HLM – Chapter 1042 Coming to Poach

After he announced the termination of the contract, everyone was stunned, including the four members of Reddy—they hadn’t expected Wang Bo to do this.

This contract had a bit of a “tyrannical clause” feel to it. They could have appealed and possibly won, which would have made the contract invalid. But they hadn’t considered doing so. After the Volcano Bar became popular, Wang Bo had been giving them a share of the profits.

Even without releasing an album, they had already earned a lot of money. After a few years, each of them had a net worth of over a million.

From any perspective, these four were like hens laying golden eggs. And yet Wang Bo was willing to let go of them—it was hard for anyone to understand.

Qingyang gave Wang Bo a meaningful glance and, half-jokingly, said, “You’re just terminating the contract like that? Do you know who signed this contract? Four future superstars.”

“Yeah, boss, do you know how many people outside are trying to poach them?” Atulu added.

After the Volcano Bar became a sensation, while the four Reddy members hadn’t become nationwide pop stars in New Zealand, they had quickly risen to fame within the bar and nightclub scene.

Many bar owners credited the bar’s success to these four, and even some major bar owners in Auckland, Wellington, and Australia wanted to lure them away.

But due to the contract and Wang Bo’s assertive behavior, no one had dared to forcibly poach them. Now that the contract was void, everyone assumed that many bar owners would come sniffing around.

Wang Bo knew this, but he didn’t care. He firmly believed that the bar’s fire had been caused by the “Heart of the Bar.”

As for whether the Sunset Band would become pop stars? That would be nice, of course, but he believed that if they left the Volcano Bar, they would never be able to write music as popular as this.

In their line of work, inspiration was everything!

Take Hill, for example. Recently, he had been invited to give a literature lecture at Auckland University. He stayed there for over half a month, and during that time, anything he wrote was terrible—completely uninspired. He had to rush back to Sunset Town and spend his days at the police station to regain his creative spark.

Then there was the newly crowned boxing champion, Oakley. He was dominating the world boxing scene, had bought villas in New York and Los Angeles, and even a farm in Montana—but he still needed to return to Sunset Town periodically to recuperate.

Wang Bo was confident that these people were bound by the “Heart of the Lord,” so why wouldn’t he be generous?

The most important thing was that the contract only had 32 months of binding power—it was almost up anyway.

No matter what anyone else said, he was determined to terminate the contract. In front of everyone, he personally wrote “Contract Terminated” on the contract.

The four members of Reddy were overjoyed. Though the contract had never truly constrained them, it was still, after all, a kind of servitude agreement. When it ended, they couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Tutu smiled: “Freedom feels so good… so fresh.”

After the album The Roaring Voice was released, the Sunset Band exploded in popularity overnight!

Wang Bo’s taste didn’t disappoint—these eight songs were the best of the best. Although the sound quality was slightly limited by the rudimentary studio equipment, the beautiful melodies and touching lyrics more than made up for it.

From the next day, discussions about the Sunset Band suddenly appeared on forums related to Sunset Town.

New Zealand had strict copyright controls—these songs couldn’t be downloaded without purchase. However, after the event, Wang Bo uploaded the songs to the New Zealand Music Network, where people could listen for free, just not download them.

Many noticed the album online. People would inevitably click to listen, and the eight outstanding songs together created an intense auditory impact.

Like travel websites, the New Zealand Music Network also had song and album rankings. The number of listeners for The Roaring Voice skyrocketed, which was the main reason the Sunset Band became a sensation the next day.

No buildup, no special promotion, no hype—just the quality and word of mouth of eight songs had created a legendary moment in the New Zealand music scene.

Media outlets such as The New Zealand Herald, NZ National Television, Google News – New Zealand, and Yahoo News – Music had initially only planned to introduce the Sunset Band briefly. They scrambled to adjust their layouts overnight and gave the band major coverage.

With that, the Sunset Band instantly became a hot topic!

The next day, when Wang Bo went to work and saw the overwhelming number of forum threads and news articles online, he was momentarily stunned: Was New Zealand’s small size the reason? Why was it so easy to become this famous?

By the afternoon, the remaining 2,200 albums were successfully sold. Five thousand albums sold out in just two days!

“This is like a damn dream,” the four Reddy members said, staring blankly at the computer in Wang Bo’s office, looking at all the online discussions about them.

Wang Bo’s phone rang continuously—it was all media outlets contacting the Sunset Band for interviews.

In the evening, an Audi A8 drove into Sunset Town, and the head of bar security called Wang Bo: “Hey boss, someone’s here to poach our people.”

The person in the Audi A8 wasn’t from another bar or nightclub—it was the Market Director of ACT Records’ New Zealand branch.

ACT Records was one of the most powerful entertainment companies in the Southern Hemisphere. It was founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1985, mainly to publish cassette tapes.

In 1987, two years after its founding, Australian Rog Richards attended a performance in Melbourne by the Belgian band Club-Moral and made contact with ACT. Seeing its potential, he joined the company.

Rog was a talented individual. In the early 1980s, he had worked in radio and noticed many gaps in the Australian music scene—such as a lack of contemporary music publishing and promotion. Out of his love for this music and to fill that gap, he took over the company and began his music career.

Initially, ACT focused solely on discovering Australian talent and promoting it abroad. But Rog believed this approach was too narrow—it ignored talented musicians from other countries and wasn’t conducive to the company’s survival.

History proved Rog’s vision correct. Under his leadership, ACT Records expanded rapidly—from Australia to New Zealand, then North America, and eventually, by the 21st century, Europe.

The company valued talent. Unsurprisingly, after reviewing the Sunset Band’s materials and listening to their songs, they concluded that this group was worth acquiring.