A few days ago, #Phoenix Legend and Eason Chan were silent # rushed to the hot search, the reason is that a netizen mixed the Phoenix legend "Free Flight" and Eason Chan's "Lone Brave" into "Lonely Courage Flying", adapted into a 6-60 years old love to listen to the divine comedy. This has to sigh the magic of "Lone Brave" - the Chinese theme song of the animation "League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities", in addition to dominating the major music lists and hot searches, under the topic of #Lone Brave, Douyin has been played 4.19 billion times, and has even become a "children's song" loved by many primary school students.
Eason Chan,"The Lone Warrior"
A song derived from a well-known game IP is such a big hit, the impression is still the first time, this is the continuation of the successful integration of the game and music, and with the help of animation to achieve pan-age coverage. More importantly, such an excellent game song has also directly caused the public to have a new cognition and understanding of game music.
However, what is surprising is that at the moment of the rapid development of China's game industry, the output value of game music is very low. According to the "2020 China Music Industry Development General Report", the total scale of China's music industry in that year (2019) was 395.096 billion yuan, while the game music revenue was about 183 million yuan, accounting for far less than one thousandth. This also shows that there is still a lot of room for development of game music.
League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities poster
How popular is Lone Brave?
More than 4 billion views are played and are still climbing
On QQ music, hot search TOP1, 7.85 million hits, 14 consecutive days on the list, 100,000 comments+; NetEase Cloud Music, rushed into the hot search list, comments 100,000 +; on Douyin, more than 2.93 million users used it as the background music to release short films, and under the #Lone Brave # topic, it has been played 4.19 billion times, and it is still climbing...
A few days ago, a video went viral on the Internet: a group of elementary school students were watching TV and singing "The Lone Brave" in unison. This song, which netizens called "difficult to sing", was effortless in the mouths of primary school students. To this end, Eason Chan himself also sent the first Weibo response in 2022: "Heard that I have a children's song? ”
Screenshot of the People's Network commenting on "Lone Brave"
Screenshot of Eason Chan's Weibo
From the data alone, "Lone Brave", which was officially launched on November 8, 2021, is an uncompromising hit song. "Eason Chan's 'Lone Warrior' is a rare Chinese pop song for many years, and it is also one of the most streamed songs in the world since 2022." Zhang Songhui, President and CEO of Universal Music Group Greater China, commented.
Frankly speaking, the interpretation of this song is decent for Eason Chan, but in the eyes of the Red Star News reporter, the songwriting is all first-class, especially the lyrics: "Who says that standing in the light is a hero" "Love your tattered clothes, but dare to block the gun of fate"... It can always impress you and me inadvertently. The lyricist Tang Tian is a recognized talented woman, she also created "The World", "Decent", "Chaser of Light", "You Must Be Happy", "If Love Continues", "Notes" and other familiar works, and the national song "Sing Loudly" is also from her hand. Although she suffered major changes in her life, she never gave up on life. For her, "The Lone Warrior" is not only her goal, but also "a treasure that can be used to mark a life, carrying the weight of time and dreams."
It is worth mentioning that when Tang Tian was ill, her parents came to a variety show with her lyrics and helped their daughter express her desire to write a song for Eason Chan. Today, she has completed the cooperation with Eason Chan as she wished, and "The Lone Brave" has become more touching because of Tang Tian's story: the whole song is ambitious, and the bravery, faith and hope shown in the lyrics really inspire every ordinary person who moves forward.
Reasons why "Lone Brave" is out of the circle:
Time, place, people
Singer Eason Chan, lyricist Tang Tian, composer Qian Lei... Such a top-level configuration, "Lone Brave" is not popular. But it is still surprising to be out of the circle and become a national song. As we all know, "Lone Warrior" is the theme song of the anime League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities Chinese. The anime, which has been in preparation for many years, has been widely anticipated by gamers before its release, and has received widespread praise after its launch. The 154,000 users on Douban gave a high score of 9.1, and the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes was as high as 100%.
Looking back, "Lone Brave" itself was born as a world-renowned game IP derivative drama promotion song, and soon resonated with the domestic player group. The Red Star News reporter noted that when this song was released, it coincided with the Chinese game team EDG winning the "League of Legends Global Finals" championship, which also allowed "Lone Brave" to have a solid audience base for going out of the circle. "Behind the circle of 'Lone Warrior' reflects the superposition effect brought about by the combination of high-quality content of different attributes, and games with high immersion experience and occupying a lot of young people's time have also become a new driving force for music dissemination." A veteran musician told Red Star News reporters.
