Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618)
Wen | Chen Qiaohui
Cover source | Visual China
The Byte Music platform, which has been passed down for nearly a year, is about to launch.
Tech Planet exclusively learned that Byte is internally testing its first domestic music App, the name of the product is not the previously rumored "Feile", but called "soda music", the product body research and development completion time is around September this year.
It is understood that "Soda Music" is a song listening platform for young people who love music trends. Its overall style is close to byte's overseas music product "Resso", the playback interface is the home page, soda music adopts a sliding music switching mode, and will use video dynamics as a background in the playback interface. In terms of music effects, soda music has a unique "Hi Listen mode", which can appear in the playback interface according to the rhythm of the music and flashing and other special effects. Music takes the way recommended by AI to push smart music libraries to users, it is worth noting that Resso has a podcast function in the new version, and it is not ruled out that the official version of soda music will add podcast functions.
According to Tech Planet, the R&D team of soda music is mainly in Shanghai, and the R&D team has members of NetEase Cloud Music, Himalaya and other music audio backgrounds, and also participates in the product operation of Resso, and the whole team is more like the "multi-flash" team of the year, which is younger.
For the above related messages, Tech Planet asked Byte for verification, and as of press time, Byte has not replied.
Since Ali's Shrimp Music withdrew from the domestic music streaming media market, a pattern of two strong competitions dominated by Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music has been formed in China, but this will not prevent other domestic platforms from giving up the idea of competing for the music market.
According to data from the China Business Industry Research Institute, the market size of China's online music services has increased from 4.2 billion yuan in 2017 to 12.8 billion yuan in 2020, and is expected to reach 24.2 billion yuan in 2022. Faced with such an attractive market cake, Byte chose to take the initiative.
Can "soda music" support the ambitions of byte music?
The playing style of soda music is similar to that of Feishu, which is modified on the basis of overseas versions, which includes Byte's expectations for products, because the overseas version of Lark of Feishu and the overseas version of Soda Music Resoo have both appeared in foreign countries, especially the latter.
It can be seen that Byte hopes that this product can inherit the explosive characteristics of Resoo and adapt to the domestic online music market.
Tech Planet got a sketch of the playback interface for soda music from a source, and while it's similar to Resso's playback interface, there are still subtle differences.
As you can see, the playback interface of soda music is similar to Resso, above the interface is the music name, music lyrics, etc., and the background can be a static and dynamic video. Below is the playback control area, which contains functions such as likes, comments, and forwards, and on the right is the local music download and library list.
The music switching is the same as the vibrato short video, using the manual sliding up and down the screen, which is also the main song switching method of the current video music App.
Note: The left is the Resso playback interface, and the right is the design sketch of the soda music playback interface
Below the playback control area are the play/pause buttons, as well as basic functions such as song search and personal center, as well as podcast functions.
The search interface is similar to Resso, in addition to searching for music, it will also provide recommended songs, playlists and other functions to meet the needs of users for discovering new music.
Soda music also has its own special effects function, called Hi Listen mode, in the hi listen mode interface, users can slide the volume, the volume of the interface design takes a semi-arc design, it seems more smooth. In the interface of the hi listening mode, there are 3 special effects designs such as light source flashing, vibration, screen flashing, etc. After the music is played, the special effects will produce special effects such as flashing and vibration according to the beat of the music, which are similar to the Galaxy sound effects of QQ music.
Note: Sketch of the soda music interface design
In addition to having music effects, soda music also has sleep mode, hidden settings, viewing albums and other functions, to meet the user's experience. In addition, users can also add the currently playing music to different playlists, through the sketch can see that the playlist has a user's favorite music library, there are also children's music, as well as different musicians' playlists.
It is worth noting that the list of children's music songs can be seen that soda music hopes to get involved in the field of children's music content. Previously, tencent music's Q-tone baby, kugou's cool dog children's song and other products have been launched, and in this subdivision scene, there is bound to be a new competition.
