Text/Fu Lao II
Edit/Gale
On January 6, ByteDance invested in "Li Weike". This "Li Weike" is not a real person, but a virtual person.
It is also the first financing on the virtual track at the beginning of the new year in 2022. According to the data of Tianyancha, the IP of "Li Weike" belongs to Hangzhou Li Weike Co., Ltd., which was established for only half a year.
Virtual characters themselves are not a new topic, and since the debut of the first virtual singer "Hatsune Mirai" in 2007, this track has been a 15-year-old industry. However, later, with the maturity of AR and VR technology, the virtual characters of the second dimension began to become more three-dimensional and real.
For example, Luo Tianyi once appeared on the 2021 Spring Festival Gala; "Liu Yexi" became popular almost overnight, relying on more than two minutes of video, and rose by 4.5 million fans overnight.
For the application of virtual characters, it is not just about entertainment. Some time ago, virtual student Hua Zhibing officially joined the academy of Tsinghua University; Microsoft Xiaoice virtual person N Xiaohei can broadcast the "Daily Economic News" for 70 consecutive days; CCTV also announced that it will broadcast news with a virtual anchor at the Winter Olympics.
Especially under the heating of the virtual fire of the metaverse, the virtual people have suddenly poured into the real world.
When the breaker is in progress
The most mature development of virtual characters is in the field of pan-entertainment idols. In 2007, the first landmark virtual singer "Hatsune Mirai" was born.
At that time, the core of the virtual idol was actually a sound synthesis software, so although you can see a variety of different characters and images of Hatsune Future, for senior fans, the most recognizable is her voice.
As soon as Hatsune Mirai came out, it exploded with two-dimensional fans around the world, and concerts held in many countries were full. Most people, even if they don't know her, know that the song "Throwing Onions" that broke the circle that broke the circle has now exceeded ten million hits on the Japanese bullet screen website niconico.
The influence of this two-dimensional girl idol is not inferior to that of a real idol. Hatsune Mirai has already held several tours in China. The last "Hatsune Mirai GALAXY LIVE" tour series has traveled to Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities. Now Hatsune Mirai has 600 million fans worldwide, and its value has exceeded 10 billion yen.
Hatsune's future success has made The country want to concoct its own virtual idols. In July 2012, Luo Tianyi was officially released. Like Hatsune, she is still a virtual avatar based on the VOCALOID series of speech synthesis engines, and her development after her debut has also been dominated by singing and songwriting. In 2016, it appeared on the stage of the Hunan New Year's Eve concert and appeared in the mainstream vision for the first time. The debut of the Spring Festival Gala program in 2021 will push the exposure to the top stream.
With the development of the times, virtual idols have also derived new ways: through facial capture, motion capture technology to project real people onto the virtual image, every move, smile and smile of the screen characters, including dialogue, are completely from real people.
This is also the hottest model at present, fans figuratively refer to the avatar as a "leather case", and the actor behind it is the "middle man". In foreign countries, the group mainly exists as vtubers (virtual anchors), but after it spread to China, it gradually began to industrialize and idol groups.
One of the most representative is the virtual idol girl group "A-SOUL" under Lehua Entertainment.
A-SOUL debuted in November 2020 as "Lehua Entertainment's first virtual idol group", consisting of five virtual girls, each of which has its own Middle Man behind it.
Only ten months after its debut, the number of Weibo and B station fans of the five member accounts exceeded one million. Captain Bella achieved the achievement of 10,000 ships in the live broadcast of the birthday party on July 16, 2021, setting a record for the first place in the virtual anchor area and the second 10,000 captains in the history of Station B.
On December 11 last year, A-SOUL held a live broadcast of the anniversary of the launch on the B station. The warm-up event was as loud as a traffic star: the bustling areas of major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou lit up large screens, looping promotional videos of five girls. On the day of the live broadcast, the number of reservations exceeded 120,000, and the popularity of the whole B station remained above 10 million, and the peak reached 12 million, and the live broadcast popularity reached the top of the live broadcast list of the whole station that night.
