughing to death, forget 100,000, I don’t think they can even sell 50,000. The public has very low recognition for idol albums”
16F: “Spending 21 yuan on these trash songs is worse than ordering bubble tea”
18F: “How long is the sales tracking? Sitting here waiting for the show.”
…
988F: “@5F, come look at the sales numbers, does the face-slapping hurt?”
993F: “@8F, can’t even sell 50,000? Hahaha, I told you all not to rush to mock—here comes the boomerang!”
1001F: “Climbing this high building exhausted me, but seeing those cold sarcastic comments earlier and today’s sales numbers is hilarious”
1005F: “Those earlier floors must have swollen faces from all the slapping, right?”
1007F: “Some people earlier got so angry they deleted their accounts hahaha”
Those who rushed out to mock coldly after yesterday’s album release… their faces really hurt today.
FTM’s new album broke 300,000 copies in 24-hour sales.
That was 300,000 copies with ID purchase limits—one person could only buy one copy!
In other words, 300,000 individual people purchased this album.
Asia’s top group BNC’s first album only sold 200,000 copies. Their later albums after becoming hugely popular gradually broke through 1 million copies, but that was across all of Asia.
Domestic ballad queen Xie Shiqi’s 10th anniversary commemorative album had final sales of 1 million copies, but her 24-hour sales were only 350,000.
FTM’s first album, just one day after launch, had already broken into the top ten of the “Chinese Music Digital Album Annual Rankings.”
Entering the top ten in one day—what kind of achievement was this?
The entire industry was collectively stunned, even finding it incredible.
Why could an idol boy group’s album sell so well? Had this group actually succeeded in taking the music route?!
While digital albums don’t make much money, high sales proved the market’s high recognition of their songs.
This was the key!
Once singers gained public recognition, the income they could generate from subsequent variety shows, commercial performances, and concerts was immeasurable.
After the sales statistics came out, Xiao Fei nervously asked in the group chat: “Brother Xu, I saw forum data saying our new album sold 300,000 copies in 24 hours and entered the annual top ten. Is this result good?”
Everyone guessed this result should be decent, but the five newbies had no idea exactly how good it was.
Until manager Xu Baichuan said: “Since the purchase limit policy began, this is the TOP-1 album sales for domestic boy groups, far exceeding expectations!”
The five: “!!!”
Holy crap, unknowingly, their album sales had actually topped all boy groups?
This meant their album had successfully broken out of the fan circle!
Other boy groups’ albums were mostly bought by fans, with little interest from the general public. But FTM’s album received universal praise, with large numbers of passersby buying copies to collect.
Xu Baichuan said: “Don’t rush, this album will have a strong long-tail effect. Entering the top ten on the first day, it can still rise further.”
Hearing this, the five were immediately full of confidence!
(advanced chapters available on kofi)
Hello.This post was really fascinating, especially since I was looking for thoughts on this matter last Monday.
Very interesting points you have mentioned, thankyou for putting up. “The best time to do a thing is when it can be done.” by William Pickens.
I am glad that I found this web site, precisely the right info that I was searching for! .
I truly enjoy reading on this site, it has excellent content. “Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.” by Demosthenes.