Antlers
essentials:
1. After the Qinglang action, the public exposure and business resources of Aidou, which debuted in idol talent shows, fell sharply.
2. The talent show is gone, and the Chinese trainees have run overseas to debut, becoming one of the few opportunities to "be seen" and "become an official idol".
3. Capital winter, the idol industry into a trough period, under the cold winter, idol job opportunities are not much, into the inner volume.
4. Idols are just needed in the entertainment market, and four idol agencies, including Lehua, have launched new groups.
5. Operating social media, taking the fan cultivation route, coupled with the company's resources, this will become the mainstream model of idol brokerage companies in the future.
2021 can be called the "first year of the collapse of the house", and many of the many stars who have been punished for their immorality or illegality are from idols.
After the Spring Festival this year, "Youth with You 3" and "Creation Camp 2021" launched an idol war, but "Youth with You 3" was rectified and suspended due to the impact of the "milk pouring incident", and could only be hastily formed into a group IXFORM at a music festival in Chengdu in July.
In May, the "milk pouring incident" became more and more intense, and the Cyberspace Administration of China announced the launch of the Qinglang Action, and under the call of the Qinglang Action, major idol brokerage companies and star studios, including Lehua, issued a proposal calling on fans to follow the stars rationally and reject any irrational illegal behaviors such as helping the list and raising funds.
In August, the State Administration of Radio and Television launched a special investigation and rectification of network programs, requiring strict control of idol cultivation programs and focusing on strengthening the management of talent-based online variety shows.
In the past, Kun Yin and Lehua relied on the popularity of "Idol Trainee" to launch the boy group Kun Yin Four Sons ONER and Lehua Seven Sons NEXT, but now idols, rice circles, and drafts have been severely beaten, and the company and idols can no longer rely on talent shows to get ahead.
After the draft, many idol entertainment companies continue to release information on recruiting trainees, which shows that the fan market is still optimistic.
However, in the past, most idol entertainment companies relied on the heat reserved for the draft to achieve success, and after losing the bonus of the draft, how far can the idols operated by these companies go?
After a sharp drop in idol exposure
This year's THE9 ushered in graduation, compared to the big fanfare of last year's Rocket Girl 101 graduation ceremony, THE9's graduation ceremony has no other form except after the release of the graduation EP.
On December 5, THE9 released the graduation digital album "THE NINE", and so far the album has sold 70,000 copies, far less than the debut album that exceeded 200,000 copies in 6 minutes.
From the overall digital album sales this year, the digital albums released in the first half of the year accounted for the majority, Cai Xukun's "Fans", Liu Yuxin's "EPSILON", and Justin Bieber's "Justice" (discontinued) are the three albums with the highest sales this year.
In September, various fan groups on Weibo issued a name change announcement, and the name change no longer appeared with an organizational nickname, such as "BAR, station, middle head, anti-black, resources" and so on.
According to the International Internet Information Office, since the Qinglang operation, the rice circle rectification has disposed of more than 20,000 illegal accounts, more than 6,500 group owners, and more than 3,000 disbanded topics.
From a marketing point of view, the proportion of entertainment topics in Weibo's hot search this year has dropped from nearly 40% last year to 25% in the second quarter of this year.
The influence of fans invading the public eye is much less than before, and the exposure of idols has dropped significantly.
In terms of business resources, there will be no idol talent shows in the next few years, and this year's various music roundups will be greatly affected, such as Youku warm-up for a long time and even invited a number of SM artists to record video promotion of the talent show "Asian Super Star Cluster" in the stillbirth, Weibo many contestants posted regrets.
At present, the existing music variety program is more vertical in a certain field, and most of the trainees mainly practice singing and dancing, if they cannot be professionally good, they will soon be eliminated by the market. Business resources are limited, many idols can only earn exposure by participating in some public welfare activities or official activities, and the brokerage team has become the key to fighting for mainstream official resources for idols, such as participating in public welfare activities and doing public welfare endorsements.
For example, because of the floods in Henan and the epidemic in Shaanxi, celebrity donations have attracted much attention this year. In the daily "micro-public welfare" activities, fans actively participate in the donation project, the influence of fans is converted into the influence of idols, if the celebrity homepage has a public welfare card, you can also give away the points in your hand to increase the public welfare influence of idols.
