"Sing Bar cut the entire senior university business line last Friday." A few days ago, the revelations of several singing bar employees on the pulse once again focused on this former "industry star".
In recent years, in the face of the cross-border entry of Internet head players, the "industry miracle" of singing bar from the number of users in one and a half years on the line has exceeded 100 million to the current monthly active users of only 20 or 30 million, not only the online K song main business market has been encroached upon by a large number, but also its attempts to break the game in mobile games, offline KTV, and universities for the elderly have also failed.
In the past ten years, as the first entrepreneurial team to explore the online K song business, Sing Bar has cultivated the habit of hundreds of millions of Chinese people to online K songs. However, in the face of the attack after the entry of the Internet giants, the living space of the former "K Song King" is increasingly limited.
"In the final analysis, it is still the game of capital." Some netizens' comments on the pulse tell the true meaning of this ring match that is not at the same level at all. In the era of mobile Internet, head players rely on capital and ecological advantages to wantonly "pick peaches", reduce dimensions to attack small and medium-sized enterprises, in a vain attempt to unify the rivers and lakes, and do not care about the weight of a grain of dust blown by their giant hands to the small and medium-sized enterprises.
The ten years of ups and downs of Sing Bar are the epitome of the helplessness of many small and medium-sized enterprises that seek to survive in the cracks, and also carry the tragedy of these people who strive to "plant peaches" and are pushed by the great waves of the times to the inevitable defeat.
Debut is the peak, K song king will eventually be difficult to resist the itch of ten years
"Singing bar has become a laughing stock, last Friday to cut the entire business line of the university for the elderly, a total of more than forty people, no one signed, issued a unilateral termination notice, the attitude is also very strong. Today, Monday, instead, began to contact some people, to give them compensation, hoping to sign. It was a joke. A few days ago, a layoff on the pulse of the news caused the media and the public to pay attention to the recent development of the singing bar.
This message was confirmed by a number of Sing Bar Certified Employees. It is understood that the sing bar layout for three years, for the middle and elderly market to develop interest learning platform "peanut classroom". However, the launch of the platform did not cause much splash and soon went offline. As a result, the business line of the university for the elderly was also abolished, and some certified employees said that there was no compensation for the layoffs and that they could not get the year-end bonus.
This is considered by many people to be another slip after the Sing Bar has repeatedly impacted ipos in recent years.
In recent years, Sing Bar has been trying to go public. In 2015, it was reported that Sing Bar had wanted to go public in the United States, but due to the lack of benchmarks, the valuation was too low, and it turned to VIE to seek domestic listing. The following year, Sing Bar began to accept domestic listing counseling, but after the two-year counseling period ended, it did not submit a prospectus to the CSRC. Last year, Sing Bar signed another listing counseling agreement, but there has been no further news so far.
Sing bar's current predicament reminds people of its glory ten years ago.
On May 31, 2012, the Sing Bar App was officially launched, and within five days of going online, it won the first place in the overall list of Apple's App Store in China, and was rated as the fastest growing product of the year by the media together with WeChat.
For a time, singing was no different. According to the "Securities Daily" report, after two years, Sing Bar has 150 million users, with a daily active volume of 5 million and a monthly active volume of 30 million, after two rounds of financing, it was once regarded as an "unrepeatable miracle" by the industry.
Behind the miracle, there is a profound change in the way of popular K songs from offline to online. And this kind of transformative innovation is a step by step by start-up, and the head is broken.
In an interview with Securities Daily in 2014, Chen Hua, the founder of Sing Bar, as a successful entrepreneur, recalled the team's entrepreneurial experience in 2011.
In the first three months, the only thing Chen Hua and the team did was to constantly knock on the blackboard brainstorm, propose, overturn, repeat, and overturn, deduce for three consecutive months, negate the most Taowang and other products, and then decide to sing it.
"Nothing has been done in these three months, that is, to take a blackboard to write about what we may be able to do, list one direction after another, and analyze the market characteristics, competitor patterns, profit models and so on in each direction." In the end, I found that the direction of singing was very good, but it was still wavering, and after more than a month, I still felt that this direction was the best, so I began to do it. ”
Chen Hua said frankly that the first three months were the most painful stage as an entrepreneur, facing choices every day, making decisions every day, "At that time, the team of 11 people, all of them followed me out to start a business, whether this thing can be achieved depends on me, the pressure is very large." ”
However, Chen Hua's team did not have time to taste the fruits of the initial victory, and the Internet giants have quickly sniffed the business opportunities and have entered the "peach picking".
Giant entry "dimensionality reduction strike"
The first to enter was Tencent.
Tencent took a fancy to the significance of online K songs to content social and tonghao social networking, and quickly released its first K song dating app "K songs for all" in September 2014. Backed by the ecological advantages of the platform, the main "social + K song", the national K song poked at the soft underbelly of the singing bar, and it took only more than two years to equalize the performance.
At the end of 2016, Tencent announced that the total number of registered K-song users exceeded 300 million, topping the list of mobile K-song APP. At this time, as the head player of the subdivision field, the difference between the two is not too big. According to data from Bida Consulting (BDR), in April 2017, the number of monthly active users of K songs ranked first, reaching 50.533 million, and the number of singing bars was 41.883 million.
Relying on Tencent Music and its strong copyright advantages, the national K song further exerts the traffic entrance of WeChat and QQ, and continues to use the advantages of acquaintance social networking to take advantage of the chase. According to the Beijing News, by September 2017, the number of registered users of K songs had exceeded 460 million.
