Wen | Wang Yaqi
Editor | asked
"Yesterday's rich Chinese woman: I don't understand what you're saying, so I spread the screen with gifts."
"Listening to such a long English listening for the first time this year, I will definitely be able to pass the fourth grade this year a few times!"
"Lian Meng guessed that the atmosphere group was one night, and he had never been so determined to learn English well..."
On domestic e-commerce/content platforms such as Taobao, Station B, and Douyin, the existence of virtual anchors has become no longer unusual. But when the virtual anchor speaks fluent English, even if the fans can't understand the "raw meat", they still crouch in the live broadcast room to brush the screen interaction, and the market's imagination of the virtual anchor has risen to a higher level - after the daily salary of the entertainment industry is 2.08 million, the virtual anchor vox uses an hourly salary of more than one million, once again refreshing the upper limit of the gold absorption.
On May 6, overseas virtual anchor Vox opened its live broadcast debut at Station B. The night was broadcast live for 1.7 hours, and the revenue reached 1.11 million. According to the statistics of the B Station @V Surface Observation Center, the debut brought 39,411 payers to VOX, with a payment rate of more than 73%. As of press time, vox accounts have accumulated 857,000 fans and 2,934 captains (captain 198 yuan / month).
Vox live
Previously, the first echelon of popularity in the domestic virtual idol industry was the virtual idol girl group A-soul under ByteDance and Lehua Entertainment, but the male virtual idol has always been a virgin land where the pattern has not yet been opened. With the high popularity of vox, the ability of virtual anchors to absorb money has been confirmed, and the operating company behind it: Rainbow Society (now renamed anycolor) has also entered people's field of vision.
Rainbow Society is a well-known virtual anchor office in Japan, with more than 200 artists, all of whom are virtual anchors.
On April 28, Rainbow Press submitted a listing application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange and was approved. This also means that after landing on the capital market in June, it will become the first listed company in the VTuber industry (Vtuber is Virtual YouTuber, which originally referred to THE UP owner who was active on YouTube with a virtual image, and now also refers to virtual anchors and virtual idols).
Flipping through its prospectus, China is not only one of the important markets for its layout, but also has Chinese companies in its shareholding institutions. According to the prospectus, THE THIRD LARGEST SHAREHOLDER OF RAINBOW CLUB, HODE HK (HONG KONG PHANTOM POWER), IS A SUBSIDIARY OF STATION B. "E-commerce Online" dismantled its financial data, what is unique about rainbow society's idol cultivation model? Only five years after its establishment, it has gained a firm foothold in the industry and become a "head", and its rapid rise path can be copied by the domestic virtual idol industry?
40,000 people audition, 1% debut rate
The girls' May "new husband" is a virtual person, a foreigner, and the whole process of English communication during the live broadcast.
As a virtual anchor set in the United Kingdom, vox was previously more active on YouTube, Twitter and other platforms, but before entering China, he was not nameless - vox debuted in December last year, and the number of YouTube channel subscriptions exceeded 100,000 in just 10 days; in a live event on YouTube in April this year, Super Chat (YouTube live tip) totaled more than 160,000 yuan, topping the single-day list According to Playboard's SC (Super Chat) total, vox has ranked among the top 100 in the world.
If we distinguish technically, virtual idols are divided into two ways: real-person drive and computing drive, vox belongs to the former. Under the delicate anime shell, it is the real person responsible for playing and communicating, and this kind of driver is also called "the middle man" in the industry. Judging from the feedback from various social platforms, the high popularity of vox is inseparable from several factors: 1, the gorgeous animation image, the painting style is in line with the aesthetic; 2, the delicate character setting, vox is set as a demon that has survived for 400 years; 3, the slightly contrasting personality, "high emotional intelligence" and "gentleman" are common evaluations, and the high-quality voice, personality charm, and literary literacy of the people in the middle bring unique emotional companionship value.
Vox's group Luxiem and Vox are on the third and fourth places of anime super talk, respectively
The success of vox has partially reflected the Rainbow Society's idol cultivation model: mass production, enriching the matrix.
