On October 15th, Singer William Chan and Rapper Gem released a collaboration remix of Gem’s hit “Wild Wolf Disco.” The song hit the top on three QQ music charts. According to the Baidu search trend data, William Chan attracted a lot of attention with the collaboration. And the attention got his seven old songs on the charts as well.

∧Baidu search trend result for keywords “William Chan.”

This incident is just one example of a successful promotion from mainstream singers using internet gimmick songs to appeal to the broader audience.

In 2016, Hua Chenyu covered the gimmick song “My Skating Shoes”（《我的滑板鞋》）which was initially made by an ordinary small-town boy from the western part of China who can sing either on the beat or on the tune. Hua remade the funny song with no musical merit to it into an artistic masterpiece and received praise all over the internet for it.

Wang Feng sang the song “Regular Disco”（《普通Disco》）that blew up on video platform Bilibili among anime fans and made himself very relevant again.

The vast majority of gimmick songs that blew up on the internet in China are considered annoyingly catchy and stupid by people with formal training in music and among privileged people who have more access to good music all over the world. However, they are the favorites of lower-income people in smaller cities and countryside who spend a lot of time watching short videos on social media apps like Tik Tok precisely because they are catchy, fun, and easy to sing along. But these people are the majority. With the increase of their living standards and income and access to the internet, they are becoming a significant consumer demographic for music, which leads to marketing strategies directly catering to them. Unicorn company Pinduoduo and Qutoutiao also benefit from the spending power of this low-end market. The low-end market is estimated to include more than 600 million people, and whoever addresses their needs and interests will succeed in the market.