Author | Gao Xuyang
Cover | Snow Leopard Finance
After the ripening of the "tomato" failed, ByteDance (hereinafter referred to as "Byte") had to consider replanting a tree.
Recently, Byte launched an app that focuses on paid reading without ads, and the icon style and name are somewhat similar to Douyin - TikTok Novel. At present, it is online in huawei fast application center to test the water in a small area.
This is no longer the first time byte has laid out the paid reading field. At present, Byte already has at least 6 paid reading apps. The experience of Snow Leopard Finance and Economics found that the interface of the 6 Apps is almost the same, the content is classified according to boys and girls, the content library is highly overlapping, and they are all charged by chapter from chapter 20. After registration, the novels recommended on the homepage are basically romance novels such as Xiu Xian Xuan Fantasy or "Divine Doctor Princess: Which Is your child's father".
At the same time, with 6 Apps to pay to read, what is the intention of the bytes?
Drunkenness means in the IP
In the field of paid reading, the purpose of Byte is by no means to take the old road of the leading reading group on the Internet.
The paid reading market as a whole is already on the decline. According to the research report released by the New Era Securities Research Institute, the number of paid reading users in China has fluctuated since 2018, from 420 million in Q1 2018 to 330 million in Q4 2019. Judging from the financial report of Reading Group, in the first half of 2021, its online business revenue increased by only 3.4% year-on-year, and the average monthly paid users decreased by 12.26% year-on-year. In contrast, copyright operations and other revenue increased by 124.5% year-on-year in the same period.
At this time into the paid reading market, Byte is obviously drunk not in the wine, compared to the benefits brought by paid reading, for Byte, more important is the high-quality IP that paid reading can bring.
The success of Byte's free-to-read platform Tomato Novels has not achieved this more pressing strategic goal.
This is not a problem with the tomato novel itself, but with the free reading platform. In the free reading mode, the platform content is single and low-quality, and it is difficult to generate high-quality IP. For example, in recent years, the popular online dramas such as "The Biography of Zhen Huan", "The Knife Line in the Snow", and "Son-in-law" are from the free reading platform. Byte's tomato novels can't get out of the industry's predicament.
Before byte layout paid novels, Tomato Novels was already the leader in the free reading platform. According to LatePost, as early as September to October 2020, the Tomato Novel DAU has reached 28 million, becoming the most user-friendly free novel reading platform. Data from Quest Mobile, a third-party data consultancy, said that as of October 2021, tomato novels' DAUs had reached about 47.74 million. However, the huge traffic did not bring the high-quality IP that Byte needed more, and for Byte, the tomato was still "undercooked".
Paid reading platforms are more productive than premium IP platforms that are free to read. This stems largely from differences in the pattern of distribution of benefits. In the paid reading model, writers don't have to wait for the work to be published, but instead get paid after each chapter is published. Online writers need to continuously improve the quality of their works to retain paying readers who are more demanding on content, and each chapter of content may be a small iteration. Therefore, the number of high-quality works on the paid reading platform can continue to rise.
The layout of paid reading will help fill the gap in the field of high-quality IP byte.
This ambition can be felt from the official introduction of Tik Wen Novel: "Tik Wen Novel is a novel reader with the main genuine high quality without advertising, with a variety of novel styles, meticulous division of categories under the boys' and girls' channels, and the platform has a sound search function to meet the diversified reading needs of users."
Whether byte's strategic intention to create high-quality IP can be successful, it is also necessary to observe its content support capabilities. At present, it seems that what can do content support for the six major paid platforms such as TiktWen Novels is Byte's repeated investment in the field of online text.
At the end of 2019, Byte invested in Wuli Culture, which owns five original reading sites. According to the official website of Wuli Culture, it has signed more than 5,000 authors, reserves nearly 10,000 full-copyright IP works, and has reached in-depth strategic cooperation with dozens of well-known film and television companies and nearly 30 third-party channels. In 2020, Byte further accelerated the pace of investment, invested in the online text platform at least 5 times, and became the third largest shareholder of Palm Reading Technology.
At the same time, the traffic of Douyin and today's headlines will be able to be used by paid reading apps such as TikTok Novels, which is also the weight of Byte's strategy of obtaining high-quality IP. Through the diversion of these two major apps, byte's paid reading apps do not need to worry about traffic problems at least in the initial stage. The personalized distribution that Byte has always been good at will be able to provide a certain guarantee for user retention.
Douyin micro-short drama: URGENT NEED FOR IP blood transfusion
Why is quality IP so important to today's bytes?
Douyin is vigorously supporting micro-short dramas, but the pain point of micro-short dramas is the lack of high-quality IP.
In September 2020, Douyin tried to adapt the original online text on Tomato Novel into a micro-short drama, and opened a "Tomato Theater" account on Douyin to try to film and television the original IP of Tomato Novel.
However, in addition to the first "When the Film Has Mind Reading" with more than 10,000 likes, the remaining two "Widows Have Joy" and "In? The data of "Super Dad" shows a step-by-step decline. The number of reviews of the three works dropped from a few thousand to a few hundred, and then to dozens. In the end, the "Tomato Theater" account only updated 3 works, and it was discontinued in March 2021.
At present, the vast majority of high-quality IP that can be adapted for film and television on the market is still in the hands of the online text platform and Aiyouteng.