The Red Star News reporter learned that the producer of "League of Legends", Fist Game itself, attaches great importance to music and is jokingly called "the music company in the game industry". The Jinx character-themed MV and the virtual girl group K/DA derived from "League of Legends" are successful cases of game and music fusion, and related works have hundreds of millions of views on streaming media.
K/DA "ALL OUT" album cover
"First of all, the animated series is very successful, acclaimed and acclaimed; secondly, the lyricist Tang Tian, in addition to her very deep skills, her own anti-cancer story can also reach more users; finally, I think it is also related to the epidemic in the past two years, the song is very inspirational and can inspire people." Lu Xiaoxu, a first-class game music brand in China and founder of Xiaoxu Music, told Red Star News reporters, "I don't know if you have paid attention, this song performs very well on Douyin." In fact, many people in our music circle are discussing, and finally (there is) a dominant song is not a vibrato divine comedy, and the vibrato divine comedy we don't sound pinched, but it is traffic. But "Lone Warrior" is of high quality and high traffic, which is very rare. ”
The production value of game music is very low
Music is in a supporting role in the game
The fire of "Lone Warrior" is a continuation of the successful integration of the game and music, and the pan-age coverage is achieved with the help of animation. More importantly, such an excellent game song has also directly caused the public to have a new cognition and understanding of game music.
The collaboration between games and music has a long history, and at first the music appeared only as BGM (background music) in the game, due to the limitations of the early sound chip, which forced composers to choose melodies that were easy to hum and simple chords. According to the Red Star News reporter, since its development, there are many categories of game music, in addition to the game soundtrack, it also includes theme songs, character songs, event songs, promotional songs, event songs and many other categories. Just like film soundtracks, game music is gradually becoming one of the mainstream music genres, showing a trend of increasing numbers year by year.
Glory of Kings symphony concert poster
World of Warcraft touring music festival live
In foreign countries, the most successful case of the combination of games and music is undoubtedly the virtual concert of "Fortnite" and American rapper Travis Scott in 2020, which attracted 27.7 million users around the world in just 20 minutes; in China, games such as "Peace Elite", "Moore Manor", "Dragon Fantasy" and other games have also tested the virtual performances in the game, and the head record company has also invested in the layout; offline, live performances with game music as the core content have also landed, whether it is "Peace Elite", "Moore Manor", "Dragon Fantasy" and other games have also tested the waters. The "Glory of Kings" symphony concert, or the "World of Warcraft" touring music festival, etc., have aroused widespread discussion.
However, judging from the "2020 China Music Industry Development General Report", the output value of game music in China is not high. The report shows that the total scale of China's music industry in that year (2019) was 395.096 billion yuan, while the game music revenue was about 183 million yuan, accounting for far less than one thousandth of a thousand. "Because it's functional music, very few people share it. The public's perception of game music may leave the game to listen to it alone, and there is no feeling. Lu Xiaoxu said frankly, "There are also game companies that attach different importance to it, large manufacturers attach great importance to it, and small and medium-sized companies do not attach much importance to it." Thousands of games are launched in China every year, and only 20-30% of the real attention to audio is likely to be paid attention to. At the same time, the game's R & D producers have a relatively poor ability to feel audio. ”
Lu Xiaoxu told Red Star News that in the game, music is always in a supporting role position, which is a neglected art. For example, he said, music accounts for 20 percent of a game's cost budget abroad, but in China, it's even less than 1 percent. "Foreign counterparts, the income from completing a game music in one year, may be enough to survive." But at home, this is clearly unthinkable. ”
"Game + music" crossover business
Greater room for user growth and monetization
The low output value of game music means that there is no small room for development of game music. Judging from the report "The Current Situation and Future of the Cross-border Business of "Game + Music" under the Blessing of The Dual Track", the number of game music in the first half of 2021 has exceeded that of the whole year of 2020. At present, the size of China's game market is about 20 times that of the music market, which is much higher than the global market data, so combined with games, it can bring greater user growth and monetization space to music. The report clearly mentions that "in large-scale online games, there are more and more functions of social interaction, and games have more social space attributes, which is undoubtedly a huge benefit for the dissemination of content." According to MRC Data, 28% of Gen Z music listeners worldwide currently use video games to discover new music. More cross-border linkage with games will help promote the dissemination and publicity of music. ”
(Screenshot of "The Current Situation and Future of the Cross-border Business of "Game + Music" under the Blessing of The Dual Track)
According to the "2020 China Game Industry Report", the growth rate of domestic game users continues to slow down, the cost of obtaining customers is rising, and the industry has moved from the era of traffic to the era of stock. "Including Tencent, Netease and other big manufacturers have also noticed that the 5-10 years of long-term games operated by them are facing the problem of user growth and payment bottlenecks, and the old players have a ceiling for investment in the game, and after reaching a certain level, they will become more and more critical of paid projects, then there are two solutions, one is to pull new, the other is to develop derivative peripherals, and cooperate with IP to do content marketing." A veteran game musician told Red Star News reporters.
