This article is from the WeChat public account: One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha), text/Bono.
This summer, rap music has once again become a tipping point in the variety market.
Although the number of variety shows is no longer a number of cannibalized hip-hop tracks compared with last year, only iQiyi's ace variety N generation has been upgraded to dominate the market as "China Rap Summit Showdown", but this "Peak Showdown" is no longer a "rookie" show, but almost includes the most active head hip-hop musicians in the market, trying to recreate the hip-hop event.
And this "peak showdown" finally raised its eyebrows, although it failed to achieve a situation of re-explosion, but also triggered a variety of controversies about "network rap", "GAI small card sold seven thousand" and other controversies, but the emergence of explosive orders such as "Longli Electric Wire" and "Don't Be Afraid of Getting Old" has made some of the lost young people crazy in the summer to listen and hum hip-hop.
"Don't Be Afraid to Grow Old"
Under the burning of the rap boom, niche has long become popular. In the past five years, it has also changed the long video, music market and other multi-party patterns and the fate of countless people and companies, Lin Tianjin, an agent who has served Rappers such as Xu Zhenzhen and Vyan, told One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) that after 2017, it is obvious that "performances have become more, and appearance costs have also increased", from a macro level, "most of the rappers' performances on the market have become very hot, and they also have a steady stream of business cooperation."
In the fifth year, the platform side and the "old cannon" want to recreate the "peak", but this "duel" battle may not answer the question of "how the peak of the rap industry should be".
The sound synthesis reshapes rap, overshadowing "pop" from the niche
Of course, the explosion of rap music is indispensable to the credit of the music synthesis.
In 2017, "China Has Hip Hop" launched by iQiyi ignited the Chinese hip hop market. From being questioned before the launch, to being spat on by netizens and hip-hop circle diss after the first program, to triggering a national hip-hop fever in the later stage, the program team only took one summer to make the niche culture of hip-hop fire all over the country.
The show not only brought the form of rap to the fire, let rap music from the underground to the public, but also directly launched Gai, PGone and other rappers.
In addition to rap giant iQiyi and its "rap" series, whether it is Tencent Video perpendicular to the female Rapper to create "Black Afraid Girl", Mango TV's main popular and rap combination of "Rap Listen to Me", or Station B to find Yan Min to create a high-scoring word-of-mouth variety show "Rap New Generation", long video continues to dig this traffic password in the internal entertainment and sound synthesis.
Stills from Rap New Generation
Rap music brought eye-catching results to a large number of music ensembles, and finally directly wrote into the listing prospectus and financial report of online video companies. After the fourth episode of 2017, it received 100 million broadcasts in 40 minutes, according to iQiyi's prospectus, "China Has Hip Hop" has been played more than 3 billion times, and there are also data that show that the short video of "China Has Hip Hop" has reached 8 billion times on Weibo, covering 700 million social groups. After the end of "Rap New Generation" in 2020, according to the data of Station B, the total number of broadcasts of the program reached 350 million, and the Douban score was 9.1 points.
On the other hand, rap variety shows also provide strong support for rap music to break the circle. According to Ai Media Consulting data, 77.4% of rap music lovers learn about this music genre through rap music programs, which is much higher than social media (73.1%), rap events (20.5%) and other ways for fans to understand rap. The two cooperated with each other and jointly promoted the development of rap music in China.
Rap is on fire and has become the consensus of everyone.
According to the "2021 China Rap Music Development White Paper", the data extracted from the news media, social platforms and other information collected on the basis of the designated time, people, brand related information and quantitative calculations through the extraction of reading volume, the number of comments and other indicators show that throughout 2021, the internet communication popularity index of Chinese rap music is higher than that of popular music, and in November 2021, the popularity index of China's rap network communication is as high as 35,000%.
Not only has yinzong obtained more traffic with rappers, but digital streaming media platforms have also become an important way for rap music to spread, and head music streaming media platforms such as TME and NetEase Cloud have made efforts to support rap music.
According to the "2022 Chinese Rap Music Report", NetEase Cloud Music not only launched a one-stop Beat trading platform Beat Soul to provide a formal Beat trading channel for music producers, but also launched the "Post-Thousand Joy Wave Series Theme Plan" for rap music, excavating rap music newcomers and giving traffic support.
Ai media data show that QQ Music launched the "Rapper Alliance" plan to support excellent works, in 2021, rap songs on the QQ music platform cumulative playback of more than 50 billion times, more than 1,000 rap music on the QQ music list more than 10,000 times.
With the blessing of variety shows, coupled with the continuous "assistance" of music platforms, and the mainstream of music listeners and music creators of Generation Z, hip-hop rap is no longer a niche that "despises" popularity, but has embarked on the position of being "laughed" by other niches for the public.