The contribution of the national K song to the group is also getting bigger and bigger, and it is called "making a fortune with muffled voices" by the industry. According to the first quarter financial report released by Tencent Music in 2019, of the 5.74 billion yuan of revenue, the revenue of social entertainment services based on the national K song contributed more than 70%.
But during the same period, the development of the singing bar seemed to stagnate, and the number of registered users was no longer updated after it was announced to reach 300 million in 2016. According to the data of Tianyancha, Sing bar has completed eight rounds of financing in six years, but the last round of financing time stayed in 2016, that is, the year that Sing Bar received the first listing counseling.
Tencent is the first to pick peaches, but it won't be the last. Seeing the important position of the online K-song market in the pan-entertainment layout and high-quality content social networking, Alibaba, ByteDance, Kuaishou, NetEase and other Internet giants have also joined the track. Short video giants such as Douyin and Kuaishou, which have changed users' Internet habits, have also entered the "dimensionality reduction strike" and launched K song sections such as jitter singing and huisen.
In the face of the dimensionality reduction blow of the "cosmic factory", the industry's duet bar is even more bearish.
Coupled with the impact and change of short video apps such as Douyin on users' pan-entertainment habits in recent years, the data of Sing Bar has plummeted. According to Bida data, in March 2021, the number of monthly active users of K songs reached 135.438 million, and the singing bar ranked second, with 30.373 million people. The gap between the two widened to 100 million people.
The data of Ai Media Consulting also supports this gap, from January to October 2021, the report shows that the average monthly life of the national K song is about 130 million people, and the singing bar is only about 20 million people. In 2021, 75.1% of the users of China's online K-song user platform use the national K-song, while the proportion of singing bar and Kugou singing is 47.8% and 40.9% respectively.
For this reason, the lonely singing bar has also tried to develop other business growth points, such as mobile games, offline KTV, hardware, etc., but only the microphone in the hardware has barely opened the market.
In the battlefield where many giant sharks grab food, the singing bar is frequently lost, so cutting business lines and laying off employees has become inevitable.
External enemies are strong, internal driving is weak, and it is more difficult to break the game by singing
The experience of singing is not unique. Ten years ago, the ecology of the Internet industry was more abundant and diverse, and small and medium-sized Internet start-ups were still full of expectations for the future.
But in the past decade, the wind has surged and the Internet oligopoly pattern has been formed. With the powerful ecosystem they have built, several internet giants have conquered the city and dominated the predator as predators, firmly holding the entire industry and market segments firmly in their hands.
Therefore, when small and medium-sized enterprises such as Sing Bar discover new opportunities for market segmentation and emerge suddenly, they will immediately attract the attention of predators. Giants are driven by capital, and when they find new growth points, they will quickly seize the market and implement a "dimensionality reduction attack" on small and medium-sized enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises have no ecology, two have no capital, three have no traffic, four have no collaboration network, and there is no unlimited trial and error tolerance. Those who do well are either "hanged" or taken under their command.
According to the analysis and comparison of Ai Media Consulting, "the user satisfaction of the national K song in singing experience, innovative functions, black technology, and social play are in the leading position in the industry." Backed by Tencent Music Entertainment Group, the national K song has strong support in terms of technical services and content richness, so that its overall service quality remains at a high level. ”
Sing bar's lack of skills in terms of technical depth, sociality, and collaborative ecology has accelerated the difference between the two.
At the same time, compared with mature large factories, the talent reserve, technical ability and management mechanism of small and medium-sized enterprises are also challenged by internal and external. For example, many people will discuss the internal management of the singing bar on the pulse.
Some friends said that in addition to the R & D team, other teams are a mess, product operation is a group, each out of its own needs, there is a sense of reservoir trainers. Those who don't have much experience will have a lot of opportunities to do projects. There are also singing bar certified employees who say, "These months keep recruiting, and then use a month to open."
In the management method is not to understand, but also eager to find business breakthroughs, but also let the staff feel tired. "Overtime is not given a leave, and the leave system is useless." Before I came, I heard that the singing bar is small and beautiful, why do I feel so rolled here? Knowing that they are lying unevenly, they only want to get the same treatment as the labor. Some pulse friends said, "The hardware department also often works overtime, shouting slogans and worshiping the god of wealth as soon as it reaches the sprint stage." ”
Therefore, while the development prospects of Sing Bar are declining and the experience of enterprise employees is not good, the work expectations of industry talents on Sing Bar are also constantly declining.
In the pulse enterprise space, there is the working environment of the pulse friend consulting and singing bar, as well as the degree of promotion and salary increase. Some certified employees said that "it is quite difficult except for hardware", "we have become a company that sells microphones", "In the environment, the promotion is not difficult, but the salary increase is low."
With the deep integration of the Internet and life, online K songs have become one of the main projects in the field of online pan-entertainment. According to Ai Media Consulting data, it is expected that in 2022, the scale of China's online K-song market will reach 17.58 billion yuan, and the user scale will reach 570 million people.
When analyzing the development prospects of China's online K song industry in 2022, Ai Media Consulting pointed out that tonghao social has become a social popular model, diversified interactive gameplay has promoted the social development of K song scenes, the user stickiness of K song platforms has remained stable for a long time under emotional attributes, and the Internet of Things and related technologies have driven online K songs to expand to offline scenes.
Article of prospect analysis, all straight to sing the soft ribs. Today, Sing Bar is regrouping and refocusing distracting attention on the main business of Sing Bar App. However, when the development of the online K song industry gradually enters the deep water area, the advantages that the singing bar can rely on are becoming less and less, and the development space will be smaller and smaller.
In the face of strong external enemies and weak internal drives, it is probably more difficult for today's singing bar to break the situation again.