Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Business Data School, author 丨 Xie Yijing Lu Yingxi, editor 丨 WenBin
"Either continue to live for three years, or pay 500,000 yuan in compensation."
This is not the encounter of a well-known anchor, but only the response that a small anchor who has been in the industry for less than a year wants to terminate his contract with the company.
Shanshan, a yan value anchor on a short video platform, when she first entered the industry, she thought it was a job that was easy enough to bring fame and wealth to herself. To this end, she followed the rhythm of 5 hours of live broadcast every day, and broadcast live for 9 months.
But after 9 months, there is no imaginary overnight fame, the account has no fans, the live broadcast has no traffic, and the income and even the cost of living cannot be covered.
"Now I can't even receive ten dollars a day, and I have to choose a new job." But at this time, the signing company took out the contract signed at that time, which read in black and white on the guarantee of "live broadcasting for 5 hours a day until three years".
If there is a default, Shanshan will face huge compensation of up to 500,000. But without breaking the contract, Shanshan could not engage in other work, and in desperation, Shanshan finally chose to go to court.
Shanshan's encounter is not just a lone case.
On March 7, the entanglement between LangGasian and his boss once again pushed the contradiction between the anchor and the company behind it to the public. Prior to this, the dispute between Li Ziqi and Wei Nian had also been on Weibo's hot search many times, and led to Li Ziqi's account being suspended so far. After that, the well-known anchor of Douyu Games@ A Small Tuantuan also wanted to terminate the contract due to the expiration of the contract, and was claimed by the guild for 600 million yuan in liquidated damages, making it suspend live broadcasting.
The tearing between the anchor and the guild has always continued, and the anchor has always been in a weak position. Even if it is well-known as Li Ziqi, it can only post a sentence on Weibo that "capital is really a good means".
▲Image source: Weibo
In other words, these big anchors with tens of millions of fans do not have enough ability and discourse power to protect their rights and interests. The situation of the little anchor like Shanshan will only be more difficult.
Before you become famous, you fall into a trap
Shanshan's earliest intention was not to become an anchor, but it was not easy for her to find a satisfactory job after graduating from secondary school.
"The resumes submitted online basically did not respond, but the anchor company, even if it did not submit resumes, would continue to send a variety of interview invitations."
Perhaps because she got encouragement from the invitations that came from the recruitment website, she began to broadcast live on her own.
I thought that with my own conditions, it should not be difficult to increase my fans, but the reality is often the easiest to break the illusion. "For a long time, the live broadcast has not improved, and the audience is basically the number of you." Sugi recalled.
Learning about the situation of Shanshan, a friend who has been in the live broadcast circle for a long time told her about the experience of "coming over". A friend told Sugi that her traffic is not good now, mainly because there is no "guild".
The guild will arrange at least three spectators for its anchor in the live broadcast room every day, responsible for warming up her live broadcast room and creating an atmosphere. The guild will also provide traffic support to the anchor to help her appear on the home page recommendation. Even in order for the anchor to get more gifts, the guild will also arrange for someone to take the lead in brushing the gifts to drive other audiences.
Of course, in addition to the traffic and professional operation brought by the guild, more importantly, Shanshan does live broadcasting itself, and the gifts and tips obtained by the platform can only get 30%, but if the guild is added, it can be divided into 40%.
After explaining the relationship between them, Shanshan's friends began to repeatedly recommend their guilds to Shanshan. Traffic and revenue, Shanshan clearly knows the importance of these two to himself. And joining the guild, there is both traffic support and higher income, why not enjoy it?
In this way, under the guidance of his friends, Sugi joined the guild. "I thought that the Canadian guild did not want money and so many benefits, and I did not lose money." Sugi recalled.
At this time, Shanshan had not yet signed any formal contracts with the guild, and everything was limited to verbal promises. "It's very free, the live content and time are determined by myself, and the company has no management and constraints at all."
At the beginning of the cooperation, the guild did bring a lot of help to Shanshan. For example, the guild will tell Shanshan, someone entering the live broadcast room will say welcome, someone will give gifts to say thank you big brother...
And just like the original promise, at any time, as long as Shanshan sends a WeChat message to the agent and says "I want to broadcast live", three "viewers" will immediately appear in the live broadcast room to interact with her in the comment area, basically not cold.
Shanshan said: "When the number of people in the live broadcast room slowly increases to more than ten or twenty, the guild will start to brush me some 'koi' (worth 40 yuan) or 'call for you' (worth 100 yuan), and they will also call on real fans in the comment area to brush gifts for me." "
These actions made Shanshan trust the guild more and more. For Shanshan, the guild at this time is like a startup partner who does not expect anything in return. With the help of the guild, Shanshan's live broadcast quickly obtained staged "results".
