A few days ago, Tencent Music (TME) announced that it will officially launch TMELAND, the first virtual music carnival in China, where users can log in to TMELAND on December 31 through the entrance of Tencent Music's QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, National K Song and other products, and experience the "Future Music World" that combines reality and virtual experience.
This is the first online virtual music world in China, and it is also another meta-universe concept product handed over by an Internet giant after Baidu launched Greece and TianxiaXiu launched Honnverse.
In September, Tencent registered the "QQ Music Meta-Universe", at that time everyone was still confused, did not know what the mystery of this "meta-universe, now look, Tencent Music has a great momentum to reshape the entire music industry in the post-epidemic era." In this virtual world called TMELAND, users can not only create their own avatars to explore music and interactions digitally; they can also experience virtual concerts and live broadcasts "immersively".
1. Why is Tencent Music leading the way?
Tencent's main industries are social networking and games, and the priority of music is not the highest, so why is tencent music taking the lead in this layout of meta-universe products?
First, from the perspective of the industry environment, the music industry in the post-epidemic era has had to fully embrace online. Before the epidemic began, the music industry was basically dominated by the offline market, and the entire industry did not have the power of digitalization, but now under the normalized epidemic situation, digitalization and onlineization have become the life-saving straw of the entire industry, which is essentially a music giant's self-help movement. Relevant data show that by the middle of 2021, the number of offline concerts that are expected to be postponed and cancelled in China will reach 20,000, with a direct loss of 2 billion yuan.
Second, from the perspective of the competition pattern of the music market, Tencent Music is no longer significant in the stock market game, and it must seek a breakthrough from the incremental market, and the metacosm is this incremental market.
At present, the domestic mainstream mobile music APP mainly includes QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, NetEase Cloud Music, etc., of which QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music are all under Tencent Music, occupying more than 80% of the exclusive music library resources and occupying an absolute dominant position in the market.
However, on July 24 this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued penalties such as ordering Tencent to revoke the exclusive copyright of online music in accordance with the Anti-Monopoly Law.
Since then, Tencent, a dominant company in the music industry, has disappeared in terms of exclusive copyrights, and the future of mutual authorization, interoperability and sharing of music copyrights is the mainstream trend of the industry.
Therefore, Tencent Music's involvement in the stock market is meaningless, and its own scale and anti-monopoly policies require Tencent to bid farewell to the past stock competition and find a new "Promised Land" ————— TMELAND under the wave of the meta-universe
2. Some explorations of the overseas music market
Overseas markets explored virtual concerts much earlier, and in early 2020, when offline performances began to be blocked, singer Travis Scott held a concert in Fortnite, which set a record of nearly 28 million players. This is the first time that a singer has held a concert in the game, providing new ideas for singers who have been affected by the epidemic later.
A few months later, renowned R&B singer The Weeknd hosted a virtual concert on Tiktok to create an unforgettable immersive virtual concert experience for fans through an interactive XR (Extended Reality) performance, and The Weeknd subsequently invested in the WAVE platform that created its avatar.
A recent meta-universe concert took place on November 18, when the famous American singer Justin Bieber sang songs from her latest album "Justice" through her avatar on the virtual entertainment platform Wave.
It is worth mentioning that The Weeknd and Justin Bieber are both investors in WAVE, and virtual concerts and surrounding industries seem to be becoming increasingly popular in American singer circles.
In contrast, Tencent's virtual music carnival TMELAND is more focused on building a platform. For example, a digital island covering an area of 130,000 square kilometers has been specially built, and the central "Conch Disco" is the venue for the New Year's Eve Music Festival, which is surrounded by 9 venues for players to experience entertainment. Obviously, this is not just a venue for music festivals, but more like a "future music world" where sci-fi and musicality coexist.
In general, the emergence of virtual concerts is not only a forced back on the music industry by the epidemic, but also a way out for the giants in the stock market. If so
Zuckerberg said: The metaverse is the next Internet. Then Tencent's layout in music can only be regarded as a small test, and what is more important will be its efforts in core products such as games and social networking.
As for whether the metacosm is another technological revolution in human history, or an empty concept created by human beings after the epidemic, the giants are giving answers.