A-SOUL Anniversary City Light Show
On the short video platform, virtual idols have also had a tendency to explode. On Halloween on October 31 last year, a virtual beauty blogger named Liu Yexi posted the first Douyin video. Immediately, 4 million fans rose in 7 days, triggering a heated discussion about virtual idols as KOLs.
Whether it is live broadcast, short video or official stage, virtual idols are appearing in the public eye more and more frequently.
The first attempt at commercialization
Judging from the current situation, the business model of the virtual idol industry is constantly being tried. At present, most of the monetization channels of avatars are only live broadcasts and brand cooperation.
At the 12th anniversary of Station B, CEO Chen Rui mentioned that in the past year, more than 32,000 virtual anchors have started broadcasting on Station B, an increase of 40% year-on-year, and virtual anchors have become the fastest growing category in the field of live broadcasting of Station B.
Station B opened the captain 198 / yuan a month, the continuous monthly price is also 138 yuan. The amount of real money and silver tips can better reflect the value of the anchor than the number of simple fans and bullet screens. According to data crawled by the secondary metadata platform vtbs.moe, in the past year, the subscription tip of B station users for virtual idols increased by 350% over the same period last year.
On July 16 last year, Bella, the captain of A-SOUL, held his own birthday party live broadcast on Station B, when all A-SOUL members broadcast live on Station B for more than half a year, and Bella only had 250,000 followers. But on the night of the birthday party, a large number of fans poured into the live broadcast room to frantically kryptonite, so that Bella directly achieved the achievement of ten thousand ships, which is equivalent to one fan in every 25 followers to recharge Bella's captain.
According to the statistics of relevant websites, bella alone generated 2.33 million gifts in the nearly three hours of live broadcasting.
It is worth mentioning that as of now, only four anchors on the B station have achieved the achievement of ten thousand ships, and virtual idols account for two of them. Under the list of anchors of the Thousand Fleet, the top two positions are also firmly occupied by virtual anchors at the same time.
In terms of brand cooperation, virtual idols have also shown potential.
Veteran virtual idol Luo Tianyi, in 2020, appeared on Taobao Live with goods, with 2.7 million viewers and nearly 2 million people rewarding interaction. According to participating merchants, the cost of a live broadcast pit is as high as 900,000. At present, the pit fee of ordinary anchors with goods is generally tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, compared with Luo Tianyi, which has been called the top value of the goods - to know that Luo Yonghao's live debut pit fee is only 600,000.
Major brands regard virtual idols as golden signs. KFC Grandpa transformed into a virtual "Cool Uncle", harvesting the hearts of 1.37 million fans in Instagram.
Domestic tea brand Naixue's tea launched a virtual image ambassador "NAYUKI", through the virtual brand image to open a live broadcast to promote products, reportedly 72 hours to win nearly 200 million GMV, which is equivalent to the sales of Naixue's tea stores nationwide in the past week.
The popularity of virtual idols has also driven the upstream and downstream of the entire industry chain. It is understood that some science and technology innovation companies that mainly impress capture technology and AI technology have ushered in a wave of financing in 2021. In addition to ByteDance, well-known investors such as bilibili, redshirt capital, and sub-capital are competing to enter the game.
According to ai media consulting forecast, the core market size of China's virtual idols will reach 6.22 billion yuan in 2021, driving the surrounding market size to reach 107.49 billion yuan.
Major manufacturers have also laid out in areas other than entertainment. In November 2021, CCTV's first sign language AI anchor officially debuted. She will start with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and report 24/7 for the hearing impaired. Precise movements, real-time interpreting and no need to rest, this is the most important addition of virtual characters to real-world work. This virtual anchor landing on CCTV is provided by Baidu Intelligent Cloud's "Digital Star Operation Platform" to provide technical support and services.
Vanke also presented last year's Best Newcomer Award to Cui Xiaopan, the first digital employee. This virtual employee was officially "hired" on February 1, 2021, and with the help of the system's algorithms, she quickly learned how to find problems in processes and data, and played a role in various receivable/overdue reminders and work anomaly detection with thousands of times more efficiency than humans. The write-off rate of overdue documents of prepaid receivables that she urged reached 91.44%.