Rainbow Society has more than 200 virtual artists, nearly 150 of whom are members of NIJISANJI Japan Headquarters, as well as 47 virtual artists from the VirtuaReal project Chinese. Rainbow wrote in the prospectus: "We were developing virtual idol business overseas, mainly in English-speaking countries and China. "Vox, which is set up in the United Kingdom, is a member of a five-person group, in addition to "demons", the group also has "mafia", "novelists", "detectives" and other settings, all of which belong to the NIJISANJI EN project. The project bears the vision of the Rainbow Society's attack on internationalization, mainly for the English-speaking international community, and currently has 20 members.
It can be found that the speed of launching new people by the Rainbow Society is very fast, since the launch of the first phase of members in 2018, 4-5 new people will be launched almost every month, and the layout has gradually spread to China, India, and South Korea, recruiting and absorbing new people for a long time.
Vox's group is named Luxiem and contains 4 other members
It's hard not to think of the model of idol originator AKB48: the same selling dreams and people, and the same localization of idols in various countries and regions. But the difference is that the process of cultivating real idols and virtual idols is not the same.
The Rainbow Society launches a virtual idol that needs to be shelled, written, and recruited. Among them, "recruiting people" is a key step - unlike real idols that require years of talent training, for the Rainbow Society, it is more concerned about whether the state of the virtual idols who have debuted is stable. How to find the right person for a virtual idol who has not yet debuted? Are there enough reserves for the middle of the population? As well as the management and training of people in the middle, they are the most difficult to standardize.
The Rainbow Society's solution is still to cast a wide net. According to the prospectus, about 30% of the sales in the fiscal year ended April 2021 came from the company's top 10 virtual idols, and about 50% of the revenue came from the top 25 virtual idols, and the overall revenue was relatively scattered. Rainbow believes that "because of this diversification of profitability, even with special VTubers retiring, the impact on the profit base is limited." And in the same period, Rainbow Society said that its "middle person" retention rate reached 97%, and simultaneously recruited: "As of the time of submission of the prospectus, the number of applicants for the (middle person) audition has accumulated more than 45,000, with an average pass rate of 1%. ”
Group photo of the virtual artists of the Rainbow Society in 2019
Live broadcasting, chatting, selling goods, the means of sucking money for virtual idols
In Japan, Rainbow Society is already a leading player in the virtual idol industry, but it is still very young – founded in 2017, it currently has 216 employees with an average age of 30.2 years. The company, which has not been established for a long time, entered its fifth fiscal year, with rainbow operating income of 10.1 billion yen (about 500 million yuan) in the first three quarters (may 1, 2021 to January 31, 2022), while its revenue in the first fiscal year from April 2017 to May 2018 was only 16.62 million yen, an increase of 600 times in more than four years.
Rainbow Society's revenue sources are mainly divided into four parts: live broadcasting, business (sub-content sales and performance activities), advertising and other businesses (overseas business). Among them, the sales of content in the business is the main source of revenue, and this part of the revenue in the first three quarters of the fiscal year reached 4.79 billion yen, accounting for nearly 50%. The so-called content sales refer to various physical peripheral products produced around virtual idols, as well as digital products such as songs and albums, and the sales channels are mainly in the official online mall of rainbow society. The Rainbow Society also launched its own fan club in 2020, providing fans with services such as paid chat for virtual idols, which also belongs to this part.
Live broadcast revenue ranked second, bringing in revenue of 2.23 billion yen in the same period, which included YouTube live rewards, membership fees, etc.; advertising and publicity of 1.84 billion yen, including artist shooting magazines, advertising appearance fees and IP licensing fees. Other businesses include revenue from overseas businesses– that is, income from artists affiliated with the NIJISANJI EN project, which is oriented to the international market like vox. This part currently accounts for the lowest proportion, but as a new business, the revenue of the previous full fiscal year increased by 511% year-on-year compared with the previous year, and the growth rate was the fastest among the four businesses.
Revenue share by business segment
It is translated into live broadcast field, business (content), business (activity) field, advertising field, and other fields
In terms of cost input, in the fourth fiscal year, for example, rainbow society's sales cost reached 4.69 billion yen, an increase of 86% year-on-year. Rainbow Society's explanation for this is that because of the expansion of the virtual idol holding system, the focus on content areas such as physical goods and digital goods, and the increase in production costs and payments due to the expansion. In other words, with more and more related products developed around virtual idol IP and the expansion of the number of artists under the company, the image production and operating costs of virtual idols and the labor costs of middle-aged people are increasing.
