"Umeizi Sauce" is on fire, will "Star Manufacturing" become the "third pole" of the Divine Comedy?

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The KPI that "Love 105 Degrees of You" did not achieve was completed by "Umeizi Sauce".

Released at the end of 2022 and suddenly popular in February this year, "Plum Sauce", as a work with a certain degree of direction and lack of pertinence, quickly attracted various shops to claim the "song title". Products that used to be printed with labels such as "Umei Osmanthus Paste" and "Plum Sauce" quickly corrected their positioning, and Qi brushed and was replaced by labels such as "Li Ronghao's sweet Ume sauce" and "Miss Yang with Umei sauce". There is no shortage of buyers who "haven't eaten it, but I want to try it after listening to the song" in the purchase comment area. So far, the search volume of "Wumei Zi Sauce" has increased by 200 times in 3 days, and the Taobao hot search index has increased by 843% in one week. As of February 27, videos on topics related to Umeizi sauce have been viewed 2.63 billion times on Douyin.

After harvesting a round of network traffic and sales, "Wumei Zi Sauce" triggered the industry to think, in addition to the topic of "whether the elegant and the common can be appreciated together", which has long been plated out of the pulp, there is also a rare phenomenon, when a singer with certain achievements in the music scene, the work strays into the trajectory of the Divine Comedy, will it be a dimensionality reduction traffic blow, or is it an attempt that cannot be called a multi-party victory? The mixed reputation of "Wumei Zi Sauce" may be able to help us glimpse the advanced path of contemporary streaming media to assist the spread of hot songs, and at the same time put forward a new thought: will music stars with creative attributes become the "third pole" of short video divine comedy production?

How did "Plum Sauce" become a "typical" hit song?

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, "Plum Sauce" has come to the operational trajectory of short video hits.

The popularity of "Hot Song" did not happen overnight. Whether it's the early "Love 105 Degrees of You", "Muse Dash", "Michelle Ice City Theme Song", or this year's "Love Like Fire" and "Plum Sauce", they all have a "cold start" beginning.

After "Wumeizi Sauce" was released on music streaming in December last year, the comment area went to normal, "The whole world knows that Rainie Yang's lipstick is mint", "Old Li Tou, after marriage, net these sweet songs". Until February, Valentine's Day gives a place for this little freshly baked love song with sweet lyrics, ear-catching melodies, and an understanding threshold.

According to Yunhe data, a week before Valentine's Day, #Your shallow smile is like plum sauce#It briefly rushed to the Douyin hot search, until Valentine's Day on February 14, after Fan Yaya, Nai Hui, Bell Linghui and other Douyin tens of millions of fans music bloggers covered it, "Wumei Sauce" ranked among the top 12 of Douyin's hot search that night and began a round of viral spread. From Internet celebrities to celebrities, from Cantonese to Japanese, "Wumei Zi Chan" has been adapted and covered in various versions. Among them, the version sung by the B station up "not a word god" team was evaluated by netizens as "having the taste of Zhang Jingxuan" and "better than the original".

Then, "Wumei Zi Sauce" ranked TOP1 on the QQ Music Hot Song List, Top 2 on the Soaring List, and TOP1 on the Pop Index List within a week; Kugou Music soared top 5; NetEase Cloud Music Soaring List TOP4, Hot Songs List TOP1. There are reports that it has spread to offline supermarkets and barbershops.

Another recently popular divine comedy "Love Like Fire" was released in November last year, and it began to ferment a full month later. Creator "Na Yina" gained a group of Douyin fans due to the series dispute during the live broadcast, the latter called himself "Na Jiajun" and jumped on "Love Like Fire".

Linkage with games is also an innate advantage of music communication. In the popular cute mobile game "Egg Boy Party" during the New Year, many music maps have the soundtrack of "Love Like Fire", which some players set as hand-shaking dance BGM, which virtually accelerates the brainwashing spread of songs. It is understood that the official account of the short video of "NetEase Egg Boy Party" has also been played many times, releasing a video of Egg Boy with "Love Like Fire" shaking hands, so far Douyin has more than 2.14 million likes, and called on dance KOLs to dance with players, so far the #Eggboy Shake Dance topic has been played more than 1.23 billion times. In addition, the ghost animal area of Station B also has no shortage of re-creations of game and dance scenes such as "Love Like Fire" and "Genshin" and "Peace Elite".

