The source | New Talk Finance
| Chen Qiaohui
Shortly after the Douyin Music Open Platform announced the official upgrade of the brand as "Hot Galaxy", the "Soda Music" App, which had been tested for nearly half a year, surfaced.
"Xinyan Finance" exclusively learned that Douyin recently tested the first music App "Soda Music" in a small range of domestic low-key. It is reported that soda music is the official music app produced by Douyin to help users discover more good music. At present, soda music contains tens of millions of songs, but it is mainly based on niche songs, and some songs need to be opened to listen to.
With the liberalization of exclusive music copyrights in China, and the withdrawal of Ali's Shrimp Music from the domestic music streaming market, the domestic online music market has new opportunities and market space here. For Douyin, if you can seize the opportunity during the opportunity period, blood can make the online music business a new growth line.
According to data from the China Business Industry Research Institute, the market size of China's online music services has increased from 4.2 billion yuan in 2017 to 12.8 billion yuan in 2020, and it is expected to reach 24.2 billion yuan in 2022. In the face of such an alluring market cake, Douyin obviously will not miss it.
Douyin Divine Comedy has a "home"
According to the experience, the "Soda Music" App focuses on niche good music. On the discovery page, you can see different categories of music stations, song list recommendations, and hot song charts, and users can recommend songs of interest to users according to the listening preferences of users and people with similar tastes.
The player interface of Soda Music adopts a similar layout to the music player in the Douyin App, where users can swipe up and down to select songs recommended by the system, and in addition, users can collect, forward and comment on the songs.
In addition, soda music also has a recommendation page, users can see the daily recommended songs of the platform. In the personal center, the basic information of the user, as well as the collection and creation of song lists, are displayed.
It should be noted that some songs in soda music need to be paid by members before they can be used.
Overall, the soda music app is more like a product that separates the music function in the Douyin App, and follows the account system of Douyin.
In order to avoid head-on competition with the head music platform, soda music is positioned as a niche music platform, similar to NetEase Cloud Music, but with its own recommendation algorithm and the blessing of Douyin Divine Comedy, soda music may be able to run out of its own development path under the fierce track.
Online music business or become the next "cash cow" of Douyin
As the first "cash cow" of Bytes, Douyin will also face the challenge of peaking domestic short video users.
According to the latest data from Ai Media Consulting, from 2017 to 2021, domestic short video users have been in a growth trend, but the growth rate has begun to fall off a cliff in 2018, which also means that the growth of domestic short video users will show a slowing trend. The foreseeable number of users has peaked, which is obviously not a good sign for Douyin, which needs to find the next track that can be monetized.
At present, Douyin is exploring a number of tracks, including e-commerce and local life business, but this is far from enough. Since Douyin has the special ability to make music divine comedies and explosive models, instead of making these divine comedies as wedding dresses for other music platforms, it is better to enter online music by yourself and become the "home" of these divine comedies, and even rely on this unique musical style to create a differentiated music platform and seek competition. This idea was also noticed by Byte Lock in 2021, and a first-level department of the Music Division was established that year.
Subsequently, Byte once again added a number of music projects, first of all, to create its own music middle station "Bytemusic" to empower its own music business, in addition, Douyin also officially included the online audio product "Tomato Listening" into its product matrix, and set up a new music agency distribution platform "Galaxy Ark", cutting into the music agency and distribution track, plus the recently launched music development platform "Hot Galaxy" and online music streaming platform "Soda Music". At this point, Byte has a complete link closed loop of the online music industry, creating a more comprehensive music business model than before.
According to the information already learned, Xinyan Finance organizes and maps.
Of course, it is also necessary to recognize some practical problems in the vibrato music business. On the one hand, the music copyright of Douyin is still less than that of Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) and NetEase Cloud Music, which is also a reason why Soda Music takes the niche music route, after all, if Soda Music can have the music copyright of singers like Jay Chou, it will greatly increase its competitiveness.
On the other hand, soda music uses a membership payment system, how to let users take the initiative to pay for it, is the next topic that Douyin needs to consider, at present, TME and NetEase Cloud Music have gone a long time in the membership business from loss to positive.
In any case, byte's music business has officially taken shape, for the domestic online music market, there is one more heavy spoiler, and for users listening to songs, there is also a new choice, whether Byte can become the third pole of domestic online music, or even reach a higher status, it still needs time to confirm.