When Chen Yiwen recorded "Peppa Pig" in 2015, she did not expect that this IP would be popular all over the world. Because she was too busy at work, she even had a little hope of "not being selected" when auditioning. At that time, the people in the recording studio had not heard of this IP, and only thought of "sending more voices to the British to choose, I don't know what they want.".
That year, the TV series "Flowers and Bones" was a hit. Zhao Liying, who plays the heroine, became a hit, and Chen Yiwen, who voiced her, became more and more busy, often recording "Peppa Pig" at night. After recording more than 100 episodes intermittently, Chen Yiwen learned from friends a year later that "Peppa Pig" is one of the world's top children's IP, and for her it may be no less than the masterpiece of "Flowers and Bones".
Also unexpected, there is Chen Qiang, the head of the Dragonfly fm children's channel. He did not expect that "Peppa Pig" would become the most broadcast children's program on the platform. Next, Dragonfly fm will not only cooperate with Chen Yiwen and others to establish a "Children's Voice Actor Alliance", but also open up content interfaces for hardware manufacturers.
Time is becoming more and more fragmented, and the ear economy continues to be hot. The economic winter and the two-child policy have made education one of the most crowded tracks in 2018.
Just this year, platforms such as Himalaya, Get, and Fan Deng Reading have successively launched audio products for children. Earlier entrants are already "picking peaches" – two months ago, Less than a year ago, "Uncle Kai' Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was sold, and sales exceeded 20 million.
What we are curious about is what kind of new story will the old craft of "storytelling" bring as a new business on the Internet?
"I'm Page, this is my brother George, this is my mom, this is my dad..." Every night, how many children nestled in the quilt, listening to this crisp, playful voice, fell asleep.
Born in 2004 in the UK, the Pink Pig has "captured" children in more than 180 parts of the world. "Peppa Pig" revolves around the pig girl Page and her friends, telling the daily life of children. Up to now, more than 200 episodes have been serialized in six seasons. In 2015, the copyright owner of "Peppa Pig" looked for Chinese dubbing, and Chen Yiwen and Paige became acquainted.
When Chen Yiwen was a child, she was a host of children's programs on local radio stations in Suzhou. Because her voice has not changed much, she has always done this job in high school. In 2010, she officially entered the dubbing industry, recording hundreds of episodes of "Cherry Pills" in five years. After that, she dubbed for film and television dramas such as "Flowers and Bones" and "Qingyunzhi", and gradually gained popularity in the industry.
Before receiving the role of "Peppa Pig", Chen Yiwen had not been equipped with an animation for a long time. The British version of the dubbing is a little girl who began dubbing Page at the age of 5 and has been dubbing for 11 years. Although Chen Yiwen believes that she is "late in maturity and a long period of naivety", there is still a gap between the voice of adults and children, which makes her a little worried. Fortunately, the filmmakers did not ask to be close to the original version, but hoped that she would "bring in her own understanding".
Coming from a non-science class, Chen Yiwen has always been an "experiential school". Instead of storing a sound library and using technique to mobilize her voice, she "lives in Peppa Pig.". "Page will meet different people, sometimes happy, sometimes depressed, naughty, spoiled... I study this state instead of thinking about how it differs from adults. Chen Yiwen could not put a few adjectives on the voice, and she felt that she was adjusting the "state" of the voice, not the "position" of the voice.
Chen Yiwen
In 2017, Chen Yiwen once went to Bali to attend a friend's wedding. After an 8-hour red-eye flight, Chen Yiwen was too sleepy to open her eyes. The child in the seat next to him played "Peppa Pig" the whole time. After the collapse, she felt that the voice was "so familiar." Later, her friend also encountered similar things, and couldn't help asking her: "This voice is very familiar, is it you matched?" ”
Gradually, the matter of "Chen Yiwen is Page" was known to everyone around him. Once, a friend suddenly called and told her that the neighbor's baby was not eating, and wanted to ask her to persuade the child in Paige's tone.
That was the first time That was the first time that Chen Yiwen spoke to the child in Page's voice. At the end of WeChat, she said softly: "Listen to your mother's words, eat well." Eat well, the body can be awesome, can grow tall. This "Page" was a little nervous, but his friend called out "too useful." After that, she often played Peppa Pig, chatting about WeChat voice at first, and then making WeChat phone calls, and also changing her avatar and nickname to Peppa Pig. Later, she simply recorded several audio files, and the parents of the children had one by hand.