However, from the perspective of profit margins, the business model of Rainbow Society is still positive operation. In the first three quarters of fiscal 3rd to fiscal fifth, its operating margin increased from 1.3% to 30.9% – thanks to the fact that debut artists began to make profits. Taking Ge Ye, the lead artist of the Rainbow Society, as an example, in the 2021 YouTube virtual anchor Super Chat (tip) world ranking, its income ranked first among male virtual idols, and the live broadcast tip alone reached more than 70 million yen (about 3.6 million yuan).
In the formula for IP monetization: the more fans - live broadcasting, content sales increase - the artist's activity and popularity will also increase - to win more customers. "In contrast, designers, programmers, and video production, including costs, partial outsourcing costs, and rental of distribution studios, are not directly proportional to sales growth." Rainbow Society explained this in the prospectus.
Ge Ye's setting is different from vox, and the Rainbow Society is set as a vampire
Rainbow Society's rivals
In the Japanese domestic market, Rainbow's biggest rival is Hollow, an artist group owned by COVER Corporation, which is more inclined to the MCN institutional attribute, but the signing object is a virtual idol. The difference is that the Rainbow Society has a low-cost, high-production strategy, and The number of Artists under Hololive is relatively small, but the number of idols in the head is relatively large. If measured by the number of fans rather than the amount of tips, in 2021, 9 of the top ten virtual idols on YouTube will come from Hololive.
To this end, Rainbow Society founded the "Virtual Talent Academy" in June last year to improve the business ability of its artists.
In the Chinese market, Rainbow Society chose to cooperate with local forces. Station B is not only a platform for the distribution of artists' content under the Rainbow Society. In 2019, Rainbow Society also formed a joint venture with Shanghai Bilibili Technology Co., Ltd., through which it participated in the operation of "VirtuaReal Project", continued to recruit and launch Chinese virtual idols, and launched diversified content output at the same time.
In contrast, the domestic market is not as mature as the overseas market, but the industry is also continuing to heat up. According to the "Virtual Digital Person In-depth Industry Report", by 2030, the overall market size of virtual digital people in the mainland will reach 270 billion, of which identity digital people (including virtual idols, virtual avatars, etc.) account for about 175 billion. In the prospectus, rainbow society regards game companies, animation companies, entertainment companies, video distribution platforms, and talent management companies as potential opponents - opponents, not necessarily in the industry's line of sight, may be cross-border rushed out.
In China, ByteDance and Lehua Entertainment also choose to join forces, one of them controls the short video distribution channel, and the other is good at idol incubation and operation. Previously, Lehua Entertainment's IPO, its prospectus data shows that in the past three years, Lehua Pan Entertainment business revenue was 26.47 million yuan, 21.08 million yuan and 37.87 million yuan, accounting for 4.2%, 2.3% and 2.9% of the total revenue in the same period, and its virtual idols were included in the pan-entertainment business. From 2020 to 2021, the revenue of this business segment increased significantly, and combined with its company's business development events, it can be basically determined that the virtual idol group A-SOUL launched by it has brought about a high growth rate of business revenue.
A-SOUL debuted in November 2020 and is composed of five virtual idols, "Bella", "Jiaran", "Narin", "JiaLe" and "Xiang Wan". The prospectus discloses that A-SOUL's first single, "Quiet," has been played more than 200 million times on Douyin as of December 31, 2021; A-SOUL's first MV, Super Sensitive, has more than 4.8 million hits on Station B as of December 31, 2021 – compared to Rainbow Society's virtual idols using the open-source Live2D and mobile face-catching technology, A-SOUL uses 3D models and real-time motion capture technology, and the scenes that the latter can enter are actually more immersive.
From the earliest virtual idol originator "Trip Love" to the rise of Rainbow Society and Hololive, and the entry of domestic Ali, Tencent, B Station, ByteDance, Lehua and other players, virtual idols are still an indispensable industry for technology, operation and content.
If you look at it for a longer time, from the early days when Yasushi Akimoto single-handedly created the AKB48 Kingdom, to the same plot being copied into the virtual idol field, only the form changed, and what remained unchanged was the relationship between the idol and the fans. Where will the next vox be? Rainbow Society will not be the only incubation base, the market is just getting started. More beautiful appearance, more intimate personality, more diversified talents, virtual people can look forward to.