【Pin Orange Tourism】In February, with the convening of the Winter Olympics, domestic Olympic-related digital collections were sought after, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of the lively digital collection market.
This new concept, which is inextricably linked to the "metaverse", is becoming a new link between finance, art, museums, and a new wealth that everyone is chasing.
Lively digital collections and NFT markets
What is a digital collection?
According to the interpretation of Alipay's digital collection platform, digital collections are digitized specific works, artworks and goods that are uniquely identified using blockchain technology, and each digital collection reflects a unique serial number on a specific blockchain, which is immutable, inseparable, and cannot be replaced by each other.
To put it simply, it is to use blockchain technology to achieve true and credible digital distribution, purchase, collection and use on the basis of protecting their digital copyrights, corresponding to the unique digital credentials generated by specific works and works of art.
Photo network
Speaking of digital collections, we have to mention the concept of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
2021 is known as the "First Year of the NFT". In this year, American artist Mike Winkelman's digital work "Every Day: The First 5,000 Days" was sold for about 450 million yuan after 14 days of online bidding, which also set a record for the price of NFT works that year. Since then, more and more digital works have been sold online at sky-high prices. This allows more "art" to enter the NFT, and also allows more products to see the possibility of breaking the circle and making money.
Driven by both interests and influence, NFTs will begin to be pan-entertainment in 2021.
In June, the movie "True Three Kingdoms Matchless" released the first set of film NFT series works in China, including different forms of character images and prop posters.
In October, Wong Kar-wai's film NFT work "A Moment of Fancy Time" was sold at Sotheby's auction for HK$4.285 million.
In May 2021, Alibaba took the lead in launching the NFT digital art special session, and in June, it sold two payment code NFT skins of "Dunhuang Feitian" and "Nine Colored Deer", priced at 9.9 yuan, each limited to 8,000 copies, and the result was seconds.
At present, digital collections have become a hot spot in the industry, with a rich range of categories, including but not limited to digital pictures, music, videos, 3D models, electronic tickets, digital souvenirs and other forms.
Reports show that in September 2021, the world's largest NFT trading platform OpenSea daily sales have exceeded $100 million, in fact, the real peak in August, the platform on August 29 trading volume of more than $300 million.
Now, in addition to Ali, Tencent, NetEase, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu and other Internet giants have also begun to lay out NFTs and have launched digital collectible platforms.
In the field of cultural tourism business, the museum's digital collection has developed rapidly in the past year. For example, Ant Chain launched the "Treasure Project", and the first phase launched the digital collection of four national treasure-level cultural relics such as the Four Sheep Bronze Fangzun and the Western Han Dynasty Gold and Silver Cloud Pattern Bronze Rhinoceros, which were sold out at the first time. Subsequently, the Dunhuang Fine Arts Research Institute and the Hunan Provincial Museum have successively launched relevant digital collections.
In February 2022, the Digital Collection of "Only This Green" launched the Digital Collection Commemorative Ticket on March 3, which is the first digital collection commemorative ticket in the performance industry.
In 2021, Visual China also carried out digital collection business, as of March 7, Visual China's "Meta Vision" platform, a total of 23 sales, a total of 100 collections, of which one of the digital collections, "Spring Flowers" was filmed in the Forbidden City Corner Tower with unique Chinese traditional cultural heritage, with strong regional characteristics.
Visual China's digital collection "Spring Flowers" Source: Visual China
For the "metaverse", chains are also very important.
The China Tourism Chain Project is a concrete innovative measure for the application of blockchain in the tourism industry. Based on the alliance chain, build different functional "sub-chains" and gradually form a complete and comprehensive system. Among them, digital collections are its focus on business segments. Li Boyang, general manager of CYTS Taiyi (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., a project company of China Tourism Chain, said that China's tourism chain has provided the underlying technology for a number of IP parties and launched and distributed about dozens of collections, and the market side has played a good role, of which a number of "explosive products" have appeared.