Rapper's accelerated trafficization
After continuous exposure at the level of music synthesis and streaming media, the monetization ability of head rappers has also been continuously strengthened.
Rappers who were supposed to realize to the end began to frantically embrace popular entertainment. GAI embarked on the stage of "Singer", "Voice of Heaven" and other head music synthesis, becoming the most "popular" hip-hop singer, and last year's "Brother with Thorns" was a collection of hot dogs, GAI, Liu Cong, Bridge a number of popular Rappers, even for three years of "Sister Lang", every time to persuade the sister to meet the challenge, create surprises are "you want not Rap it", not to mention the "Peak Showdown" in the Rappers thank the "uncle" Dong Gem for bringing hip-hop rap to the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, in addition Judging from the recent hot search for "Zhou Zhou CP", even Love Roundup did not let go of Rapper...
According to Ai Media Consulting data, as of November 2021, the economic value of Chinese rappers has exceeded 100 million yuan, and rapper Wang Jiaer was also selected into the Forbes Elite Asia List under 30. Idol draft rapper Xiao Devil received 33 advertisements, participated in 15 commercial performances and received at least 4 films and televisions, in addition, the number of advertisements, films and commercial performances of head rap music singers such as GAI, Jiang Yunsheng, Nai Wan, ma Siwei and so on also reached a new high.
Jiaer Wang was named to forbes' Under 30 Asia list
The explosion of the rap industry has also benefited the front-line practitioners, who also have more feelings about the "rap market is getting better". After 2017, it is their consensus that there will be more performances and higher appearance fees.
In addition to the increase in performances, the number of ticket-buying audiences in the macro market of the pulpit performance is also increasing.
"Before 2015, there were 100 or 200 rappers in a performance, and as practitioners, everyone already thought it was very good." Rapper agent Lin Tianjin recalled that around 2016, Manshuk Livehouse Guangzhou Station performance sold 400+ tickets, not to mention that shortly before "China Has Hip Hop", Jony J performance tickets sold 1,000 tickets, "including Jony J himself excitedly tweeted that 'this is the first thousand people in life', and people in the industry also feel that this has created a new situation."
But today, it has become common for rappers to sell more than 1,000 tickets, "even many singers who can sell more than 1,000 tickets, they may not be the top in the industry."
And Pupu culture, which is committed to "hip-hop culture operation", has also successfully ushered in its own harvest period under this wave of goodwill, and in 2021, after 14 years of establishment, it finally achieved Nasdaq ringing the bell and won the "first share of Chinese hip-hop".
The market is on fire, and the capital is on hold.
A young Rapper Who has loved rap music since childhood and formed bands and took business performances during college can more intuitively feel the changes in this market.
Hot Dog "Mr. Almost" 10th Anniversary Edition MV
He told One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha), "Since I started to contact B-BOX and rap in the sixth grade in 2011, the first songs I heard were the hot dog "Mr. Almost" and "They Think", which were very small at that time, there was only one 'Beat Box society', there was no rap society", but after the "China Has Hip Hop" explosion in 2017, "both singers and listeners, it is really more."
He also rode on the east wind of rap music and received many commercial performances. "Before the rap explosion, the annual meeting of the enterprise or the promotion of large companies will find pop singers to perform, but since the rap explosion, many companies will invite Rapper to perform", he has sung the promotional works of companies including Poly Real Estate in the past two years, "the income and the number of times have been on a level.".
More importantly, rap music has also changed Xu Zhecheng's living conditions.
"In the past, rap music didn't pay attention to so many people, and I sang to the people around me and didn't stir up any splashes, but when rap exploded, singing to the same group of people, everyone was completely different reactions, and they would feel 'you can also rap'." 」 Xu Zhecheng also got to know more friends through participating in activities such as livehouse performances and gained many fans.
Rap difficult "peak"
However, although rap music is loved by more people and has brought changes to the material lives of rappers, it is still too early to talk about "peak".
Xu Zhecheng told Yiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha), "I will take rap as a hobby, but I may not work on rap music in the future." He believes that there are still opportunities in the rap industry, but the development of the rap industry has also brought about the phenomenon of "everyone can become Rapper", so that the changes in the basic disk of the industry have not caught up with the increase in rappers, and the resources of the rap industry have competed for more, and how the market digests these rappers is particularly important.
On the other hand, the rap industry "has almost divided the cake", so the rap industry has greatly narrowed the ascending channel of tail singers compared with before.
Xu Zhecheng's concerns are not unreasonable. Compared with the monetization channels such as the head rapper receiving advertisements, film and television, the monetization channels of the tail rap musicians are still narrow.