"One day I could earn 500 yuan just by just playing it for two hours at night. A month later, the guild calculated my salary according to 40% of the income, and I earned a total of more than 4,000 yuan. "
The money is easy to earn, and it also makes Shanshan start to be confident. "During that time, I wondered if I was born to be an anchor."
But things didn't go on like this, and after a while, the guild agent contacted Shanshan and wanted to sign an "artist agency agreement" with her. The agent told Shanshan that as long as he signed the contract now, the company would immediately pay Shanshan thirty thousand yuan in cash as a salary advance for the next three years.
Of course, the contract will also have some restrictions. For example, the contract requires live broadcasting for three years, and at least five hours a day, a total of more than 5,000 hours of broadcasting within three years, and compensation will be paid if the total length of the broadcast is not completed.
▲The picture shows a screenshot of the "Live Performance Time Allocation Plan" of the guild to which the anchor belongs
Thirty thousand yuan is undoubtedly a huge amount of money for Shanshan, who has just walked out of school and earns four thousand yuan a month. Therefore, even knowing the harsh conditions behind the agreement, Shanshan still signed the contract without too much hesitation.
"What I was thinking at the time was that now my live broadcast is just starting out, I can have four or five thousand income every month, and the future will definitely be better, not to mention that I can get thirty thousand when I sign a contract." Shanshan said.
After signing the contract, Shanshan began to immerse herself in the joy of about to embark on the peak of her life, and she did not expect that she would fall into a quagmire in the future because of this contract.
Soon, the live broadcast room of Shanshan changed. Once thunderous, only one of the three "spectators" would appear on the live broadcast; the guild never brushed gifts again; and the popularity of the live broadcast room began to decline at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In just a few days, the live broadcast room returned to the situation where there were only a few people at the beginning. From beginning to end, the first page recommendation promised by the guild has not been realized.
"At this time, there are few people in the live broadcast room, let alone brush gifts." When you are lucky, you can earn twenty or thirty dollars a day by painting small gifts with iron painting. When I'm unlucky, it's a luxury for viewers to post comments and chat with me during the live broadcast. "
Looking at the deserted live broadcast room, Shanshan began to retreat. But because of the existence of the contract, Shanshan still had a hard scalp for nine months. It wasn't until nine months later, when there was little left of the 30,000 yuan that Shanshan finally decided to say goodbye to live broadcasting and proposed to the company to terminate the contract.
But as we mentioned at the beginning, what awaits Shanshan is just a cold sentence of "either continue to live for three years, or pay 500,000 yuan." ”
▲The picture shows a screenshot of the "Artist Agency Agreement" of the guild to which the live broadcast belongs
"When the company told me that I would pay 500,000 yuan for the termination of the contract, I was really confused." At this time, Sugi finally saw clearly the fangs exposed by the guild. But at this time, Shanshan has already been deeply involved in it.
Appearance is treatment
From Shanshan's encounter, we learned that in order to recruit more people like Shanshan into the live broadcasting industry, these anchor companies are often induced through high-paying positions on the recruitment platform.
In order to find out the "routine" of the anchor company's recruitment, the commercial data faction also investigated along this clue.
On a recruitment platform with the best traffic today, the business data party registered an account with the identity of a woman, and found that indeed as Shanshan said, although there is no active job such as anchor, there will be many HR with the name of "media company" who take the initiative to send recruitment invitations to anchors.
▲ Picture: Business Data Dispatch receives an invitation to an interview
Not long after we registered, we received a lot of private messages from recruiting anchors. "The first three months of the internship period guaranteed 6,000 yuan, and after the regularization of the guarantee also have 10,000 yuan." "Guaranteed bottom 8000-15000." "No experience required, free time, home broadcasting, salary day end."
"Academic qualifications are not limited", "experience is not limited", "monthly guarantee of more than 10,000 yuan"... Very tempting words, for many little girls who are not familiar with the world, it is indeed easy to "hook". What's more, when these companies send these invitations, they don't seem to be by object, but just contact each other randomly.
Along these recruitment information, the business data faction also randomly communicated with several companies, but before we could talk a few words, HR asked us to add WeChat and then send our own photos or videos to "score".
These HR said their salaries are rated based on the looks of the newcomers, and the talented will be given extra points.
"It's easy, happy to earn money," Zhang Min, an HR of Chengdu Whisper culture, told the business data faction.
