I don't know if you will borrow an account everywhere to use it?
Note that Xiao Lei is not talking about game accounts, but paid membership accounts of major video or music platforms.
The brother next door is usually a white prostitute, not to the point where he has to charge money, he will not pull out a chicken feather to the platform.
For example, if there is a need to watch AIYOUTENG VIP videos or listen to VIP songs, Bi Brother will find relatives and friends to borrow a wave, and he will never pay for it.
This practice is naturally cool and crooked for users, but the platform side that burns money to do content and operation is definitely unwilling to see this kind of operation.
After all, if you lend an account to five people, the platform is equivalent to earning five less membership fees.
When it comes to money bags, the platform will naturally not be polite with users, and today Xiao Lei saw that Netflix has begun to crack down on the behavior of "sharing accounts".
To know that Netflix is one of the few video platforms that can make a profit, even it can't withstand the loss caused by the "shared account", which shows how difficult it is for those few platforms that lose money in China.
The impact on the platform profitability is only a small part of the impact, the key is that the user has less money to charge members, and the proportion of "member payment" on the platform's financial report will also be reduced.
People investors see that the core revenue ratio of this platform has shrunk, and they are willing to buy it...
Take iQIYI's third-quarter earnings report this year, for example, with iQIYI's total revenue of RMB7.6 billion in the third quarter.
Among them, the membership service revenue is 4.3 billion yuan, accounting for the majority of the total revenue, which shows how important membership services are to iQIYI.
But here's the problem, iQiyi's membership users decreased by 2.6 million in the third quarter compared to the second quarter.
It shows that it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain new member users, and the road to expanding paid users to death has become narrower and narrower.
Under the double attack of the reduction in the number of member users and the three-year net loss of 26.4 billion yuan, increasing the single-user membership fee is the most intuitive way to stop loss.
Everyone can say that it is "ugly to eat", but iQiyi itself knows that if it does not rise, it really cannot stand it.
Of course, Xiao Lei also talked about it above, along with the increase in membership fees, there are stricter account sharing restrictions.
In the fight against "account sharing", the domestic video platform is actually much earlier than Netflix.
After all, the revenue has not been enough to make ends meet, cracking down on sharing behavior, forcing more users to take the initiative to charge money to open members, it is also a good way, is a little disgusting ordinary users...
So, how strict are the restrictions on account sharing on domestic video platforms today?
Xiao Lei tested them one by one and showed them how the situation was.
Account sharing is becoming more and more difficult
Still starting from iQiyi, the first of the three giants of domestic video, Xiao Lei used his iQIYI VIP account as a test account.
I first used my mobile phone and tablet to occupy two login pits in advance, and then deliberately lent the account to a friend to test.
At the beginning of talking to Ji You about this, he was still excited, and his expression revealed a hint of superiority, thinking: Bai Prostitution succeeded!
But I didn't expect that in the next borrowing process, Xiao Lei and Ji You both suffered a huge setback.
According to Xiao Lei's previous borrowing experience, just send the account password over, sit and wait for the friend to successfully log in.
At most, a verification code is sent to The Base Friend, and the borrowing process is smoother than Dove.
And now... It can't be said to be silky, it can only be said to be top torture.
As soon as I sent the account number to Ji You, he asked me to receive the verification code and send it to him, and I thought about it.
It didn't take long for Ji You to send me a long string of numbers.
Xiao Lei was stunned when he saw it, until he saw this picture.
Good guys, co-author is to let me take the initiative to send a verification TEXT message, so that the base friend can successfully log in ah...
It can be seen that the seemingly daily borrowing process has now become the focus of iQIYI.
Borrowing is to borrow, but the process has become extremely bumpy, one is to receive the verification code to send to friends, after this level, there is also a level of "actively send verification code".
If the two sides do not cooperate well in the process, a lot of time will be wasted to start over.
At this time, some small partners may have thought, iQiyi does not have a scan code login? This login method is simple enough.
Xiao Lei and Ji You also thought of it, and really tried to scan the code to log in.
But not surprisingly, this process still encountered difficulties, Xiaolei scanned the code after being prompted by iQiyi, and could not scan the code with WeChat login.
If you want to help your friends scan the code to log in, you can only log out of the account yourself and log in with the SMS verification code again.
Ah this... Can this also create a limitation? It seems that iQiyi really doesn't want us to lend out the number.
After this twist and turn, Xiao Lei went to the official website of iQiyi to see what clear restrictions the official has on the borrowing number.
