This article is from the WeChat public account: One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha), text/Mu Yu.
At the end of last year, the annual hot song list released by the music platform once again triggered the public opinion sound wave of the "pill" in the Chinese music scene, many people began to miss the previous golden age of records, and the stories of the kings were mentioned again. Some people question the decline in the aesthetic level of popular music, some blame short video platforms such as Douyin, and some people denounce the poison of talent shows and idols cultivating variety shows.
So, is the Chinese music scene really entering the twilight?
In places that many people can't see, the mountains have long been shaken, and the many trends in the Chinese music scene are actually the structural derivation of the entire music industry, which is ultimately a problem of the content consumer market, people always feel that the past era is better, but from another point of view, the really beautiful era may have just begun.
This is the age of the common people, the end of the kings, like the moon fading, and then the stars shine in the night sky.
Who made the "pills"?
At the end of 2021, the TMEA Tencent Music Entertainment Festival announced the "Top Ten Hot Songs of the Year", and the top performers on the list were "Clouds and Seas", "White Moonlight and Cinnabar Moles", "Shepherd of the Cocoto Sea" and other Vibrato divine songs, which unexpectedly triggered an uproar. Many people lament that "the Chinese music scene is going to end", although this voice has been extended for more than a decade, but this time it is particularly strong, and the dissatisfaction is like a surge of layers, pushing the related topic #Chinese music world # directly to the first place in the Weibo hot search list.
The day after the list was released, singer Yang Kun posted on Weibo, "I once said that this era is progressing, but music has gone back at least ten years, yesterday, I suddenly found that I was wrong, too conservative." Musicians and the public echoed their feelings, and the Chinese music scene has the meaning of "mourning its misfortune and angering it".
However, can this "Top Ten Hot Songs of the Year" really represent the musical standards of the Chinese music scene today? Of course not, but it can represent the musical aesthetic preferences of most people in the market, so is the public aesthetic declining? No, this is just a replica of the CRBT era.
Jay Chou, as the peak representative of both quality and reputation in the Chinese music scene, was in 2004, and another market also hatched a god-like existence - Daolang. In 2005, the Legal Evening News reported that Daolang's songs were made into color ringtones and downloaded wildly, generating more than 30 million yuan in revenue in 2004 alone.
Jay Chou and Dao Lang have achieved the ultimate in their respective styles, thus hitting the hearts of different groups of people, and they are at the same time enshrined, which is not contradictory in the vast market of China.
Nowadays, with the development of music streaming and short video platforms, it has further broken through the broader sinking market, and the Matthew effect of algorithms and traffic has allowed the "knife langs" to occupy a larger field of vision, and the algorithm will automatically filter out the "explosive models", and the traffic will push it farther away. The continued popularity of "Mohe Ballroom" even made the original authors speak out on their own, "Don't push, you can, and then brush it and it will become flavorful." ”
Therefore, the "Annual Top Ten Hot Songs" released by TMEA according to data statistics are normal to be dominated by the Douyin Divine Comedy. The musicians who expressed dissatisfaction are more from the record era, and their loss and emotion are deeper reasons behind the transfer of power.
TMEA Tencent Music Entertainment Festival Announced "Annual Top Ten Hot Songs"
The biggest shift from record music to the digital music era is the power center of the record era , the scepter of the record company is handed over to the streaming platform, and the preferences of the streaming platform are naturally dominated by users. The pyramid-making star-making model of the record era has also been completely deconstructed by the Internet, which is the structural change in the production mode of the entire music industry, and it is also the business model reconstruction brought about by efficiency upgrading.
In the Internet era, the production mechanism of the record industry is obviously out of place, and zhang Yadong, a well-known producer, once said, "A standard album needs 400,000, and it is at least 1 million to hit the chart and shoot MVs." "With so much money to throw down, how much revenue is difficult to predict, and the cost of making a network divine comedy is much lower, under the guidance of big data and algorithms, the market preference is more traceable, and the cost performance of betting on hot spots is obviously higher."
In another way, if we take music production as a kind of product development, then the agile development that is popular on the Internet today is the mode of vibrato divine comedy production.
Moreover, in the digital age, the form of the product has also been redefined, before listening to the song need to buy an album, now click on the single can be, and the royalty mechanism of the streaming media platform generally adopts the "advance payment + share" model, the amount of music played determines the income of copyright owners, which is naturally dominated by the largest number of sinking market users.
The music industry has always been a business, and has always catered to the public, but today's mass subjects are more sinking, and they have quickly reached the mainstream through the feedback mechanism of data, making the elite feel uncomfortable. Leaving aside the sentiments of some people, the market has actually become larger, and with the decline of the old order, new chapters are being written.
The stars are quietly rising
If we take our vision to a higher dimension, we will find that digital music has reshaped the power structure of the Chinese music scene while also pushing it into a more diversified fertile land.
Nowadays, Chinese music content is far richer than before, from supply to consumption, any type of music can find enough soil to blossom, and the days when those who like niche music but struggle to live in small cities and can't find relevant resources are gone.
At the end of 2020, the band Universal Youth Hostel, which has been dormant for ten years, released the second album "Ji southwest lin road trip" in NetEase Cloud Music, with a Douban score of 9.2, not only won the netease cloud album daily chart top 2, the sales exceeded 400,000 copies in one week, and by the end of 2021, the total sales exceeded 13.2 million yuan.
This is the magic of the digital music era, in addition to the short video divine comedy of industrial assembly line products, it can also fully tap the market potential of high-quality music works, help musicians and listeners quickly find each other, and break the circle from niche to the public.