In summary, whether it is the linkage of the music cover area of "Wumeizi Sauce", or the linkage of "Love Like Fire" through the dance area, game area, and ghost animal area, in addition to the blessing of short video traffic, the atmosphere and enthusiasm of the second creation are still the core of a divine comedy breaking through the traffic threshold. Previously, "Michelle Ice City Theme Song" broke the circle through the linkage of offline stores on Station B, and Watson's advertising song "105 Degrees of You" was similar through short video platform challenge gameplay and fermentation popularity.

And the reason why these short-term booming hits are called "divine comedy" is their universal quality. First, simple repetitive melodies, catchy lyrics, and the prerequisites for brainwashing transmission. Second, the song itself has a mixed reputation and has a strong degree of topicality. The listening threshold is low, and the depth expression of the song itself is missing, but it provides space for secondary creation. This is also the beginning of the controversy of "Umeizi-chan": the sinking aesthetic raises the enthusiasm of the public to participate in "perfection", and also pushes the song itself into the trap of "speculation" and "chasing traffic".

Should stars become the "third pole" of the birth of the Divine Comedy?

The "vulgar controversy" in the music market repeats itself every few years.

When the popularity of "Wumei Zi Sauce" was just fermenting, music critic Ding Taisheng's comments appeared on the hot search, accelerating the discussion of such topics. On the 22nd, Ding Taisheng commented on "Wumeizi Sauce" in a video, saying that "as soon as I enter the chorus, a strong Chinese rural style, mixed with the hot elements of the current short video platform", is a "speculative" practice.

In fact, the dispute about music elegance and vulgarity was staged as early as 2019 in the "The Voice of China" program. At that time, Li Ronghao, as a mentor, helped students choose the Internet popular song "Your Tavern Closed to Me" and caused public controversy, and then he posted on Weibo that "music is not good or bad", saying, "Because a song was born on the Internet and is well known to everyone, no matter how many people like it, does it also represent inferiority?" "Music is not good or bad. Only if you like it and you don't like these two ways", "Mountain and sea delicacies must be good, sour and spicy potato shreds must be low?" ”

Li Ronghao, who has written works that fit his personal struggle experience such as "Young and Talented" and "Sparrow", and has won the Golden Melody Newcomer Award, is a music producer recognized by the industry, which is also the source of "Wumei Zichan" being "attacked by groups". Ding Taisheng believes that "creators should break through upwards and should not be downwardly compatible." The essence of taking root downward is to create according to the aesthetic standards of the common people, break through their own limits, and not compromise with the market."

In the Internet era, it has almost become instinctive for all walks of life outside the arts to chase blockbusters. Compared with the unexpected catering to the market, in this era of more and more mature divine comedy manufacturing industry, there is no lack of a large number of companies and individuals to systematically create divine comedy that fits the aesthetics of short videos, after all, the composition law is hidden in the past divine comedy, analyze the content orientation of popular songs, the direction of emotions to guide chords, 4536251 and other most common and easily remembered chord routine formulas, through a catchy chorus melody line to boost emotions and so on. In addition, short video platforms are also making efforts, using platform KOL with resources such as high-quality producers and songwriters to link up with film and television variety games and other fields, trying to expand more channels through music.

"Plum Sauce" is undoubtedly a success from a market perspective. A data comparison is that Jay Chou's new work "Mojito", which was previously popular on Douyin, has been played less than 2 billion times on Douyin so far, while the former has soared to 2.6 billion in 30 days. A large number of users of short video platforms are happy to use it as a video BGM. Behind such achievements, it seems that the "musical gesture theory" cannot be used to kill the enthusiasm of the creator, because in the process of creation, the creator has already completed his own trade-offs.

In addition to the "two levels" of online singers who strive to produce "Divine Comedy" and the institutions and platforms that teach people to make "Divine Comedy", will singer-songwriters make "third level" of Divine Comedy? Fragmented communication has its own advantages and disadvantages for musical works, Jay Chou's new album and singles in recent years have been dissatisfied by listeners, we respect musicians at different stages of creation to balance art and business, but also to allow the diversity of the music world, with the improvement of listening aesthetics, more and more similar discussions will continue, we expect the music world to become fuller and more progressive in such discussions.