Text/Shirasawa
Editor/Letter Lee
Sing bar fell into an eventful autumn.
Recently, the former employees of the singing bar said on the pulse that they were "fired", this time suffering from the entire business line of the university for the elderly, a total of more than 40 people, the singing bar practice is very tough, unilateral termination. However, the former employees of Sing Bar intend to "harden to the end" and take the road of arbitration.
At this time, it is only about a year before Sing Bar enters the middle-aged and elderly business. Sing Bar hopes to make the "Peanut Classroom" a professional interest learning platform launched by middle-aged and elderly users.
But apparently the singing bar didn't work out. Many middle-aged and elderly people who are willing to continue learning will choose to go to offline universities for the elderly, and singing bar has not cultivated the online class habits of middle-aged and elderly people.
As a product of the Internet era, singing bars are actually forgivable in the middle-aged and elderly market, but now singing bars cannot get the "heart" of young people. Since the national K song turned out, the data of the sing bar has plummeted, and now in the face of the impact of various short video products, the sing bar has long been left behind by young people.
Sing Bar also sees its own bottleneck, so it has been developing side businesses, such as mobile games, offline KTV, hardware, etc. But in addition to the sales of microphones in the hardware is not bad, the other business results of the sing bar are not satisfactory, especially offline KTV, when the original singing bar CEO Chen Hua set a five-year goal of 2000 stores, the result of achieving 400 stores has taken 4 years to sing bar.
Losing young people at the same time did not catch the elderly, and now in the face of the impact of short videos, it is difficult to restore the peak of the past.
1, middle-aged and elderly people do not like to sing it
Sing bar began to lay off employees.
Recently, many employees of the singing bar on the pulse came out to expose the layoffs. Netizens who were certified as former employees of the singing bar said, "Last Friday (singing bar) cut the entire business line of the university for the elderly, a total of more than 40 people, no one signed, issued a unilateral termination notice, the attitude is also very strong." There are also netizens who broke the news, "Beijing Sing Bar lays off employees, does not give year-end awards, and strongly sanctions officers before issuing year-end awards, too pits, sinkholes." ”
The hand operation of the sing bar is probably to save some money, and as a result, the laid-off employees did not "buy the bill", no one was willing to sign, and the former singing bar employees said that they wanted to meet with the singing bar "arbitral tribunal".
Sing bar layoffs, figure source pulse
Seeing that the "former employees" are so rigid, singing it is a bit "instigated". The staff of the pulse singing bar said, "This Monday, we began to contact some people to give them compensation and hope to sign." ”
So far, Sing Bar has not publicly responded to the matter.
Judging from the layoffs of Sing Bar, the layoffs are all employees of the business line of the elderly university. Originally, Sing Bar wanted to catch more middle-aged and elderly people, but now it seems that not only did not catch it, but also wasted a lot of resources.
According to public information, Sing Bar officially entered the middle-aged and elderly market in early 2021 and launched the "Peanut Classroom". According to Sing Bar, "Peanut Classroom" is a professional interest learning platform launched for middle-aged and elderly users, strictly selecting professional teachers across the country and providing high-quality free live courses.
In fact, there is a reason why Sing Bar aims at the elderly market. According to the National Bureau of Statistics released the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China economic and social development achievement report shows that by the end of 2018, the number of mainland Netizens reached 830 million, according to the data released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in June 2018, only the elderly netizens over the age of 60 accounted for 7.1% of the mainland Netizens.
That is to say, in 2018, there were about 58.93 million elderly netizens in the mainland. From the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, it can be seen that in 2018, about 250 million people aged 60 and above in the mainland, that is, 23.57% of the elderly were "netizens".
With more and more middle-aged and elderly people using smart phones, the market is paying more and more attention to "silver-haired people", and some apps or functions for "silver-haired people" have also emerged. Internet companies such as Tencent, Ali, and Byte have carried out age-appropriate transformations for apps, not only launching the "care model", but also developing large-character versions of the APP.
