People with a strong desire to show off and fame - this is Chen Hua's high summary of this mainstream user group, singing is to provide an outlet for desire
Gao Haibo/Beijing reporter of "Lookout Oriental Weekly"
The first thing Yang Jiao wakes up every day is to check her mobile phone, and she wants to know whether the songs released yesterday are on the list and how many fans have been added.
The software she plays is called "Sing It", an online K-song app.
On the sing bar, Yang Jiao has 2 million followers, and almost every song will appear on the homepage list. Users of this level are called "celebrities" in the singing bar. Yang Jiao told The Lookout Oriental Weekly that she liked the title and that she longed for "big red and purple.".
This is exactly what Chen Hua, the maker of this app and CEO of Sing Bar, is willing to see. He described his vision to Lookout Oriental Weekly: to bring more users to sing and form a community.
Singing is just needed
"Bursting red", this is what Chen Hua said when he described the singing bar when it was online.
"The first day Sing Bar passed the AppStore review, the server went down." Chen Hua was a little proud, "The number of downloads exceeded expectations. ”
On the day of the launch, the singing bar team ushered in the download peak when preparing to leave work, and at about 7 p.m., the server was basically out of touch, and the whole team had to readjust the architecture, write code, and repair it all night. The number of downloads that day exceeded 100,000, while Chen Hua's previous expectation was only "tens of thousands".
Then, the sing bar had more than 1 million users in 10 days and more than 10 million in 80 days. Since its launch in May 2012, the number of users of Sing Bar has exceeded 200 million, and the number of monthly active users is about 30 million.
Looking back on this process, Chen Hua believes that singing is a strong user demand. "Users never think karaoke is a novelty, but we put it on mobile."
In the world of mobile Internet, "popular" products are not unusual, how to maintain hot spots, maintain high activity is the core. "For example, Face Meng (a cartoon face-fighting software), it creates a new product experience, users feel new and funny, will form a round of spread heat." Chen Hua analyzed, "After the heat, there is no more." ”
As Chen Hua said, singing is a rigid demand for Asians, and all he has to do is find a solution to the need.
On the mobile side, "the mobile phone is a natural hardware device", as a basic communication tool, the problem of recording sound does not need to worry, "only the mobile phone can complete the singing, you think, a person holding the computer at night singing is very strange." ”
Interestingly, there were no people in the original team of Sing Bar who liked to sing. Zhu Tianyu, an investor and partner of Lanchi Venture Capital, told this reporter that he is looking at Chen Hua's team. The original direction was still "mobile + e-commerce", which was completely different from the current singing bar thinking.
Chen Hua can no longer remember who came up with the original concept of Sing Bar, the whole team kept writing ideas on the blackboard in the early stage of entrepreneurship, constantly erasing and pushing them over, and the final result was "screened out".
Look at human nature
Yang Jiao downloaded the singing bar to her mobile phone on a boring afternoon. "At that time, I was the first in the AppStore to sing the bar, click in to see it, and play."
The first song recorded by the Chinese conservatory of music as a graduate student who sang folk songs was "Later", and after that, her time was spent singing, "from opening her eyes to sleeping." ”
She felt that she had mobile phone obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Weibo, WeChat, and Sing Bar were the most frequently used mobile phone apps she used. The schedule is completely messed up. On the day of the meeting with reporters, Yang Jiao did not rest until 4 a.m., but she enjoyed "fame" more than this price.
After using the singing bar for a month, Yang Jiao had her own fan base - "Chili Troupe", they are ordinary people, "small people, mature people mostly." ”
Yang Jiao described her singing style as a "thin water and long stream" type, unlike many post-90s, "let go, play very high". She prefers to choose some classic old songs, although she will feel that the overall style of the singing bar is a bit "contrary", but there are still many people who listen to it.
According to the official statistics of Sing Bar, the mainstream user group is about 20 to 24 years old, more than 60% of which are female users, and the characteristics of the crowd are relatively fashionable.
"People with a strong desire to show off and fame" - this is Chen Hua's summary of this mainstream user group, singing is to provide an outlet for desire.