Therefore, game manufacturers through the content to do brand exposure and distribution is becoming one of the trends, music marketing is becoming an important branch of this trend. According to the "Status Quo and Future of the Cross-border Business of "Game + Music" under the Blessing of The Dual Track", from the perspective of APP STORE and Tencent WeGame platform, the importance that most of the head game IPs attach to game songs can be seen. Including "Glory of Kings" and "Sword Net 3", the number of game songs released in 2019-2021 exceeded 10.
In addition, from the 2019-2020 new game songs, the number of game songs that played exceeded 10 million that year, the head game IP has increased investment, and have chosen to cooperate with popular musicians, trying to expand the influence of game IP and cover a wider range of target users. For example, "Glory of the King" found Yi Qianxi, Zhou Shen, and Wang Sutaki to cooperate, "Fantasy Journey to the West" chose Zhang Yixing, and "Tianya Mingyue Dao" was a bet on Wang Yibo. In addition, popular singers such as Deng Ziqi, Zhang Bichen, Zhang Shaohan, Mao Buyi, and Rocket Girl 101 have become collaborators of head game IP.
(Screenshot of "The Current Situation and Future of the Cross-border Business of "Game + Music" under the Blessing of The Dual Track)
"It's still the (game) songs that mainly work with the stars, and they want their traffic to do the songs." Lu Xiaoxu admits that this is actually not the same as game music, "just like the soundtrack of a movie, the criterion for testing whether it is good or not is its cooperation with the movie." The same is true of the game soundtrack, depending on how well it integrates with the game. Working with celebrities is more about publicity, and it's your market that's effective. Lu Xiaoxu believes that both are very important, but he feels that the degree of integration with the game is more important than choosing to work with traffic stars.
The gaming market is further developed
Game music may become a new growth point in the music industry
In 2013, foreign media did a report on the income of American programmers, game painters, game planners, producers and full-time game musicians. The report shows that among the several large positions that make up the game, full-time game musicians rank first with an average annual salary of $95,682, followed by programmers with $93,251, which shows the importance of game musicians. And domestic game musicians have not yet reached this level. A few years ago, there were media reports that the cost of domestic music production did not reach 5% of the total budget, and this figure was 10%-30% abroad.
In other words, even in 2022, the average annual salary of domestic game musicians will be difficult to reach the level of programmers. "In fact, their competition abroad is greater, so now the world's composers and musicians are all in China, including Japan." Because China's business is big and the market is big, but the competition in their country is really more saturated. "But Lu Xiaoxu also revealed to the Red Star News reporter that in fact, the salary level of musicians engaged in the game audio industry is the highest in the entire music industry." I personally think it's in the top 20 percent, because game companies have money and the industry can make money. "Indeed, from the perspective of benchmarking internationally, as the game market moves towards quality, it can provide a good job for game musicians.
Xiaoxu Music founder Lu Xiaoxu
In 2021, games and e-sports were written into the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of cultural industries", mentioning the promotion of the integration and development of e-sports and the game literary and art industry, and the game market can provide new growth points for the music industry while being further developed.
