In today's near-"asset-heavy" online music business, the small and beautiful model is even more difficult to survive. The user experience sacrificed in the data makes people begin to miss Shrimp Music, and also miss the vibrant era of online music.
The author | Yang Zhichao
Edit | wilderness
WeChat public number: slightly larger reference (ID: hyzibenlun)
Where is the clean, refreshing, simple listening music platform?
Unfortunately, it is difficult to find such a product in today's domestic online music market. The two major head platforms Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music have opened the pendulum mode, the App is filled with various short videos, live broadcasts and other entertainment content, and advertisements have been covered from the opening screen page to the lyrics.
The logic behind this change is that the full advent of the copyright era has made the online music industry a high-investment asset-heavy industry. The revenue generated by music membership subscriptions alone is difficult to cover the cost.
NetEase Cloud Music financial report shows that in the first quarter of 2022, the revenue was 2.1 billion yuan, with a loss of 152 million yuan, of which the average monthly payment of music subscribers was only 6.4 yuan, and the total revenue was 880 million yuan. Obviously, it requires open source throttling. In terms of throttling, netease cloud music's operating cost in the first quarter was 1.815 billion yuan, an increase of 17.5% over the same period last year, far lower than the growth rate of 38.6% in revenue. In terms of open source, the social entertainment business based on live broadcasting has accounted for 62% of NetEase Cloud Music's revenue, while Tencent Music's figure has accounted for more than 70% of the year.
What is sacrificed in the data is the user experience. As a result, some people began to miss the shrimp music, and ran to the official Weibo of the shrimp music to express their remembrance, as if turning it into a "public cemetery". They are here to mourn shrimp rice, but also to mourn a vibrant era in online music.
01 No selection
"Is there anyone on the earth who can avoid the ads of NetEase Cloud Music?"
Music lover Dachun posted this spit in the circle of friends, was liked by countless friends. As a deep user of NetEase Cloud Music, he has seen the gradual deepening of advertising implantation, from the initial opening screen with advertisements, to the later listening to songs with advertisements, and now even the lyrics have advertisements, "can not hide at all."
He also understood why NetEase Cloud Music did not get the support of public opinion when it fought with Tencent Music in April this year.
At that time, NetEase Cloud Music, like an angry daughter-in-law, released a long article accusing Tencent Music of six major crimes. Among them, it mainly includes Tencent Music's products secretly releasing NetEase's copyright content through "external song lists", impersonating and washing songs for works without copyright, and plagiarizing NetEase Cloud's product functions.
However, it is somewhat embarrassing that this "little essay" has not received one-sided support - considering the penguin's perennial scolding physique, this situation is not normal. On Weibo, many users ridiculed this as a farce of "dog biting dog", and some people began to complain about NetEase Cloud Music, such as "a product that started with plagiarism, and even accused others of plagiarism", "First cure the full screen of advertising and then complain about it." ”
Some users also pointed out that some of the "crimes" accused by "small compositions" were actually used by NetEase Cloud Music, such as it has also played content without copyright through radio, sharing links and other ways to wipe the edge ball for a long time.
Behind this public opinion war that has lost the hearts and minds of the people is still a significant decline in user experience. In addition to the excessive frequency of advertising, the scale of content push also makes many users disgusted, after receiving many pushes of entertainment content such as beauty live broadcasts, Dachun simply turned off the push notification of NetEase Cloud Music.
Without him, NetEase Cloud Music just wants to make money too much.
Since membership subscription income is difficult to cover high copyright expenditure, entertainment has become an unstoppable trend of NetEase Cloud Music. In 2019, NetEase Cloud Music launched the Cloud Village section. At first, Yuncun was positioned in the community, trying to "create a music community with a sense of belonging", but since then, Yuncun has become more and more distant from the community, and entertainment functions such as live broadcasts, short videos, and K songs are full of them. On the home page of the NetEase Cloud Music App, content such as beauty live broadcasting has also occupied an important entrance for a long time.