The vast market makes many people feel that the "silver economy" is the new "wealth code", and the elderly market is the new growth point of the Internet. Therefore, Sing Bar has also developed a "Peanut Classroom" for the needs of the elderly, led by Bai Fan, co-founder of Sing Bar, and is ready to "make a career" in the elderly market.
In baifan's words, "Our peanut classroom business seems to be an educational product, but I have always felt in my heart that it is a social and entertainment product, and it cannot be treated as a business like K12." ”
According to public information, the Peanut Classroom is a large class of interest for the elderly, including peanut Chinese painting class, peanut vocal music class, peanut calligraphy class and other interest categories. To put it simply, middle-aged and elderly people can find relevant courses in the peanut classroom according to their own interests and hobbies to learn.
Unfortunately, Sing Bar only sees the huge market for the elderly, but ignores the real needs of the elderly.
Looking at the reality of the moment, middle-aged and elderly people either go out to sing, dance, fish, travel, or take their grandchildren at home. The middle-aged and elderly people who are willing to study are in the minority, and they are more willing to choose offline universities for the elderly, rather than the habit of taking classes online. At the same time, the screen of the mobile phone is small and the font is small, which is not an ideal tool for the elderly to "go to class".
In addition to the fact that the habit of class demand is not well cultivated, the so-called social and entertainment attributes of the peanut classroom are not obvious. As a teaching product, Peanut Classroom wants to cluster middle-aged and elderly people through hobbies, but forgets that offline is the gathering place for middle-aged and elderly social and entertainment.
Based on this, the defeat of the "peanut classroom" has long been foreseeable, and today's layoffs also show that Sing Bar has not seized the elderly market.
2, the midlife crisis of singing: can not retain young people
Didn't catch the singing of the old age market, now even young people can't keep it.
According to the data of Zhiyan Consulting, in the third quarter of 2021, the average monthly active users of Sing bar were about 32 million, ranking second; the first is the national K song, with an average monthly active user of more than 135 million people, which is more than 4 times that of singing bar.
Statistics on the average monthly active users of major mobile K song applications in the third quarter of 2021 (10,000 people), Tuyuan Zhiyan Consulting
At the sing-bar (hi sing) ceremony held in early 2016, Chen Hua announced that the installed capacity of the singing bar exceeded 300 million, and the monthly active capacity exceeded 30 million. That is to say, after 5 years, the monthly life of the singing bar has not changed much.
In fact, once sang bar to sit firmly in the top position of social K songs.
In May 2012, Sing Bar's online singing K social software Sing bar App was launched. On the first day of launch, the number of registrations of the Singbar App exceeded 100,000; in the ten days of going online, the number of Singbar users exceeded 1 million. In 2012, Sing Bar was named one of the fastest growing apps of the year.
The rapid growth of the number of users has allowed capital to see the potential of Sing Bar. In August 2012, Sing Bar received a Series B round of financing of $15 million, invested by Sequoia China and Lanchi Venture Capital.
The "Pockets Of Money" singing bar accelerated its expansion, and by October 2013, the number of users of the singing bar exceeded 100 million.
At that time, in order to attract more traffic, Sing Bar cooperated with WeChat in 2012 and held an online K song contest of "WeChat Sing Together". Sing Bar helps WeChat improve the diversification of services, while WeChat attracts new traffic and expands its visibility for Sing Bar.
This activity also did "recharge" the traffic for the sing bar. On November 18, 2014, Chen Hua, the founder of Singbar, announced in the "Innovation Space" forum that Singbar exceeded 200 million users.
However, after that K song competition, Tencent did the "K song for all" and stole many users of the singing bar. On August 26, 2014, the national K song launched an appointment download, and by the first day of its launch on September 1, the national K song gained 200,000 users.