The market value of virtual people is still being slowly explored, and all parties are constantly trying out new possibilities for them in business.
The reality dilemma of virtual idols
The development of virtual idols seems to be smooth sailing, but there are still some limitations and problems behind them.
In an offline comic exhibition held at Station B this year, A-SOUL's booth was overcrowded, and fanatical fans sang along with the idols on the screen, and even issued a call for "the next stop is the Bird's Nest". Being able to climb the bird's nest means that it has really received mainstream recognition.
However, in the Lehua family concert on July 17, when performing on the same stage with real traffic stars such as Wang Yibo and Wu Xuanyi, A-SOUL was booed by the audience "embarrassed" and "going down".
Ordinary viewers don't seem to be impressed by the little people who can only sing and dance on the screen. A-SOUL fans are indignant, puzzled, and a little discouraged, and many of them are beginning to understand that there is still a distance between being seen by the public and being recognized by the public.
It is undeniable that virtual idols are active today, but the acceptance of them by ordinary audiences and the conversion rate of fans still need to be a question mark.
The production and operating costs of virtual idols are much higher than the average person thinks.
According to Ai Media Consulting data and industry insiders revealed in an interview with 36kr, the production cost of a single domestic virtual idol single is as high as 2 million yuan; the cost of a holographic virtual concert is about 20 million. As a contrast, Xue Zhiqian once revealed in the show that the production cost of his single is about 1 million; The bird's nest stadium costs 4.5 million yuan a day, and the money for a holographic virtual concert can be opened for four days.
Although most of the virtual idols are backed by capital giants, such as ByteDance behind A-SOUL, Tencent also has the "Infinite King Group"... However, such an expensive money-burning model also causes the problem of high entry threshold and difficult commercial closed loop.
In addition, will virtual idols really not collapse?
YuYajun (pseudonym) is a professional painter and an old man in the circle of the second dimension. He told Zinc Finance that the popularity of virtual idols is largely due to the reality behind virtual.
"Real life is so tired, there is always an outlet for pressure to pour out. Can you find someone around you who can talk about every day, anytime, anywhere? Even if there is, I am embarrassed to say it. But in the live broadcast room of the virtual idol, everyone wears a mask and speaks freely. At the same time, you can also receive suggestions of true feelings, because the anchor is also a real person wearing a leather holster. ”
Jia Ran read the audience's small composition and turned around and sobbed
This kind of virtual real feeling comes from the people behind it, but as long as someone sets it up, there is a possibility of collapsing the house.
In the memories of two-dimensional elders like Yuya Jun, the most impressive collapse is probably the Japanese virtual idol group hololive insult incident.
In September 2020, Hololive's vtuber Akai Shin and Kiryu Coco described Taiwan as a country in the live broadcast room. Subsequently, all Japanese virtual idols on Station B were banned for one month.
In the subsequent apology, Hololive's attitude was not sincere, and even once there was a replay of "provocation". This stimulated the vast majority of Chinese fans, and the subtitle group also deleted the manuscript and withdrew from the circle. Yu Yajun said that at that time, many people were completely dead to the virtual idol because of this collapse, and never returned to the pit.
In addition to their own inappropriate remarks will lead to the collapse of human design, virtual idols must always be wary of the risk of being "skinned". Once the mask is torn off, the mystery between the audience and the audience will cease to exist. If the contrast is too large, it will also cause resistance from fans. In Japan, there are many examples of virtual girl idols being pulled out that are actually uncles.
This has led to another deeper way of thinking: Can the audience accept the iteration of the person in the middle? At present, this is still an unresolved pain point, and it is also a real problem that all virtual things need to explore.
Virtual idols may be moving toward the mainstream, but they are not yet at the top. The degree of circle breaking, cost and collapse are all problems that cannot be ignored. At least for now, it is just an electronic sheep in the dreams of many clusterers.