Such NetEase cloud music is no longer what old users like. The original birth of this music App is actually due to the owner Ding Lei's love for music, but this love is too expensive, by 2020, NetEase Cloud Music has accumulated a loss of 7 billion yuan, while Tencent Music has achieved profitability early.
Ding Lei once said that his entrepreneurship is "seven points of ideals, three points of business", and today's NetEase Cloud Music has taken the ideal as a business sacrifice.
NetEase Cloud Music, which has fewer and fewer ideal components, has become better and better in business. In 2018, NetEase Cloud Music online music service revenue accounted for about 90%, which is a relatively pure music software. In 2021, the revenue of online music services and social entertainment services supported by live broadcasting, K-songs and other businesses will be basically the same. By the first quarter of 2022, NetEase Cloud Music's social entertainment revenue reached 1.182 billion yuan, surpassing the 710 million yuan of online music services for the first time. Live streaming has been the main factor driving revenue from online music services in recent years.
Nowadays, although NetEase Cloud has not been able to turn losses into profits, the loss situation has gradually improved, and the loss rate in the first quarter was only 7%, narrowing by 45% year-on-year. Obviously, the beauty anchor's ability to absorb money is stronger than that of vinyl members.
This model of channeling through music and then monetizing it with entertainment content is Tencent Music, the forerunner in China. At the beginning of the listing in 2016, Tencent Music's online entertainment revenue reached about 50%, and since then it has been maintained at more than 70%, which has become an important factor for Tencent Music to maintain profitability all year round.
Today, the only two music platforms, after a high degree of imitation of each other, have entered a significant homogenization.
For example, copyright. This is the most important factor for users to choose a platform. Previously, Tencent Music built a copyright moat by burning money, but under the banner of anti-monopoly, Tencent Music's exclusive copyright was released, and NetEase Cloud Music quickly followed up, accelerating the rhythm of copyright procurement, and successively reached cooperation with major copyright owners such as Modern Sky, Emperor Entertainment, China Record Group, BGM, etc., making up for a large number of copyrights that had been monopolized by Tencent Music.
The battle for copyright continues to this day. In June 2022 alone, NetEase Cloud Music has reached a cooperation with South Korea's SM Entertainment and Times Junfeng, and reclaimed the copyrights of music groups such as Oriental Shenqi, SUPER JUNIOR, Girls' Generation, TF BOYS, and Times Youth League.
In front of the business, NetEase Cloud Music, which is busy expanding the copyright library, seems to have little time, energy and motivation to save the product tone it once prided itself on. In contrast, Tencent Music, which has no tonal baggage, is lightly packed, with complicated entertainment content, nowhere to hide from advertising, and shrinking membership services, which has long been its "package" that has been criticized by users for many years.
Under the comment area of the "slightly larger reference" article "Tencent Music Comes to an Unfamiliar Battlefield", many readers have counted the crimes of Tencent Music: "My smart speaker is used well, and suddenly one day I let buy music members, and after buying it, there are still paid singers who can't play it from time to time." ”
Another reader said: "If it weren't for so many copyrights, I would really like to uninstall Tencent Music right away." Of course, this is just an angry word, after all, in the collapse of shrimp rice, NetEase cloud music gradually "goose" today, uninstalled Tencent Music, where can users go?
02 Miss the shrimp rice
Seeing the "fallen" NetEase Cloud and Tencent, many users miss Shrimp Mi and the era when there is still a third choice.
Nostalgia for shrimp has become a phenomenon, until today, there are still old users in the shrimp music official Weibo farewell announcement daily "tomb sweeping": "Long time has not come." "I've been thinking about you for a long time this year." The passing shrimp music has received nearly 100% praise. Under this farewell weibo, 37,000 comments have been accumulated.
Born in 2008, Shrimp Music does represent a vacant ecological niche in today's online music market: small and beautiful.