As a Tencent product, the national K song also knows how to use Tencent's own resources. Soon after its launch, the national K song and QQ music held a "Campus Star" competition. According to the IT House report, the "Campus Star" competition attracted 75,000 college students to sign up and received the attention of 3 million college students.
With the strong support of Tencent, by December 2016, Tencent Technology reported that the number of registered users of K songs exceeded 300 million, and later surpassed Sing Bar and topped the list of mobile K song Apps.
Back against a large tree for shade. Two years after the launch of the national K song, it surpassed the industry "boss", and the number of social users accumulated by WeChat and QQ is not unrelated. According to Tencent's 2016 annual performance report, WeChat and WeChat have 889 million monthly active users combined, which are potential users of the national K song.
However, what really impresses users is its social attributes. After its launch, the National K Song continued to give full play to Tencent's advantages in the social field, continuously improved its functions, and launched such as chorus, song, heartbeat, friend singing, video chorus, live broadcast, etc. In terms of technology, the national K song has also strengthened research and development, and has successively launched TECHNOLOGIES such as AI singing, intelligent retouching, and AI song style to improve the user's experience.
What helps the national K song to retain this position is its "secret weapon", that is, copyright.
In July 2015, the National Copyright Administration issued the "Strictest Copyright Protection Order", and the copyright problems in the online music market were put on the surface. In order to solve this problem, in 2016, Tencent "took" the controlling right of Ocean Music Group, integrating QQ Music, National K Song, Kugou Music, and Kuwo Music, and had a greater advantage in copyright.
In contrast, the singing bar is a bit backward, and it is slightly sluggish in the development and optimization of functions such as chorus, private unlock, and video. What's worse is that the singing bar has also been exposed to copy the singing function of the singing duck, whether it is the note form of the singing area, the instrument area, the color of the singing button or the operation area, which is basically the same as the singing duck.
The "elderly figure" of the online K song software has degenerated to plagiarism, which is really regrettable.
Sing bar pop-up shop, picture source sing bar official Weibo
Nowadays, singing bar is facing the impact of various short video apps.
The same are all entertainment information flow products, vibrato, kuaishou, national K songs, sing bars all hope to occupy the user's time to the greatest extent and improve user stickiness, but the use scenarios of these two types of Apps are very different.
Whether it is waiting for a train to take the subway or eating, anyone can watch Vibrato and Brush Videos anytime and anywhere, and each video can be stopped at any time. The K song software is different from the K song software, and users who are interested in singing need a certain amount of time and a specific environment to use, and there are more restrictions.
It is also used to pass the time, obviously short video apps such as Douyin Kuaishou are a better choice, and users have also "voted with their feet".
According to iResearch Mobile's data, there are 150 million monthly independent devices on Douyin, about 80 million monthly independent devices for K songs, and only 23.89 million singing bars. In terms of the total monthly effective time, the vibrato is as high as 540 million hours, while the total monthly effective time of the national K song is 180 million hours.
In the face of short video apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou, even the industry's first national K song is difficult to overcome, let alone sing it.
In the competition with the national K song, Sing Bar has also made many attempts, but it is basically in the inferior position, either a slow step, or "picking up people's teeth and wisdom", the most critical software experience is not good, resulting in its now even young people can not stay. Although Sing Bar also did offline business to attract young people, in the face of menacing "enemies", Sing Bar eventually lost.
Today, the same type of software feature differences are similar, each player is around to improve the user experience to exert efforts, these functional differences, although subtle, but is the key to winning the favor of users, especially for the young generation who pay special attention to user experience. In this regard, the singing bar, which is caught in the plagiarism controversy, has lagged behind.
3, sing bar repeatedly self-help, but it is difficult to solve the dilemma
Sing Bar is actually aware of its own bottlenecks and competitive pressures, so it has been trying different businesses.
2014 was special for Sing Bar, not only because of the birth of singing bar opponents, but also because Sing Bar made two major attempts in this year.