In terms of original IP, Douyin's IP productivity cannot compete with traditional online text platforms. The "2019-2020 Online Literature IP Film and Television Drama Adaptation Potential Evaluation Report" is based on user review data, and the comment content compared with the original work is selected for satisfaction analysis. Judging from the results, the original IP of the works with high popularity after film and television adaptation comes from the starting point Chinese Network, Jinjiang Literature City, etc. The broadcast platform after film and television is also in iQiyi, Tencent Video, etc.
When buying rights, Douyin will encounter resistance from long video platforms. In June 2021, Zhang Fuping, vice president and editor-in-chief of ByteDance, said on the forum "Challenges and Collaborative Governance of Short Video Copyright Protection": "Several well-known long-form video platforms in the industry have formed a head platform price alliance, which on the one hand put pressure on film and television film and television producers, not allowing film parties to sell the copyright content jointly purchased by the alliance to platforms such as B station, watermelon, and douyin; while squeezing the profit margins of film and television film and television producers." ”
The ability to create high-quality IP is not as good as that of traditional online literature institutions such as Yuwen, and it is surrounded by long video platforms such as "Aiyouteng" when copyright procurement, and Douyin has to explore inward to find the possibility of producing high-quality IP.
Star Sea: IP industry chain linkage
Behind the development of paid reading and the acquisition of high-quality IP is the ambition of the linkage of the byte IP industry chain.
Reading Group has been able to realize the closed loop of ip industry chain operation. Taking "Qing Yu Nian" as an example, the drama is adapted from the novel of the same name by The Platinum Writer "Cat Greasy", produced by Tencent Pictures and Xinli TV, and premiered on Tencent Video and iQiyi.
When the "Qing Yu Nian" TV series was launched, Tencent Video simultaneously launched the sale of the genuine peripheral. At the same time, the multi-platform of Reading Group carried out book-shadow linkage, and the starting point of reading launched the "Qingyu Nian Fanwai" fan contest, inviting Cat Ti and other judges to promote the increase in IP popularity through fan co-creation. In addition, the licensing of Sheng Qu Games to develop the game of the same name of "Qing Yu Nian" and the customization of the Beijing Municipal Government Card have enabled the IP popularity to continue to ferment.
The popularity of film and television dramas has also further fed back to the original work. According to a number of media reports, after the broadcast of the "Qing Yu Nian" TV series, with the help of the popularity of the series and IP linkage, the number of online readers and the online reading income of single books on the starting point reading App increased by 50 times, and re-entered the top three of the best-selling list after the tenth anniversary.
Wu Wenhui, then CEO of Yuwen Group, once said in an interview, "As an important IP operation practice of Yuwen, "Qing Yu Nian is a business interpretation of Yuwen's content and IP understanding ability. ”
Nowadays, byte layout paid reading is undoubtedly enriching the content library and waiting for high-quality IP like "Qing Yu Nian" to appear. In terms of IP incubation and industrial chain linkage, Reading Group has also given a demonstration.
For Byte, incubating high-quality IP has the foundation of industrial chain linkage, and the Vibrato micro-short drama is a mature film and television platform, coupled with the development of Douyin e-commerce, it will be able to achieve "one-stop IP operation".
Through the "Storm"
If you want to make paid reading and build a pan-entertainment industry chain, Byte is facing the dual challenges of content output and film and television production.
First, the growth of the quality writers on whom paid reading depends most takes time. Taking the platinum writer Tang Jiasanshao as an example, in February 2004, Tang Jiasanshao began to create Virgo "Children of Light", and for at least 5 years thereafter, they maintained the efficiency of producing two works per year. Later, it was adapted into an animation and dominated the Tencent Video Animation List, "Douluo Continent", which was the ninth work produced in the fifth year of his writing.
In order to obtain high-quality writer resources more quickly, Byte needs to consider signing up mature authors on the market. Today, reading group has nearly half of the signed authors in the online literature industry, and when expanding the team of writers, Byte will inevitably fall into a big war with reading to grab authors.
Wukong Q&A and Watermelon Video have shot 2 billion digging angles respectively to know the "big V" and B station UP master. However, the method of "vigorously out of the miracle" is not suitable for the Q&A platform that relies on content precipitation, and the content style of the watermelon video is also inconsistent with the B station UP master.
The respondents who exchanged the high subsidy for Wukong Q&A finally scattered, and the platform only had a shutdown announcement in January 2021. Regarding the cooperation between Watermelon Video and the UP master of Station B, Huachuang Securities concluded in the research report released in April 2021: "The average number of fans/likes of the 'Top 100 UP Lords' in Station B is 3.56 million/18.6 million, but in Watermelon Video, the data is 1.55 million/920,000".
The lessons of the past are in the past, and whether byte can win in the possible robbery war is a big question mark.
In the later stage of film and television production, the current adaptation and production capabilities of Douyin micro-short dramas are not yet a climate. Taking the "Moment of Star Movement" launched in 2021 as an example, the drama is adapted from the 9.8-point "National Film Emperor Crush on Me" on the Tomato Novel Platform, and after the broadcast of Douyin, the finale also only had 2.7W likes. Someone said in the comments: "The first time I loved the original book into a TV series, I finally understood why so many fans of the original work resisted the REMA series." ”
At least for now, there are still many "storms" to survive if this newly planted tree by Byte is to bear fruit.
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