Chen Hua found that the most intensive time to use the singing bar was at 11 p.m., and he envisioned that when a young person finished singing at 11 p.m., he needed someone to hear, he needed to share, and he needed to interact.
In the original version, singing, scoring, sharing, and charting were the basic functions. After a user finishes singing a song, the sing bar will score and list how many users have beaten the whole country, and can put it in the WeChat Weibo, if the number of listeners is large enough, it can be on the local or national ranking list.
"The scoring system is exciting, and sharing is about showing off, so the first wave of spread is out." Chen Hua explained, "Playing the list requires more people to hear, and they will pull friends around them, attract the attention of strangers, form fans, and drive fans with fans." Chen Hua believes that Sing Bar is a product with strong self-propagation ability.
At first, Yang Jiao would constantly interact with his friends who sang the bar and pay attention to the chat. She admits that so many fans are carefully managed, and due to the version update, most of the songs in the singing bar are now videos, "because the audio is not listened to." Yang Jiao needs to wear makeup every day, and she told this reporter that she is "exhausted.".
Online Supergirl
Locking up the stars, locking up the beauties, locking the singing people, this is the strategy that Chen Huawei has formulated for singing. He believes that as long as there are female users and do not worry about male users not coming, the star effect will drive fans.
To this end, the sing bar online will continue to carry out activities to stick to users. Yang Fan, director of operations at Sing Bar, said that the operation department will invite celebrity users to participate in tests from time to time, improve products, organize offline performance activities, and also make recommendations to TV programs.
Chen Hua participated in the recording of the daily upward movement with the most popular celebrity of the singing bar, "Thousand Faces and Flowers", and the day after the program was broadcast in January 2013, the singing bar added 1 million users. Chen Hua realized the similarity between the user group of the singing bar and the audience group of Hunan Satellite TV, "The feeling on the singing bar is like a group of little girls chasing stars, you can chase male stars or female stars, like putting the super female voice user group on the Internet." ”
In the competition organized by the singing bar, Yang Fan obviously felt that the fans among the reds often quarreled very badly, "like the first and second fans in the super girl voice do not want to see each other." ”
Reds will earn advertising fees in the form of oral advertisements before singing, and the income of an advertisement for a red person is two or three thousand yuan, and some celebrities have opened micro-stores based on fans.
"Not now, ads in videos will be banned." Yang Jiao regretted not doing this earlier, and now she endorses a microphone, and the golden microphone will appear in the video every time she records a song.
The number of 2 million fans of Sing Bar, the performance opportunities of CCTV, and the albums that have been released are still just "nicknames" in Yang Jiao's view, and she half-jokingly described her understanding of "big red and purple" is - "Rumors with Jay Chou!" ”
Be the first in the industry
A real problem is that oral advertising appears because celebrities who sing bar cannot get revenue from the sing bar platform. Although the singing bar has opened a membership and gifts, which all require users to pay to use, the gifts given cannot be divided with the platform party like the "show anchor".
The show mode of YY Entertainment is that the anchor performs, the user gives him a gift, and the anchor divides with the platform party. Chen Hua did not want this, worried that it would damage the tone of the singing bar.
Wu Shichun, an early shareholder of Sing Bar and a partner of Meihua Angel Venture Capital, told Oriental Weekly that Sing Bar has completed the C round of financing, and Chen Hua did not want to disclose too much financing, he felt that "there is no meaning, brand awareness does not need to be shouted out"
As for the way to make a profit, Chen Hua admits that he has been trying. Whether it is membership, virtual props or games, they have not yet fully explored it, and he believes that although the way of survival of the mobile Internet is different, the profit point will be more similar. Chen Hua revealed that Sing Bar may sign singers in the future.
"I can only do things in a down-to-earth manner, and I am still losing money anyway." Chen Hua said.
Chen Hua's most urgent thing is to turn the cake of singing into his own cake, "Users want to sing, the first thing they think of is to sing." At this stage, the absolute first in the industry is more important than profitability, and Chen Hua believes that the absolute first in the industry will produce many "additional benefits".
The reporter of this magazine found Chen Hua's name in another K song application, he is also paying attention to similar products, for opponents, Chen Hua's attitude is "only to kill them."