According to Zhang Min, the commission of the anchor mainly relies on the tip obtained in the live broadcast room, and the income platform after the tip will first draw a part, and the rest will be divided into five or five points by the anchor and the company, and the more gifts the fans brush, the more the commission will be correspondingly more.
In order to dispel the concerns of the newcomer anchor, Zhang Min told us that the company will provide free accommodation and training during the internship period, use the form of the elderly to bring new people to the group broadcast, there is a host in the live broadcast room to control the field, the newcomer does not have to worry about no traffic, the company will spend money on Douyin to do promotion. In addition to this, the company will also provide free live broadcast equipment and makeup artists.
In this way, these live broadcasting companies seem to have paved the way for newcomers to fame. But is there really such a good thing that the low threshold and high salary guarantee are guaranteed?
After some understanding, the commercial data faction found that before joining the company, these live broadcasting companies will sign a live broadcast contract with the newcomer for up to three years; if the anchor wants to stop broadcasting during the period, it needs to sign another non-compete agreement, and can no longer engage in live broadcasting work within three years, otherwise it needs to pay liquidated damages.
Although the aforementioned Shanshan did not sign the so-called non-compete agreement, the three-year contract and the liquidated damages of up to 500,000 yuan also put Shanshan in a dilemma.
After a brief understanding of several anchor companies, the business data faction also found that these so-called HR statements are more similar. That is, first use high salaries to attract your attention, and then blow the benefits of the anchor's profession, and finally lure you to the company to sign a contract with them step by step.
Of course, real live streaming is not as easy as these HR describe.
According to the understanding of commercial data, anchors usually need to broadcast live for six days a week, broadcast live for 7 to 8 hours a day, divided into three shifts in the morning, middle and evening. The morning shift traffic is not good, the evening shift starts at 6:30 p.m., and the latest can not be sown until 2 a.m., and the wages will be deducted when taking leave.
At twelve o'clock in the morning, when the commercial data was sent into the live broadcast room of a certain anchor company, it was found that there were only 19 people in the live broadcast room, and the four anchors looked like girls in their 20s, sometimes looking down at the mobile phone and sometimes looking at the camera. This kind of group broadcast is different from other talent live broadcasts and chat live broadcasts, mainly playing games, and the form can be regarded as novel.
Although there are few people in the live broadcast room, the host is still very energetic and active. Shouting loudly, "Thank you for the rocket sent by the big brother of the list.".
After watching the live broadcast for several consecutive nights, the commercial data faction found that the average number of likes for the evening live broadcast was only about 10,000, and the number of followers in the live broadcast room also fluctuated up and down 20 people, although occasionally there were generous fans to brush gifts for the anchors, but the overall effect did not seem to be very good.
Denominators, resources, and chips
Although the effect is not good, it does not prevent these companies from continuing to recruit.
According to the business data school, in addition to Chengdu, the company also has branches in Changsha, Hangzhou and other places; and Chengdu, as a newly established branch, currently has more than 20 full-time anchors, but even in this case, the company is still recruiting a large number of people.
Many people may also wonder, why are these live broadcasting companies so obsessed with recruiting people? Do they really make money on the "500,000" of defaults? The answer is not so simple.
For these anchor companies, their profit model is actually very simple, that is, to rely on their anchors to get tips on the live broadcast platform, and then share.
But what we have to understand is that these companies never rely on these little-known small anchors to make money, but on those big anchors who can get tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of tips for a live broadcast.
Taking the well-known MCN institution Ruhan as an example, although the agency currently has 168 anchors, the head anchors are only three represented by Zhang Dayi. With these three people alone, Ruhan Culture has created a transaction value of more than 300 million yuan in one year, more than the sum of all the remaining anchors.
▲Image source: Baidu
So how do you train a head anchor? Or how can we be sure that an anchor can fire?
The answer is that it doesn't need to be determined. Just like taking a hundred photos, there is always one photo that looks good; for a live broadcasting company, recruiting 100 anchors is bound to have a head anchor. If not, recruit a thousand.
And this way is not a cost to the anchor company.
Taking Shanshan as an example, thirty thousand yuan, three years of changing an anchor, under the premise of good appearance conditions, there is still a chance to catch fire. If the anchor does not broadcast, they can also claim half a million yuan from the anchor under the threat of the contract. This is a business that makes no money for the guild.
On the other hand, there is also a bond between the guild and the platform. As a content provider, the guild connects with the platform to drain the platform, provide content, and ensure activity. The platform provides resources for the guild to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results for both sides.