In 2014, Sing Bar announced its entry into the mobile game industry, and launched the mobile game "Sing Bar Peter Pan" for free on the iOS platform on March 28 of that year, which was jointly released by Sing Bar and Hot Cool Games. Although this is a flying shooter game, it incorporates a lot of elements of the singing bar, such as the character setting has the most popular celebrity image of the singing bar, and the gold coins in the game are the logo of the singing bar.
For why an online K song software to get involved in the mobile game industry, Chen Hua is so, "Sing bar the earliest game is inspired by Momo, back, look at the current user base of singing bar, if you choose a suitable mobile game, then the monthly flow can be very high is also promising, so sing bar in this regard or made up its mind to try it." Before, after the launch of "Sing It Peter Pan", the results were still good. ”
Shortly after its launch, "SingIng Peter Pan" ranked sixth in the Apple App Store free game chart.
In 2015, Sing Bar launched "Artillery Regiment", which is a tower defense combat strategy game featuring QQ Emoji Artillery. On the basis of imitating COC, the game also adds some unique gameplay, such as users can use a similar lottery form to obtain specific props, you can also transform equipment, interact with singing friends, etc.
However, this game seems to have a general response in the market, and there is basically no data about this game on the Internet, and it is now not available in the App Store.
While laying out the mobile game, the singing bar also set its sights on offline KTV.
In 2014, Sing Bar invested in Mai Song KTV. Sing bar Mai Song KTV takes the boutique mini route, each store only has about 20-30 private rooms, and its target group is a young consumer group within a radius of 5 kilometers. Chen Hua, CEO of Sing Bar, said, "After five years, I hope to copy this online and offline connection model to 2,000 KTV stores across the country."
Sing bar Mai Song store, picture source sing bar Mai Song official Weibo
However, with the emergence of more and more leisure and entertainment apps, the business of offline KTV has become difficult to do, and the KTV that has collapsed has been one after another. The Daily Economic News has reported that in 2021, "the existing KTV companies are less than half of what they were seven years ago", and as of March 2021, the number of KTV in the mainland is only 64,000, and the peak is as high as 120,000. The decline of the KTV industry is unquestionable.
Offline KTV can be said to be already a "sunset industry", and the offline attempt of singing bar has not brought good results to it. According to the report of the Financial Eye, from 2015 to 2016, in 40% of Chen Hua's "five-year plan", Sing bar Mai Song only completed 7.5% of the target, and even the listing plan was affected.
According to the entrepreneurs' reports, by 2018, Sing Bar Mai Song KTV only opened more than 400 stores in the country. Based on the goal of 2,000 stores in 5 years, Sing Bar Mai Song KTV should open 400 stores per year, but now it takes 4 years to complete this year's goal, at this rate, Sing Bar Mai Song KTV to complete the goal of 2,000 offline stores is at least 16 years.
According to the data of Tianyancha, in 2020, the singing bar Maisong KTV only opened 500 stores.
In addition to expanding the market offline, in 2015, Sing bar once again expanded its business field and began to sell hardware. CNET Science and Technology Information Network reported that on June 26, 2015, Sing bar announced that it officially entered the hardware field, and also released hardware products - sing bar microphone, charging treasure and microphone stand, the price of the three products is 179 yuan, 99 yuan, 49 yuan.
Sing bar microphone, picture source sing bar official Weibo
According to the 2018 Global Network report, the sing-bar microphone created a good result of selling millions of units. But there is no way to find sales on the Internet about its charging treasure and microphone stand.
Overall, although Sing Bar continues to make new business attempts, the results are not satisfactory. The root cause is that the singing bar has not been able to establish its own moat, and the competitors are pressing forward.
The multi-party exploration of the sing bar, now began to cut the development of the business is not smooth, timely stop loss, but the road ahead is still challenging, can it finally achieve "self-help"?
(The source of the header of this article is singing bar official Weibo.) ）