The domestic Internet giants know the sharpness of the outlet, combined with the reasons of policy supervision, set a custom limit: digital collections, and set multiple restrictions, avoiding malicious speculation and deliberate de-financialization. But that still doesn't stop digital collections from being sought after in the market.
Investor or leek?
"Since the issuance of NFTs overseas requires virtual tokens to do, which is not in line with Chinese laws, so in China, everyone has taken a relatively compliant route - digital collections." Abroad is that it is profitable by copyright, like the stock exchange model. In China, it is actually a kind of financial transaction, and it is also something you can't do without a license. Now Hainan has approved the country's first digital collection exchange, and the license is also available, but at present, because the rules have not yet been established, it has not been officially opened, and some platforms have opened up the transfer function with deadline requirements. Compliance is the most important thing, and now everyone is waiting, waiting for another boot to land. Veteran players said.
Although it has not yet been officially opened, privately, the digital collection market is evolving rapidly. Museums, Internet platforms, and cultural and creative enterprises are all going deep into this field, and some small and medium-sized platforms for digital collections are even more numerous.
Digital collections on the professional platform "Whale Detective" Source: Web screenshots
"There are nearly 100 large, medium, and small platforms that I have paid attention to, and now there should be hundreds." Veteran players say.
Yan Xiaojun, founder and CEO of Ke Yao (Beijing) International Culture Media Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ke Yao Culture"), said to Pin Orange Tourism that he paid attention to this market at the end of 2020, when this market has formed a relatively complete industrial chain of "resource side (copyright party)", "operator" and "platform".
Ke Yao Culture is the "operator", and its main job is to provide digital product conversion services for copyright owners. "Whether it is a photo or a cultural and creative product, the original product also needs secondary investment, digital transformation, and sometimes we also need to create a second degree to make it a product that can meet market demand and regulatory compliance."
At present, Ke Yao Culture and Ao Xiang Zhai Culture jointly create digital cultural creation of sports cultural relics, and use digital technology to create culture re-creation, so that it has more applications in the field of cultural creation. At the same time, they have also jointly created traditional cultural digital products with Galaxy Changxing, and have established tens of thousands of three-dimensional models, covering realistic characters, buildings, weapons, daily necessities, stationery, clothing and clothing, jewelry and other categories, and created a meta-universe three-dimensional digital collection tide play series, developing the Three Kingdoms character card blind box.
Upcoming card digital collection mink cicada Galaxy Changxing
"In fact, in theory, the digital collection is not exactly a commodity, because it is also a tool for corporate marketing, whether it is now CCTV, Xinhua News Agency or Ping An Bank, Audi, there are new products to make a new digital collection, not for the purpose of profit." Yan Xiaojun said.
Although some of the cultural tourism collections are aimed at marketing and disseminating culture, investors may not.
The IOC officially authorized ice pier digital blind boxes were sold in the early morning of February 12, Beijing time, with a total of 500 units, $99 each, limited to 5 per person. In less than half a month, all series of blind boxes have been sold out, and the highest-rising digital collection has soared nearly 20 times.
The same is true of other museums' digital collections, where thousands of collections are sold out in less than a second.
This stems from the low selling price, and at the same time, it also stems from people's "imagination" of the premium space for digital products. "Now not only investors are securing land, but individual investors are also hoarding goods." Senior industry insider said.
This has also caused some disagreement in the museum community.
A museum industry insider revealed that there is no problem in the direction of digitization of collections, and there is no problem in digital collections entering the public domain, but it is inappropriate to use him as a tool for profit. More consideration should be given to the concept of public welfare and sharing, after all, the funds are originally from public finances.
"The main problems in the future are the control and demand of digital collection circulation, as well as the copyright of secondary development," the person said. According to the Copyright Law, the copyright of secondary development belongs to the developer, and there should be a clear definition of the form of secondary development, and there must be no agreement that violates social customs, this problem has been recognized by many people, but there is no action at the management level. In the future, the development trend of wenbo digital collections, I hope is free, but the current operation is carried out as a market behavior, which is contrary to the museum's public welfare and sharing concept. Therefore, I personally do not advocate excessive marketization. ”
However, Yan Xiaojun believes that because it has just started, the current state of this market is chaotic and disorderly, but once the regulatory policy is introduced, this market will enter a normal market track, so some people are also holding a wait-and-see attitude. For creators, digital collections stimulate the market to create better digital culture products.