Tech Planet also exclusively learned that Douyin did a music-related user survey questionnaire some time ago, and one of the multiple choice questions in the questionnaire is to let users choose one of the 6 different music App icon designs, and it is not excluded that one of these 6 icons may become the logo of soda music.
However, it should be noted that the soda music should still be based on the official version of the official final announcement.
It is worth mentioning that Resso's overseas monetization model is similar to Apple Music's, and paid users can enjoy free ads and a better streaming experience.
Not long ago, Byte also recruited jobs in the domestic market to explore the direction of music consumption, according to relevant sources, the profit model of soda music or similar to the domestic mainstream membership payment.
Through the above information, it can be seen that the main design and function of soda music will follow the overseas version of Resso, with video music as the mainstay, audio music as a supplement, and there will be changes in the sound effects and songs unilaterally adapted to the domestic market, which will be conducive to byte's expansion on the music video track. The way to switch songs similar to short videos will allow users to experience the same immersive experience as short videos, which will form a differentiated development with domestic head music products.
In addition, Resso's success overseas is inseparable from the support of Tik Tok, if soda music relies on the daily active more than 600 million vibrato for support, it will effectively alleviate the problem of insufficient cold start users in the early stage.
However, it should be noted that the multi-flash App also relied on Vibrato for drainage, but later proved that this rough drainage method is not good, and the loss of users is also fast. It is foreseeable that this problem of user retention in the later stage will also become a major test for soda music.
At present, the emergence of soda music may have an impact on head music products.
Behind the byte layout music: open up traffic and profit channels
As the first "cash cow" of bytes, Douyin will have to face the reality of domestic short video users peaking. According to the data of Ai Media Consulting, from 2017 to 2021, domestic short video users have been in a growth trend, but the growth rate has begun to fall off a cliff in 2018, which also means that the growth of domestic short video users will show a slowing trend. For TikTok, this is obviously not good news.
On November 18, according to the Securities Times, a person close to ByteDance revealed that the company held a general meeting of the commercial product department on November 18, at which it was disclosed that its domestic advertising revenue had stopped growing in the past six months. This is said to be the first time this has happened since ByteDance began commercialization in 2013. As the big head of the byte advertising business, the pressure on Douyin is obvious.
On November 2 of this year, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo released an internal letter announcing the organizational structure adjustment. Among them, today's headlines and watermelon videos will be included under Douyin, which shows that Byte hopes to concentrate more resources to create a Douyin ecology, while also retaining the possibility of exploring other directions.
In the second half of this year, byte multiple business lines opened motors to explore the direction of commercialization. Today's headlines took the lead in making changes, testing the reading tool "Zhi District" in the second half of this year, and launching the browser business "Wukong Browser" in the sinking market. Douyin also recently tested the e-commerce sub-brand "Douyin Box" to pry the pockets of young people. Byte has also recently increased its investment in the happiness of the real estate platform.
At the same time, the byte of the second half of the year has not stopped in the action of music, and its layout is advancing according to plan. On July 24, the State Administration for Market Regulation ordered Tencent to revoke the exclusive copyright of online music in accordance with the law, which required Tencent Music to terminate the exclusive copyright agreement within 30 days. The liberalization of exclusive copyrights and the withdrawal of Shrimp Music have ignited Byte's vision of the online music market, and online music is also expected to become Byte's new traffic growth and profit curve.
At the end of July, Byte launched the music agency distribution platform "Galaxy Ark", a global platform that focuses on uploading songs and videos at one stop and making it easy to list. In addition, a number of music marketing and distribution studios such as Hot Cake Studio have been established to promote the music distribution of Douyin musicians and the creation of popular songs on Douyin, such as Lu Zhengting's "Long Time No See" and Li Yugang's "Wanjiang" are all publicized by galaxy ark and have gained widespread attention.
In the near future, Galaxy Ark will carry out in-depth cooperation with Modern Sky on content, which is regarded as an expansion of music copyright. The two sides will jointly launch the "Jumping Spaceship Hot Song Incubation Program" and the "Jumping Spaceship Music Festival" IP to dig up treasure musicians and original songs online, and transport potential musicians to the festival.