For a while, Chen Yiwen had to coax children to sleep every night. "Sometimes when we're out in a meeting, all of a sudden, a little friend calls and asks how Page is doing." Chen Yiwen said that once her voice was dumb, the child on the other end of the phone thought that Paige was sick, and also told her very warmly to listen to her mother's words and obediently take medicine, and to be brave and not afraid of pain.
At this time, she suddenly realized that sound can affect people. For Chen Yiwen, Peppa Pig is just an ordinary fairy tale character, and for hundreds of millions of children across the country, this is a friend who grew up with them. "Sound has healing powers, and in some cases, this virtual character is more useful than Mom and Dad."
Accompanying the children to grow up, there is not only "Paige", but also a bald uncle "Uncle Kai".
More than 30 years ago, Uncle Kai, who was in the third grade of primary school, became fascinated by Mr. Tian Lianyuan's book reviews. "At that time, every day at 6:30 p.m., other children were watching cartoons, but I sat on the mazar and listened to the commentaries." Uncle Kai's habit lasted from the third grade of primary school to the admission to college, almost without interruption for a day.
After graduating from college, Uncle Kai has been engaged in dubbing and hosting. In 2013, he left CCTV, where he had worked for nearly 10 years, and the following year he founded the children's brand "Uncle Kai Storytelling". Previously, Uncle Kai only told stories to his two daughters, but now his audience is 20 million children across the country. According to public information, in the past four years, "Uncle Kai's Storytelling" has broadcast more than 8,000 stories, with a total of more than 3.4 billion broadcasts and a total of 267 million hours.
Not only a single content IP, but also major mobile radio stations and knowledge payment platforms this year have also begun to accelerate the layout of children's audio.
In January this year, Luo Jisi's "Teenager Gets" was launched for public beta; in October, Himalaya launched a story audio platform for children aged 0 to 12, "Happy Cat Story"; in November, Fan Deng Reading launched a children's reading product "Fan Deng Little Reader"; earlier this month, Dragonfly fm held a children's ecological cooperation conference and proposed a series of children's audio solutions.
"The children's channel ranks in the top three in Dragonfly Station, with an average daily active activity of more than 2 million, and an average daily listening time of about 2 hours." Chen Qiang, the general manager of Dragonfly fm children's business line, believes that there are many reasons why audio is suitable for children's consumption: one is the needs of parents for children's eye protection; the other is that audio may be helpful to children's concentration and imagination; third, there are more audio consumption scenes and stronger accompanying attributes.
Wu Li, executive director of Micro Shadow Capital, has led the financing of Projects such as Uncle Kai's storytelling, ten-point reading, and time know-how. Based on the investment logic of demographic structure and segmentation, she has also been optimistic about the children's audio track in the past two years.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total number of children aged 0 to 14 in China will exceed 300 million in 2020. According to the "China Urban Children's Reading Survey Report", 74.8% of children began to read before the age of 2, of which 65.7% of children liked digital reading and audiobooks.
Investing in "Uncle Kai Storytelling" is mainly based on segments of the population. "For example, there are more male users, most female users reading at ten o'clock, do parent-child groups have good content?" Wu Li said that "Uncle Kai's storytelling" has a certain first-mover advantage, and in terms of "storytelling" alone, there is not even a second or third in the industry, "the gap is too big."
Of course, "storytelling" is just one category of children's audio. Chen Qiang introduced that "Children's Stories" accounts for more than 60% of Dragonfly fm children's channels, which is a product with strong accompaniment, targeting 0 to 6 years old. A little higher is "parent-child education", such as subject enlightenment, quality education and so on.
It is undeniable that in recent years, the outlet of knowledge payment has led to the development of children's audio. However, Chen Qiang believes that the vast majority of children's products do not belong to "knowledge payment", and only those given to parents, such as pregnancy parenting knowledge, can be called "knowledge payment".
"Adults are anxious or self-satisfied because of their curiosity, which is knowledge payment. Children are innocent, and if there is a product that makes them anxious, the values are not right. The companionship of children's products should be greater than the learning. Chen Qiang explained that there is no problem for adults to pay for knowledge, but when applied to children, it is necessary to be more cautious and careful.
This view coincides with Uncle Kai. He once proposed a formula: extreme children's content = happiness + growth + crossing. Adult content is like commodities, children's content is like crafts, "copywriting, music, graphics... Every link must be done to the extreme, and all the extremes are summarized into crafts, and finally have the characteristics of traveling through time."