In the specific cooperation, how many anchors the guild has in the broadcast determines how many resources it can get from the platform. These resources include gifts from the live broadcast room, props, the number of recommendations on the homepage, and even most guilds can buy a large number of virtual gifts from the platform at a very low price.
The more broadcasters there are, the more resources the guild can replace with the platform, and it is not surprising that the live broadcasting company will continue to recruit people for profit reasons.
But another problem is that these resources that are replaced by the continuous live broadcast of newcomers may not eventually fall to these newcomer anchors, at least not the vast majority.
After all, brushing a rocket for a newcomer, or the last homepage, doesn't make her a "big" anchor with tens of thousands of fans. But if these are put on the already famous anchors, it will bring her higher popularity, and even a live broadcast can directly get more tips.
In short, it is to use the newcomer anchor to exchange resources with the platform, and then allocate the resources to the company's head anchor, and concentrate on holding out one. After all, for live broadcast companies, as long as they can win a celebrity anchor, they can make money.
And for those a large number of newcomer anchors, whether there is income, or whether it can be fire, the company does not care, their biggest significance is as a chip with the platform replacement resources, and the denominator of the popular head anchor.
Therefore, institutions often verbally promise to lure small anchors to sign contracts with conditions such as high salaries, platform support, and team packaging, but the contract does not state what kind of specific support the anchor will receive after signing the contract.
And when you realize that you have been deceived, the sky-high liquidated damages of a paper contract will tie you up tightly. At this point, you have only two choices: either continue to live and become a chip for guilds and platforms to ask for resources, or lose money.
The above-mentioned anchor Shanshan, after being threatened by the company to repay half a million liquidated damages, got the contract to consult a lawyer. The lawyer said bluntly: "Either apply for arbitration, or you can only 'drag'." ”
At present, Shanshan has terminated the live broadcast and decided not to move. The company has also not found anyone to negotiate with Shanshan. Whether it is the end of the dust settled now, or the calm before the storm, it is not known for the time being.
In addition, some anchor companies will also find ways to make money on these anchors.
For example, after Shanshan signed the contract, the guild agent found her again, asking her to help recommend the anchor of the face value, if she successfully joined the guild, she could get a commission of 50-500 yuan.
"50-500 yuan is judged according to appearance, and I learned that after my friend introduced me to this guild, she also got a commission of 300 yuan."
Developing offline, dragging friends into the pit is just a general operation. Some MCN institutions will also use plastic surgery loans to bundle anchors in disguise.
The plot of "plastic surgery loan" was mentioned in the TV series "Sweeping Black Storm"; in reality, Xi'an also had more than a dozen girls asked for plastic surgery by Internet celebrity organizations in 2020.
▲Source: "Sweeping Black Storm"
In the news, girls broke the news that Internet celebrity organizations often use verbal PUA and female competition psychology to make them have unconfident ideas about their body and appearance. In the company, appearance anxiety becomes a "corporate culture".
In the end, the anchors applied for a total plastic surgery loan with a total amount of more than one million yuan, and were pulled by the company to a cooperative plastic surgery hospital for plastic surgery. After the plastic surgery was completed, each of them also carried nearly 100,000 loans that needed to be repaid within a limited period of time, but the company was empty.
It can be seen that the fraud industry chain led by MCN institutions, plastic surgery hospitals and lending companies has been formed. In September 2021, the central media also published an article criticizing the routine and signing chaos of MCN institutions, but until today, this situation has not been eliminated.
end
Nowadays, with the maturity of live broadcast technology, watching live broadcasts has become more and more part of people's daily lives, and due to the characteristics of high salary, beauty, freedom, and attention, the profession of anchor has become the choice of more and more young people.
According to the "2020 China Online Performance (Live Broadcast) Industry Development Report", as of the end of 2020, the number of anchor accounts in the mainland online live broadcast industry has exceeded 130 million, and at the most, 43,000 people have been added in one day. In the third quarter of 2021, the number of job seekers in the live broadcast industry increased by 46.69% year-on-year, and the number of college students seeking jobs increased by 69.52% year-on-year.
This year, the number of fresh graduates reached a new high, reaching 10.76 million. Severe employment pressure and tireless job offers from countless MCN agencies on the market have allowed more young people to start entering the industry.
But for students who have just stepped out of the ivory tower, they may not realize that they may have unwittingly fallen into the trap specially designed for them by MCN.
After all, there is no free lunch in the world, and all the gifts of fate have long been secretly marked with prices.