In addition, this year, many idol singers, including Zhang Yanqi, Zhou Zhennan, Liu Yuxin, etc. have participated in a number of music festivals, which has also caused some controversy, and self-media and fans have also talked about idols to "roll" the market share of independent musicians and bands in music festivals.
When the exposure of idols decreases, business resources and party performance opportunities decrease, but fans are still there, a small number of idols will completely transform into a film and television route and become an actor, but the film and television industry itself has more monks and less porridge, and these years have been the cold winter period of the industry. Therefore, many small and medium-sized idols will be more "inner volume", and it will be relatively easy to release singles and release albums in the traditional mode of offline Live touring next year, from this point of view, it is obvious that the booking of offline performance venues next year will definitely be more tense.
What should I do if I don't make my debut?
This year's Korean women's talent show "Girls Planet 999" created a draft competition for trainees from China, Japan and South Korea, and among the 33 trainees in China, the agency includes iQIYI's Guoran Entertainment, ETM Vitality Era, Ingenious Entertainment and Siba Media.
Although only one Chinese contestant, Shen Xiaoting, entered the debut group Kep1er in the final show, the other contestants who performed well in the show received a lot of attention because of the broadcast.
For example, the number of trainee Fu Yaning's followers on Instagram is more than half a million, and the number of daily post likes can be between hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands, which is a good data performance among domestic stars. Because there are many K-pop fans in China, Fu Yaning's Weibo reading volume has also increased significantly.
After the draft was stopped, Blossom Half Summer Culture Media launched photosynthetic teenagers, Kunyin Entertainment launched high5 boy band, Catfish Entertainment launched DREAM4 boy band, and Lehua Entertainment launched the NAME girl group.
The five members of Photosynthetic Youth, Zi Yu, Zheng Xingyuan, Wan Yuchen, Li Mingxu and Han Ruize, all participated in this year's "Youth with You 3", ranking in the middle stage of more than 30 to 60. The group debuted in June, and has now launched its own group roundup on iQiyi, and released its first EP.
The HIGH5 group comes from Kunyin Entertainment's own public trainee brand BC221, composed of 5 members of the second generation of trainees Ma Sihan, Lin Yiming, Yang Tao, Feng Chen Sinan and Liu Xin, and announced the name of the group in August, and has released 4 singles so far.
NAME is a new girl group officially announced by Lehua Entertainment in December, composed of Li Jiajia, Li Siyang, Liu Jiaxin, Long Yunzhu, Ouyang Chengxi, and trainees Jin Zihan and Feng Ruohang who have participated in "Youth with You", and the group has released a single "Say My Name".
DREAM4 debuted in August by Xuan Wei, Chen Junyu, Tang Jiaqi and Bai Ding, and the group came from Catfish Entertainment under shaocheng times, and has launched its first EP "Guanghe".
There is already a precedent for the success of the times Fengjun to independently cultivate idols in China, and although the Panda Hall that participated in "Youth with You 3" this year has not been a fire, it has a lot of good reputation through independent operation.
Obviously, the company through self-made materials, in the planning to seek a breakthrough point to operate idols, in social media (such as Weibo, B station, Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other platforms) to accumulate fans, is the best choice for these idol agencies to operate their idol products.
Idol companies embark on the path of self-cultivation
Among the groups that announced their debut this year, the NAME launched by Lehua Entertainment was on the hot search as soon as it was officially announced. Starting from the warm-up, Lehua's artists, including Wang Yibo, Cheng Xiao, and Wu Xuanyi, all forwarded Weibo to drain them, and artists from all over the company went into battle to expand the publicity effect.
At present, NAME debuted only 1 month ago, has been in the Phoenix Network Fashion Choice to obtain the 2021 annual potential combination, Ruili Beauty Awards annual cutting-edge combination, and is currently invited by Beijing Satellite TV to participate in this year's New Year's Eve festival, and other debut new groups to open up the gap in resources.
The idol debut of the big company comes with its own traffic, the era of the peak of the debut of the previous generations of groups have always been the attention of the company's TF family fans, B station on the TF family has more than 4 million attention, the current company's uninitiated three generations of trainees video materials can even reach one million hits.