According to "Under the blessing of the double track, the current situation and future of the cross-border business of "game + music"" shows that "game + music" has ushered in more intersections in the industry changes, and the development of the two sides is moving closer to each other. More importantly, the rise of the concept of "meta-universe" and the development of the "game + music" content ecology will further promote the industry's exploration of immersive, strongly interactive and extensible digital experiences. "Under the rapid rise of the concept of metaversity and the comprehensive progress of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, AR/VR and other technologies in recent years, the development formats, application scenarios and commercial value of the cultural entertainment industry are rapidly expanding and heating up." Although the concept including the metaverse is still difficult to define, the future of people's relationship with the digital and virtual worlds, entertainment consumption methods will fundamentally change, the full integration of rich and diverse differentiated media resources, including games and music, will be the last entertainment industry to create immersive, strong interaction and extensible digital experience in the general trend. ”
Industry "big man" Lu Xiaoxu:
Game companies need to raise awareness of music
Lu Xiaoxu, a native of Chengdu, began to drift north with a guitar in 2001, and founded a music company in 2005, and has been working on game music for 16 years. According to the Red Star News reporter, his Xiaoxu music has completed tens of thousands of original music for thousands of game soundtracks such as "Tianlong Babu", "Xue Xian", "Perfect World", "Ancient Sword Qitan", "QQ Fighting Landlord", "Devil Cry", "Legend of the Paladin 7", "My Name is MT", etc., and has completed tens of thousands of original music, which is a well-deserved "big guy" in this subdivision. His most well-known work is the theme song of the game "Perfect World", "Perfect World", a song sung by Mizuki Nianhua, which appeared on the spring festival gala stage in 2006.
The dreams of rock musicians are all in Beijing, Lu Xiaoxu can't stand the temptation of music, and began to drift north when he was in college: "Life in the north drift is the same as in the story, living in the basement, singing in bars, etc. Have all been experienced." It's common to be hungry. "At that time, the record company where Lu Xiaoxu worked was called Xiyangyang, and there were singers such as Mizuki Nianhua and Tian Zhen." At that time, I helped others to do chores, and when I had the opportunity, I wrote songs for Mizuki Nianhua and Sun Yue, and I could barely make ends meet. ”
After SARS, the record industry was in a slump, and fewer and fewer people asked Lu Xiaoxu to write songs and arrange music, and a chance to expose him to game music. At that time, Mizuki Nianhua was still three people, in addition to Lu Gengji and Miao Jie, there was also a man named Yao Yong. He didn't stay in the band very long and was in the game industry himself. Once he asked me if I wanted to write music for the game, and I hadn't worked for a long time, so I agreed! The first time he wrote game music, Lu Xiaoxu got about 40,000 yuan in income, "which is a huge amount of money for me." ”
Lu Xiaoxu has more and more opportunities to contact game music, and later a game special program of CCTV Sports Channel also did his special feature, which made him receive great attention in the game circle. "At that time, the Beijing music circle was quite irregular, and the phenomenon of dragging money was very common. I make songs for celebrities, and I haven't paid them out for half a year. Later, I couldn't bear it, and went to the singer to ask for money, he said it was a public welfare song, and he didn't have any money. In contrast, game companies never drag money. So I started making game music wholeheartedly. Lu Xiaoxu revealed the motivation for making game music, bluntly saying that it is a close combination of the two hobbies, "I like to play games, and I do music production." ”
Lu Xiaoxu
When it comes to the current problems in domestic game music, in addition to the game companies do not pay attention to it, the homogenization of games is also very serious. "There are a lot of Chinese-style Xian Xia wuxia games in recent years, which may account for 70% of the market share, but the music in them is similar. Or for the customer's cognition, Xianxia Martial Arts needs to add Chinese elements such as flute and erhu. We also want to break through, but music is tailor-made for the game after all, and it is quite difficult to break through. Or call on the entire game industry practitioners to improve their musical literacy. ”
In his opinion, it is quite difficult to eat the bowl of game audio. "Whether it's for games or music, you need to understand it very well. Even you have to understand the process and programming that are open to some games. Unlike some douyin divine songs, you can sell songs by finding someone on Taobao and Idle Fish to arrange a song and record a sound. ”
According to Lu Xiaoxu's experience, it may take more than 5 years to cultivate a game audio talent. Compared with his own single-handedness 16 years ago, his company received two rounds of investment from Youjiu Games and Songcheng Performing Arts in 2014 and 2017 respectively, and is a music brand with a certain scale and influence in China, in addition to the Beijing headquarters, it has also set up branches in Guangzhou and Chengdu. In addition to game music, the company's business also involves the incubation of Douyin MCN. Lu Xiaoxu said that he has witnessed the growth of Chinese games, but if he wants to go to the next level, or play a role in promoting the entire game music industry, "what matters is how the game company perceives music." If their cognitive level cannot be improved, no matter how hard we musicians try, it will be in vain. It is very important to hope that through successful products such as "Glory of Kings" and "League of Legends", the audio level of the entire industry will be led. ”
Red Star News reporter Ren Hongwei intern Yu Xuejiao
Edited by Li Jie
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