According to the instructions on the official website, it can be seen that at present, iQIYI does not set hard login restrictions, at most it is a cumbersome point of login steps.
There are clear restrictions on logging in to devices, such as an account can log in on up to five devices and support up to 3 devices in a day.
And well, the same account at the same time, only two devices are allowed to log in to watch the movie.
This means that if you lend the account to a friend, you can't use the account to continue to watch, and one will always be squeezed offline.
Of course, what Xiao Lei is discussing above is only account rental between friends and family.
Playing batch rental like that kind of black production is a blatant illegal act...
Last year, a company made a profit by selling "shared accounts" in batches, and was eventually sued by iQiyi, losing 3 million yuan.
Really speaking, this wave of iQiyi is no problem, friends can use the account, but if it involves the use of the account for profit, it should be punished by law.
The degree disk, which is also known as a film viewing artifact, also has clear regulations for the sharing account.
Xiao Lei glanced at it, the restrictions are not more relaxed than iQiyi, first of all, the same account allows 6 devices to use, which looks good here.
But login and simultaneous use are two different things, from the regulations, the same account can not be used on two devices at the same time.
That is to say, Xiao Lei is using an account to download things, and the base friend can only wait for me to finish before logging in, otherwise it will squeeze me off the line.
Youku's login restrictions are much the same, using a policy that allows multiple devices to sign in, but does not allow simultaneous use.
This wave of operations, Xiao Lei also expressed understanding, if multiple devices are allowed to watch at the same time, these platforms will really lose their money.
Behind the restriction contraction is the continuous loss of video platforms
If Xiao Lei remembers correctly, the account sharing in previous years was not so strict.
Just like QQ login, you only need to know the account number and password to log in, and the borrowing between friends is smooth and unimpeded.
But now, the platforms have added layers of shackles to the original simple login steps, and account sharing has become a matter of extremely high time cost.
This is not that the platform is idle and has nothing to do to disgust users, but it is really a loss and wants to increase the number of paid users through various means.
Or take iQiyi as an example, its membership service income is actually very high, last year's membership income was 16.5 billion yuan.
but... In the third quarter of this year alone, iQiyi's operating loss came to 1.4 billion yuan, which was more than the same period last year.
At the same time, the size of subscription memberships has also entered a bottleneck period of stagnation or even regression.
That's not okay, lao ai mainly relies on member service income to support the family, always have to do some way to increase income.
So the advance on-demand came, eating is very ugly, but iQiyi is very happy, after all, this can indeed increase the revenue of membership services. (Although the rectification was cancelled later by name...) ）
Stricter account sharing restrictions have also come, and small partners who have shared accounts understand that the borrowing number step is really too cumbersome now.
Everyone is also very curious, why is the revenue of this iQIYI membership service tens of billions, or so can burn money?
Let's show you the data.
This wave, this wave is the classic income can not make ends meet, the money earned by member income is not enough content cost burn.
iQIYI's membership service revenue in 2018 was 10.623 billion yuan, and the content cost was 21.1 billion yuan.
In 2019, the revenue of membership services was 14.436 billion yuan, and the cost of content was 22.2 billion yuan.
In 2020, the membership revenue was 16.491 billion yuan, and the content cost was 20.9 billion yuan
As for why the cost of content remains high, in fact, it is still the platforms that are involved in order to seize copyright and traffic.
In the past few years, the traffic was dominant, and a popular idol was invited to shoot a movie, and the film remuneration alone accounted for more than half of the cost of producing a serial.
Can the platform not throw money along? Obviously not, the platform does not spend a lot of money to take this actor as the protagonist, the user will be taken away by other platforms.
Of course, in the final analysis, the era of traffic is also driven by the capital behind it.
The audience wants to see a good drama with quality and acting skills, but they are pressed to watch the traffic drama with sparse acting skills and crotch plot.
Platforms for traffic, in the video copyright of this piece of contention to break the bloodstream, a few hundred million to buy a whole drama, put aside who feel that the heart is dripping blood ah...
However, the traffic star is pushed out by the platform itself, and the copyright price of the serial drama is also rolled up by the competition between the platforms.
It can only be said that the video platform has suffered the bitter fruit.
Just some time ago, didn't iQiyi say that membership fees have to rise again? I like a sentence from netizens:
"It's better to go up to 100 yuan a month, anyway, I don't charge money to see."
In short, it's hard for consumers to be willing to pay for it until they have really good video content.