With literary and niche labels, Shrimp Music was once located at the top of the music software "despise chain", in the pre-copyright era, Shrimp Mi has the most complete niche music library in China, in the era of extremely chaotic song information for the song to indicate a detailed source, arranger, distributor, album cover picture and other information, constitutes a beautiful electronic content packaging, but also the earliest establishment of a more professional music review area. Even NetEase Cloud Music with the same label has to rank second.
At the beginning of the establishment of NetEase Cloud Music in 2013, many details of the product were similar to shrimp music. Unfortunately, while NetEase Cloud Music adapted to the times, Shrimp Music was abandoned by the times.
Shrimp Music was born in the barbaric era of copyright, with a rich music library, high-quality community to win the favor of a large number of music lovers. By the time it was acquired by Alibaba in 2013, Shrimp had 20 million registered users.
But in the copyright era, Shrimp Mi Music is obviously a bit unable to keep up with the rhythm. After the National Copyright Administration requested the removal of unfiled content in 2015, Xiami Music did not pay enough attention to copyright. When Tencent Music acquired copyrights and established a copyright empire, Alibaba focused its attention on The Planet Ali, and Shrimp Music, which missed the window period, gradually fell behind in the copyright acquisition station. Shrimp Music, which once had the largest song library in China, became the weakest player in the music library.
According to iResearch data, by 2016, Tencent Music's copyright coverage rate reached 90%, while Ali Music's was only 20%. According to Yien data, in 2016, Tencent Music's song library reached 15 million songs, while Shrimp Music only had 4 million songs.
When the tracks in the playlist are constantly "graying out", even the most loyal fans will choose to flee. By 2019, there were only 28 million monthly active users left in Shrimp Music, while netease cloud music's monthly active activities had reached 80 million in the same period, and Tencent Music was more than 100 million.
The signs of decline then became more and more obvious, and by the later stage, the user experience of Shrimp Music was already very bad. In 2019, Shrimp Music launched 88 yuan membership, but due to the lack of copyright, members can spend money to hear the content is also extremely limited, which has attracted the dissatisfaction of many users. The lack of resource investment also makes the update of Shrimp Music products slow, user experience problems frequently, and some users have reflected that by the end of 2019, Shrimp Music clients have often begun to have BUGs in terms of lyrics, album covers, etc.
By September 2019, The Yunfeng Fund under Alibaba and Jack Ma led the investment in NetEase Cloud Music, with an investment of $700 million. At this time, Ali already had plans to give up shrimp rice. By the end of 2020, when the news of the suspension came out, the monthly active users of Shrimp Music were less than 10 million, and there were even news that it was less than 2 million.
Today's nostalgia for shrimp music naturally has the beautifying effect of nostalgic filters. Because Shrimp Music did not die in the external environment, but because of its own operational problems, it went to extinction. In today's near-"asset-heavy" online music business, the small and beautiful model is even more difficult to survive.
To some extent, the current situation of NetEase Cloud Music is the form that small and beautiful music platforms have to transform into today. Die or change, and it clearly chose the latter.
Despite the bad reputation for this, the data is confirming the viability of this option. NetEase Cloud Music's first quarter 2022 financial report shows that the average monthly payment of online music service users is only 6 yuan, while the average monthly payment of social entertainment services exceeds 300 yuan. Obviously, beauty anchors are far more attractive to user wallets than musicians.
This is the inevitable result of the change of the times. When the cost of music rises year by year, and the price of user subscriptions cannot rise too obviously, the platform can only fill the expensive investment by relying heavily on live broadcasts, short videos, advertising and other businesses that destroy the user experience. And that era of purer, more choices for users is history.
All that remains for users is the freedom to remember. Every day, there are comments in the updated Shrimp Music Weibo, some netizens wrote: "Shrimp Mi's Weibo must not be closed, leave us a place of memorial." ”