The same is the operation of idol groups, Lehua Entertainment and Times Fengjun are focused on using business resources to increase popularity, one is to attract fans through self-made materials, both reflect the current two routines of idol operation in the internal entertainment market.
For idol agencies that don't have too much background, homemade materials are the lowest cost channel to accumulate fans, and many idols show themselves through the works of others.
Cover other people's works do not have to spend too much effort on creation, mature and successful works can maintain a basic display, and can also attract the fans of the artists themselves.
However, although the intersection with different artist fan groups can at least have a certain degree of popularity in the rice circle, there are no actual works in the long run, but it is easy to leave the impression of cover songs and flips. Although the current Times Youth League has a high popularity, in the eyes of many passers-by outside the fans, the impression of the group is always the work of Cove others.
During the "Idol Trainee" period, because of the popularity of the show, Kun Yin Entertainment's Kun Yin Four Sons ONER was optimistic about many internal entertainment fans. However, in the past two years, ONER has been much less influential than before after the termination of the contract by the members and the retreat of the popularity of the program, and the group member Ling Chao participated in the "Junior Rap Project" this year to challenge new things, and other members have successively entered the group to shoot. In the case of increasingly high professional requirements for internal entertainment, idols need to learn more, which is the basic reality that most idols will face today.
At present, idol entertainment companies including Artisan Star Entertainment are continuing to recruit trainees, from the perspective of the trainee resources of the draft in recent years, the good seedlings have become less and less, and it takes too much energy to train an excellent trainee for many idol entertainment companies.
After the draft is stopped, whether it is independent cultivation or resource support, it will be more difficult than the operation in previous years, and it will also test the patience and endurance of entrepreneurs and traders.
Idol star-making industry, in essence, is to create a dream, to meet the hormones of adolescent girls, but to create a high-quality idol needs to be "timely and geographically favorable", with the collapse of the previous generation of high-quality idols - Wang Lihong, the public's filter for idols has once again been shattered by reality. The path of creating a perfect idol based on human design, hiding real personality, and creating a perfect idol has worked in the past era of television and print media, and there is a huge gap between idols and fans, and idols can largely preserve their privacy and real personality. But now the Internet is extremely developed, and casual shooting makes it easier for idols to collapse and walk off the altar in a very short period of time.
It is worth noting that Lehua Entertainment launched a virtual idol boy group "Quantum Boy" on December 18, and the four members made their debut live broadcast on Station B. Prior to this, Lehua launched its own virtual idol girl group A-SOUL (currently has 330,000 fans on Station B).
Obviously, Lehua has also accelerated the company's layout in the virtual idol track when it has not abandoned the old business. Compared with the "chicken feathers in one place" of the idol market in 2021, this year can be called the first year of the real virtual idol driven by the wave of the meta-universe (different from the paper man era, the hyper-realistic virtual person). Once at an annual meeting of entrepreneurs, Du Hua, founder of Lehua Entertainment, said of A-SOUL, "So no one complains anymore, because our girl group will never collapse, never fall in love, always love Du Ma, and then work 24 hours a day." ”
Nowadays, the live idol group and the virtual group operate synchronously, standing in the perspective of the past market development path, once a wind outlet rises, the market will fall into the inner volume, from the blue ocean to the red sea competition, how many virtual idols in the real sense can be born in the wave of virtual digital people, there is still a test of time, not the company announced the debut of virtual idols, it is really in the "idol".
For the idol industry, after the rectification, we will see the real trick. For any generation of teenagers, idols are a kind of just need, what kind of idols to create for the teenagers of this era? This is worth thinking about for every idol agency. It is a good thing that the speed of idol star-making has slowed down, and the industry has bid farewell to deformed development and embarked on the road of real high-quality development.
In the next two years, spending less money, reducing costs and increasing efficiency, while finding a new way out, surviving, and surviving the past, will be the proposition of every idol agency. In this process, it is obvious that we will witness the bankruptcy and liquidation of some idol companies, the stagnation of some idol companies, and the efforts of some companies to transform. The business ideas of the idol industry will continue to explore, adjust and innovate in this process, and under the pressure of the development of companies in the industry in the cold winter, we will continue to observe the dynamics of this market segment.
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