"There are also people who worry that there will be homogeneous products coming out, in fact, the attributes of the blockchain determine the uniqueness of the copyright of the collection, and the circulation determines the value of the collection, so this worry is unnecessary." Yan Xiaojun stressed.
How do cultural tourism companies play with digital collections?
"Because the domestic digital collection and international NFT are not a concept, the operation process is relatively simple, and it is mainly in cooperation with external companies." The relevant person in charge of a cultural tourism enterprise said.
According to reports, Visual China's digital collection business is committed to promoting the development of the real economy, carrying forward the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation, promoting the digital "revitalization" of traditional culture, integrating innovative technology and cultural industry, helping the digital breakthrough of cultural and creative industries, and promoting the healthy development of the industry.
For what issues to consider in the participation of cultural tourism (cultural and creative) enterprises in the digital collection, the relevant person in charge of Visual China said that it is necessary to find the direction and positioning, and tap those products that have the potential to change from "one corner of the bundle" to "widely circulated" products, so as to reverse empower the local cultural tourism industry and open up a new path for cultural product innovation.
Yan Xiaojun also believes that creating digital collections must be "content is king", but there must be directional delivery when selling. "After building a platform with existing technology, what is ultimately needed is content. At the same time, the existing platform influence and focus are also different, some are cultural relics, some are cultural creation, some are movies, some are music, etc., different themes correspond to different groups of people, on the contrary, choose different platforms, the results of sales are not the same, large platform companies will create a digital collection series with the theme of scene stories, and the real three-dimensional model collection is closer to the metaverse. ”
Three-dimensional digital collection: Han Dynasty hanging drum Galaxy Changxing
At present, the digital collection and the metacosm are still being explored in the combination of number and reality, and at the two sessions of the National People's Congress this year, CPPCC members have paid considerable attention to this. From the perspective of the history of Internet development, public opinion governance, transaction supervision, personal privacy protection and even national sovereignty protection in the online virtual society is a severe challenge, and it is still being continuously explored and improved.
Li Boyang predicted that from the perspective of the future development of the cultural tourism industry, China's tourism chain has two directions of industry support vision, namely industrial digitalization and digital industrialization. In terms of industrial digitalization, by relying on blockchain technology to create a new credit system, through smart contracts to promote transactions more standardized and efficient, so that consumer behavior is more intuitively presented, to achieve the digital upgrading of cultural tourism consumption. In terms of digital industrialization, based on the existing cultural tourism resources, the creation of a digital cultural tourism space for personalized tourism experience has become the future direction, and with the digital migration of human beings from the physical world to the digital world, a complete set of economic and social systems may be formed in the future, resulting in new financial markets and commodity markets.
Li Boyang said: "What is the focus of cultural tourism on the combination of mathematics and reality? Rights. The value of the collection has been on a rapid upward trend, and it is no longer convincing enough to just be a digital collection. It needs to be turned into a project to operate, and now that successful cases at home and abroad are like this, the collection needs to start to consider whether it is copyrighted. Is there an interest? Only then will the value continue to increase, and will not dissipate with the end of the digital collection activity, leaving only commemorative meaning and no other value. ”
Although there are many variables, he is still optimistic, saying: China's cultural and creative industry accounts for less than 1% of the world, and we have a lot of room for development.
However, due to the fact that it was born out of the financial field and the upper management system is not clear, many cultural and tourism enterprises are secretive about this topic, and many respondents are reluctant to mention it, and hold a wait-and-see attitude - "Wait and see".
It is only the tide of digitalization that is surging up, and the "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly mentions that it is necessary to promote the deep integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and the real economy. Accelerating the development of digitalization, digital collection is becoming a new trend of modern people's cultural consumption, one day, it will become something that more people pay attention to, and then it may be too late to enter the digital collection track.