Children's audio is not a new market, nor is it a small market.
The essence of human beings is a repeating machine, and the Rice Rabbit story machine in the hands of children now, "Peppa Pig", which has crossed the ocean, is just a tape listened to when the post-90s were young, which contains "Snow White" and "Cinderella".
This industry seems to span multiple fields, but the actual core is "early childhood education". According to Ai Media Consulting data, as of October this year, in the field of online education, children's early education enterprises have the highest number of investment, accounting for 23.3%.
Although the medium of storytelling is changing, Chen Qiang said that classic readings such as "One Thousand and One Nights" and "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales" are still very large. Wu Li also said that many poems and traditional Chinese studies have long been in text versions, but through audio, they have become a form that is easy for children to accept. "Uncle Kai's Storytelling" is not starting from scratch, but is based on classic works such as "Journey to the West" and reinterpretation.
"I don't think you can charge users directly for putting the original sound of the cartoon on the platform." Chen Qiang introduced that in addition to presenting 5 minutes of animation content, the audio Chinese "Peppa Pig" also added about 3 minutes of popular science content. Throughout the process, Dragonfly fm will be equipped with a producer to complete the planning and landing of the content, the copyright owner will record the audio, and finally the two parties will jointly operate. The input cost of the platform side is in the million level.
"I think the key in this track is not what model you use to come in, but whether the content you produce is high-quality." In Wu Li's view, the model of "Uncle Kai's storytelling" is not complicated, "there is no shortage of content in this track, but there are not many companies that continue to produce good content, and Uncle Kai has actually established its own content threshold."
Uncle Kai has shared a story on many occasions. Because the story is so vivid, he has encountered complaints from parents: the child listens to it and does not sleep. Later, Uncle Kai used the method of "bedtime poems", adding a jerky ancient poem to the end of each story. Each poem is read aloud 7 to 15 times, and the sound is getting smaller and smaller. Some parents have reported that even they themselves have to fall asleep listening.
This brings us to another key word: scene.
Chen Qiang said that the most common consumption time for children's audio is 8 p.m., which is basically a 1-hour bedtime story, followed by a half-hour nursery rhyme in the morning. Time, content, and behavior are relatively fixed. Artificial intelligence, at this moment, has the opportunity to appear.
Hu Rui, an analyst at Chuangfeng Capital, believes that new audio opportunities are only born in subdivided vertical use scenarios. At the same time, such start-up applications must have the ability to connect with smart devices and have corresponding data collection and data precipitation attributes. Market research firm Canalys predicts that the number of smart speakers worldwide will be close to 100 million units in 2018.
In May this year, Himalaya launched Xiaoya Mini, which mainly targets people aged 0 to 14, and its sales exceeded one million on the first day. In contrast, Dragonfly FM chooses a light mode and opens the content to major hardware manufacturers. Dragonfly FM revealed that it expects to invest 150 million yuan in high-quality children's audio content in 2019.
As Wu Li said, content is at the heart of the industry. The first paid product of "Uncle Kai's Storytelling" is "Uncle Kai's Journey to the West", dolls, picture books, U disks and other things, which are packed into an iron box and sold for 250 yuan. The exclusive story machine inside can only listen to the first part of Journey to the West, and cannot access other audio files. However, it is such a product that has sold more than 30,000 sets.
This is still 2015, when content payment and smart speakers are not developed.
Chen Qiang said that in 2016, the parent-child intelligent companion device was 60,000 units, and the market size reached 0.2 billion, and by 2018, the two figures were 6 million units and 1.2 billion units, respectively. In the stage of staking the race, more resources and energy are invested in hardware production and channels, and many manufacturers lack professional audio content teams. Customizing content specifically for service providers may be an opportunity to break through.
For "Uncle Kai's Storytelling", most of the revenue comes from content payments, and when the new list interviewed Uncle Kai this year, he revealed that the revenue in 2018 is expected to reach 400 million. Wu Li believes that "Uncle Kai Storytelling" is already a parent-child consumer brand, which can not only cooperate with third parties to develop content, but also sell other children-related products.
For platform parties such as Dragonfly fm, when "knowledge payment" is no longer new, it will turn to "content payment" and "service payment", and the story machine may be a new story, but whether "prospect" means "money scene" is unknown. Perhaps people are more concerned about what life will become in the future as a medium and hardware as an outlet.
In any case, the "old craft" of "storytelling" has become a "new business" today.