The emergence of the Galaxy Ark will give Byte Music more initiative. Through the self-operated music copyright operation platform, it can provide one-stop services for Douyin's own music business and Douyin musicians, and backed by Douyin, it will attract more musicians to settle in and continuously expand its own music library.
In addition, galaxy ark's first "jumping spaceship music festival" is scheduled to land in Guangzhou on December 25, 2021, which provides an opportunity for Byte's exploration of offline music.
As the "grain and grass" of the Galaxy Ark will also provide sufficient music library support for the upcoming "soda music", and before that, Byte has also reached cooperation with many music copyright owners, soda music has the support of internal and external copyright resources, that is, it can avoid the embarrassment of the song library in the early stage of the launch.
In terms of profit model, there is Tencent Music, which began to make a profit in 2016, as a reference, Byte Music or step by step, its profit model is expected to exert efforts in advertising, channels, content, offline music festivals and original music, overseas Resso has been in progress in the above aspects, if you open up the upstream of these industries, there is no doubt that the online music business will become a new big cash cow of Byte in China, alleviating the pressure on Byte in commercialization.
The domestic online music market ushered in new competitors
In the context of the announcement of the closure of Shrimp Music this year and the release of exclusive music rights by regulators, many players in domestic online music are eager to move.
In addition to byte test soda music and Galaxy Ark, head players such as Tencent Music and Online Music Music have also made new moves on different subdivision music tracks.
Take Tencent Music as an example. In the past year, Tencent Music has launched or tested products such as Polka Dot Music, Kugou Listening To book, Kugou DJ, Salt Video, MythIcal Music, Kennel KTV, Dashen Sparring, Song And Song, Listening to And Seeing Treasure, etc. QQ Music has also added the function of identifying music through video short video links, optimizing the function of listening to songs and reading songs.
In terms of scene consumption, Tencent Music is also increasing its efforts for paying users. Tech Planet learned that QQ Music recently launched the Green Diamond Level 9, through more rights to attract users to open Green Diamond membership, this year's Q3 financial report shows that Tencent Music Entertainment Group online music paid users reached 71.2 million, an increase of 37.7% year-on-year, of which the net increase was 5 million, the payment rate reached 11.2%, the launch of green diamond 9, is expected to attract a group of loyal users to pay.
It is worth noting that Tencent Music's Polka Dot Music has recently been upgraded to version 2.0, this music product is similar to byte soda music, in terms of commercialization, Polka Dot Music has adopted two ways to watch ads to download and share downloads, the former is the main way of profit of Polka Dot Music, for users, compared to paying, free download songs will be more real, which has also become the core competitiveness of Polka Dot Music.
NetEase Cloud Music was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 2, and broke on the first day, for players who traded the second domestic music, it can be seen that the unsealing of music copyright will have limited help to NetEase Cloud Music in the short term.
But on the other hand, NetEase Cloud Music is increasing in the community, Ding Lei stressed that in the future, "Cloud Village" should use innovation to expand more "possibilities" of the music industry, continue to create a humane music community, the community can enhance the stickiness of users, from the side can increase the number of paid users.
As a short video giant, Kuaishou has also increased its layout in the music business this year. This year, a total of two new products "Huisen" and "Komori Singing" were launched, which are positioned as music K song platforms and original music communities, which have become common platforms for Kuaishou independent musicians.
For Byte, soda music is not only to realize Byte's dream in music, but also to meet the needs of domestic users and expectations for commercialization, and more importantly, it has become an important part of connecting other businesses in the byte ecosystem, just like QQ Music can become a music provider for Tencent e-sports, Tencent animation, listening to books and other businesses, creating a real pan-entertainment ecosystem.
It is undeniable that Byte has taken an important step on the online music track, but under the attack of the two giants of Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music in China, Byte will still face many challenges on the music track.
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