Reporter | Liu Yanqiu
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The conference in late January finally had the theme "1". This is the first song in the album "Glory of Tomorrow" released by the band Sober in 2007, when Shen Lihui was still the lead singer of the band Wake, believing that the virtual and real world are one. Today, as the founder of Modern Sky, the largest independent music company in China, he uses this song to announce the strategy and route of Modern Sky to build a "music metacosm".
Last year, Modern Sky and Vientiane Culture launched the virtual artist label No Problem, and the artists signed and cooperated with included NAND Band, POOl Pool Band, DJ PURPLE, OPEN, 5 Brothers and so on. At the same time, four groups of musicians under Modern Sky , Fu Han ( Force Girl ), APEX ( APEX ) , GUAN (GUAN Twins) and GG Lobster ( GG Lobster ) — also entered the virtual track. At the press conference, Shen Lihui announced that in 2022, more musicians including Yi Nengjing, FlurtShow, jellyeeee and other musicians will join them.
Entering the Virtual Musician Track, Modern Sky also launched the first virtual musician Miro, whose meaning is a girl who combines Mirror (Mirror) and Miracle (Miracle). Created by modern Sky Visual Creative label MVM, this virtual musician image symbolizes the refraction between reality and virtual like a mirror. In Shen Lihui's planning, in the future, Miro will use music as a language to express his perception of the new world, use audiovisual languages such as music and trend culture, break the boundary between virtual and reality, and continue to perceive and create with a more three-dimensional virtual musician image.
Miro Image source: Modern Sky MVM design label _
As early as the end of 2017, modern sky visual creative label MVM launched the visual art IP "Modern Sky Infinite Universe" with the virtual world as the background, and since then it has successively launched the virtual image "I.M.O." and "Strawberry Jam", which established a virtual IP series program, and cooperated with Nike, KFC, DELL, Alienware and other brands to achieve IP commercialization. Compared with the scene-based pictures of the first three seasons, MVM tells the story step by step in the new universe, with the modern sky virtual IP "I.M.O." The character REZ makes a more specific content setting for the protagonist, and the modern IP including Modern Sky, Strawberry Music Festival, "I.M.O.", M_DSK Music Festival, etc. are all integrated into the works.
In 2022, Modern Sky will also launch the Virtual Strawberry Music Festival, allowing fans to experience the Strawberry Music Festival in the virtual world through the Internet and interact with other players in the venue. In addition, the offline Strawberry Music Festival will also increase the AR experience - when you scan different physical scene times through the "Live" app of Modern Sky's Internet platform, you will see different content, including performance schedules, navigation, weather forecasts and other functional information, as well as experience content such as devices and interactive games.
Virtual Strawberry Music Festival Concept Image Source: Modern Sky
Digital collections are also an important direction for Modern Sky's future business. The "On-site" app will launch a digital collection sales channel in 2022, and Modern Sky's own IP will be sold online in the form of digital collections.
At the same time as launching a new virtual form business, Modern Sky is also exploring the experience of upgrading offline scenes. At the end of 2022, Modern Sky will launch a people's paradise in Wuhan, which integrates live music, virtual musicians, AR experiences, digital collection exhibitions, public art, commercial scenes and other content, in Shen Lihui's view, "It is a comprehensive space for virtual augmented reality experiences".
Modern Sky isn't the first entertainment company to announce its entry into the Meta universe. On January 9, Great Aim Film and Television announced that it decided to adjust the organizational structure, one of the key points is to set up a special meta-universe new business department to "seize the new development opportunities in the digital era." The key directions of the layout of Huace Meta-Universe are three areas: virtual image, film and television art NFT and digital studio. Earlier, Lehua Entertainment, which owns artists such as Han Geng and Wang Yibo, and idol groups such as UNIQ, Cosmic Girl, and Lehua Seven Sons NEXT, launched its first virtual idol group A-SOUL in November 2020. A-SOUL members consist of five virtual girls, each of whom is played by a dedicated middleman.
At present, virtual people are a key direction for these entertainment companies to lay out the metaverse. According to Ai Media Consulting, the core market size of China's virtual idols in 2020 will be 3.46 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 69.3%, and it is expected that from 2021 to 2023, the core market size of China's virtual idols will reach 62.2/120.8/20.52 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 79.6%/94.3%/69.8% respectively.
The advantage of virtual people is that the traditional film and television content production industry chain is overly dependent on individual artists, star overturning will cause huge losses to the company, virtual people do not have this problem, and can also shape people and images according to the big data of target positioning and user preferences. However, the relevant layout is still early, and problems such as the technology and monetization of virtual people have yet to be solved in the development.