According to the "2022 Chinese Rap Music Report" "rapper income source" data, in more than 2600 valid samples, more than 80% of rappers' income sources are copyright income, less than 20% of musicians engaged in offline performances are monetized, other monetization methods such as receiving advertising songs, tips, physical records, etc. account for less than 10%, and peripheral sales and other monetization channels are 1%. In addition, 60% of practitioners said in the survey that "music alone cannot support themselves", which shows the monetization path and survival status of rap musicians.
2022 Chinese Rap Music Report
From the supply side, "people" is the main factor in the performance industry, and the rap music industry has also been widely concerned by the public because of a series of negative events by rap practitioners. From the very beginning of the variety show "China Has Hip Hop" with the fire hip hop industry, the rappers and program judges launched by the program have disappeared under the mainstream discourse, and even the program music director Liu Zhou was detained by the police in 2019 for the crime of embezzlement, that is, at the moment, the "small card" incident that appeared in "China Rap Peak Showdown" was once again discussed by netizens, which was a setback to the industry itself.
Of course, the continuous development of the rap industry in China in recent years has been more accepted by mainstream culture, whether it is the reduction of the "dirty words" word in the lyrics, or the different dialect types developed by rap music in China, and the audience's attention to positive words such as "dream" in the lyrics (Houlang Research Institute research shows that the top 1 favorite rap themes of men and women are "Dream"), all of which show that rap music is actively changing and embracing the mainstream attitude.
But nowadays, in the keyword search of the online platform, there are still many negative public opinions in the rap industry, which also shows that the rap industry still needs more industry norms and constraints.
In addition, on the consumer side, with the acceleration of the capitalization and popularization of the rap industry, the rice circle culture has also entered the rap industry.
According to media reports, Jiang Yunsheng fan aid will have a set of negative public opinion response guidelines, One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) combed and found that the rescue will not only have a response guide to works, performance criticism, but also a response strategy to personal attacks on social platforms, anti-string fishing, this set of guidelines wrote: "for malicious slander, personal attacks, anti-string fishing" incident, "first calm ... Remember to expand the quarrel... Complaints that are excessive and illegal, private message management or following the rules of the platform." After another rapper, Ma Siwei, performed at the 2021 Chengdu Cactus Music Festival, his life plan was also placed in Ma Siwei's Weibo super talk for the first time.
An industry insider once told One Entertainment Observation, "They (the rice circle) are not really listening to music out of respect for music, but people who are biased towards the rice circle, we say that it is now the livehouse 2.0 era." The industry insider lamented that in the 2.0 era, livehouse has become another kind of bar, "some audiences come to bungee, not to listen to music, for them, it does not matter what music the singer performs on the stage, what matters is whether they can jump."
Moreover, more importantly, after a short period of boiling, it is difficult for rap to appear explosive, and even it is difficult to even reach the passing line.
One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) combed and found that as of now, there have been 11 rap-related variety shows that have come out or been finalized, but in addition to the "Rap New Generation" score of 9.1, "China Has Hip Hop" score of 7.1 and "Rap Peak Showdown" score of 6.3, the rest of the rap tones have not reached the passing line, and the pass rate is only less than 30%.
For the audience, the freshness of hip-hop is long gone, and it is difficult to achieve the potential of the whole network explosion as the first year, even if this "China Rap Summit Showdown" will find the most topical, representative works and strength rappers in the market one by one, but it still can't stop its attention dilution, the biggest hot discussion of the whole network is also concentrated in controversial events, whether it is the program is jokingly called "network rap", or the #GAI small card caused by the "Hall of Fame Collection Star Card" around the program sold for seven thousand #微博热搜背后, "learn to love beans to make money is it, don't you look down on love beans" and other hot reviews continue.
But fortunately, the emergence of this show can really be seen as a "strength Rapper song show", after all, a few years of "draft" down, large and small Rapper resources have long been dug three feet, is there a node, to the past few years of precipitation of Rapper to a new song show, from this point of view, becoming a blockbuster program is not the mission of "peak showdown", but the achievement of the explosion may be, and "Longli Wire" "Don't be afraid of getting old" The data growth of hot songs on short video platforms and music platforms, as well as the full chorus that can be seen at any time in the music festival, are confirming the value of the existence of this "peak showdown".
The seemingly "peak" rap industry, there are still many problems under careful study, and it is a long way to go to talk about "peak". In addition to the platform side and the capital side constantly reclaiming "rap" resources, other practitioners on the supply side of the rap industry and fans on the consumer side also need to work together to maintain the benign development of the industry, and only in this way can the rap market really go to the "peak".