If the rise of Wanqing and the accumulation of word of mouth, then the growth of post-95/00 original musicians such as Shen Yicheng, Xu Binglong, Shuangsheng and so on is completely dependent on the east wind of the digital music era, they may not be as well known to the public as idol singers, but in online music platforms such as NetEase Cloud Music, they have millions of fans and have become kings in their own world.
The kings and queens of the day no longer covered the sky, and the stars rose with them.
According to the "Chinese Music Trend Report (2022)" recently released by NetEase Cloud Music, as of the first half of 2021, the total number of NetEase musicians exceeded 300,000, an increase of 15 times from the launch of the Stone Plan in November 2016.
Streaming music platforms replace the role of record companies in discovering musicians, and compared with the latter, which mainly promotes a small number of top singers, music platforms can give a large number of original musicians more opportunities, which is a change brought about by business model changes. Not only is the Internet's infinite amplification of the long-tail effect, but also thanks to today's music market, which can provide musicians with richer commercial monetization channels, copyright revenue, platform sharing, online live broadcasting, advertising cooperation, etc., all of which give music platforms a stronger motivation to support and cultivate new talents. In 2021, NetEase Cloud Music Ladder plans to give musicians more than 100 million yuan in incentives.
"Chinese Music Trend Report (2022)"
In addition to the surge in the number of musicians, the blossoming of musical styles is also a major trend in the Chinese music scene, and in 2021, pop, rap, electronic music, folk songs, and rock and roll ranked among the top five in netease cloud music style playback. This is also due to the promotion of the music synthesis, "China's New Rap" and "Summer of the Band" respectively rap and rock Amway to more young people, and achieved a win-win situation for all parties.
The market's tolerance and encouragement of Chinese music genres also give musicians more strong creative confidence, in the "golden age" that many people miss, in fact, a large number of Hong Kong and Taiwan music is covered from Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, and most of the genres are lyrical pop styles. And now China's original music is accelerating to the sea with a diversified appearance, the influence from the domestic circle to overseas, according to the "Chinese Music Trend Report (2022)" survey statistics, from the beginning of 2020 to the first half of 2021, electronic music "Smoke Bag Diagonal Street", with rap elements and other Chinese music works in the overseas platform broadcast more than 1 billion times.
The new atmosphere of the Chinese music scene is also reflected in the infinite expansion of the boundaries of consumption scenes.
Online, music is empowering everything, which can be used as a BGM for the short video of Douyin to set off the atmosphere, and can also provide a talent display stage for ordinary people in the singing bar, and can also derive a strange social field in the comment area, "Late Night Net Suppression Cloud" will connect all unmasked people through music, report to the group to warm up or comfort each other.
Offline, although the epidemic has blocked the development of music festivals, the livehouses scattered throughout major cities have also given new musicians more display space and allowed young people to gather together to revel. In addition, the restriction of long-distance travel has also indirectly ignited the consumption form of camping, which is a peripheral tour, and "camping + music" has become a new fashion, and in October 2021, the number of NetEase cloud music camping song playlists increased by 536% compared with the same period last year.
Nowadays, the stage boundaries of musicians are infinitely expanded, they do not have to hide behind the record alone, or stand on a high concert stage to interact with fans, they can always be with their audience.
The charm of the superstar era is also the enchantment of the era of the stars, you don't have to be famous, and people who like you will always be with you.
Prologue to the Age of Populism
The Chinese music scene has fully opened the prelude to the era of civilianization, the adjustment of the entire industrial structure has been preliminarily completed, and the current Chinese music scene is no longer the selection of a few people, but the daily life of the majority.
The circle division and interest diversity of the civilian era are bound to cause aesthetic disunity, similar to the "classical > jazz> rock > folk > electronic music > popular > rap" music contempt chain, its foundation is constantly being shaken. In "The Summer of the Band", Gao Xiaosong said that there is no chain of contempt for music genres, and each genre has a particularly bad and exceptionally good one.
In the face of TMEA's "Top Ten Hot Songs of the Year", the well-known radio DJ Yang Fan said in the circle of friends, "Any music has a target audience, there is no music that everyone can like, this hot song list reflects China's social environment, netizen structure and aesthetic orientation." "Instead of being obsessed with the choices of another group of people, think about what you have done to improve the aesthetics of society, and what else you can do."
After objectively pointing out the market status quo of the music market, this commentary loses no time in criticizing the condescending aesthetic superiority of the elite and giving positive advice. It is reminiscent of Tan Weiwei's new album in October 2020, "The price of "being yourself" is losing the market" In terms of knowledge, there is a high praise answer that commented, "When you "do yourself" but find that the market is not responding, should you think about it, is it possible that you are too dish? ”
The development of social media also provides more space for the discussion of musical works, from the perspective of many high-level comments and the improvement of the level of education for all, it is difficult to conclude that the overall musical literacy of the public is declining, and open discussion can also show a variety of different voices, in such a large enough open market, the real quality of the work will not be buried.
And Kevin Kelly's theory of a thousand hardcore fans will also become a more common reality in the Chinese music scene, as long as musicians can find their target group and completely conquer them through their own talents, even if the number is small, it is enough to support themselves, not to mention that no matter how niche the market in China, it has a huge crowd base.
With the change of times, the fall of the altar and the birth of the world are staged in turn, the tide of civilianization in the Chinese music scene is unstoppable, new chapters have yet to be written, countless roads have been extended, and new musicians are waiting to engrave their names.