The author | Xia Wenqi
"There is no sun in my sky, it is always night, but it is not dark, because something has replaced the sun. It wasn't as bright as the sun, but it was enough for me. With this light, I can turn night into day.
I've never had the sun, so I'm not afraid of losing. ”
On August 12, Keigo Higashino personally supervised the production of "White Night" by Han Xue and Zhu Yawen, and the high-quality audio drama "White Night Walk" was exclusively launched in Himalayas as a blockbuster content for the "818 Members' Pet Festival" to reward fans.
Less than ten days after its launch, the album has been viewed more than 1.2 million times and subscribed to 66,000.
"White Night" is one of the pinnacle works of Keigo Higashino, with a total circulation of nearly 10 million copies in China, ranking 11th in the total list of Douban books, and has been named the "uncrowned king" by readers.
Previously, the introduction of Higashino's works has enabled the originally niche suspense novel market in China to achieve a leap forward. Today, Keigo Higashino is also looking forward to more people entering this moving story through this new way of acting.
"Teacher Wang Mingjun + Baomu Zhongyang + New Classic + Photosynthetic Building Blocks + Keigo Higashino This ultra-luxurious lineup is simply the highest standard of audio novels."
"I waited with everyone for four months, and finally waited for the "White Night" of the king lineup to be officially launched. Although the human heart is unfathomable, the night will surely pass!"
Many users left five-star reviews in the himalayas' album comments section, and it is hard to hide their excitement.
In addition to "White Night", many of the high-quality audio dramas launched by Xima have received welcome and praise from users, of which the related works of "Son-in-law" and "Qingqiu Xing" have reached 1.02 billion and 300 million respectively.
On August 20th, Himalaya launched a brand renewal campaign, officially replacing the slogan of "every second accompanied by love" to "spiritual food every day". This also shows that in the future, Himalaya will focus on creating high-quality content and providing users with high-quality spiritual food.
Compared with ordinary oral books, why does Himalayas strive to create high-quality audio dramas? And what methodology is used to build itself into a "spiritual food incubator" for users and the industry?
01 Immersive Masterpiece "White Night Walk"
At present, the sound drama of "White Night" has a high score of 9.6 in the Himalayas, which is enough to show that users recognize the palace-level production team behind this boutique.
Previously, after long-term unremitting efforts and communication, the producer of "White Night" Himalaya and New Classic Culture obtained the Chinese sound authorization of this work, and then achieved a faithful presentation of the original IP.
As one of Keigo Higashino's most valued works, "White Night Walk" has deeply understood and recognized the production strength of Chinese teams such as Himalaya through Japanese publishing houses and agency companies before he authorized it.
New Classic Culture published 90% of Keigo Higashino's works in the Chinese market, and internal staff told Entertainment Capital, "Before the album was launched, Keigo Higashino not only personally reviewed the fragments of the works, but also understood the reasons for their roles. It also reviewed the visual design of the album cover, poster and other visual designs, and put forward detailed revision suggestions, so as to strictly control the quality of the work for the listeners. ”
The recording of the sound drama of "White Night" has also been carefully polished, and one of the voice directors, Yuan Mingzhe, said, "After getting this IP, we did not dare to slack off at all, not only to control the personality characteristics and voice recognition of more than 50 characters, but also to dig deep into the secret and complex relationship network between the characters, and guide the actors to perform and interact." ”
In terms of casting, Zhu Yawen and Han Xue have been recognized by the public for their amazing performances in the "Sound Immersion" program, not only with the popularity of stars, but also the solid line skills and performance strength of professional actors.
Han Xue, who has previously toured the country for 87 musical theater versions of "White Night", has a cool temperament and voice line that is the best candidate for the heroine Xuesui. Even though most of the lines have already been memorized backwards, Han Xue still made a detailed and dense annotation on the sound script, trying to present a snow spike with more imagination.
Zhu Yawen is also a senior fan of Higashino, during the recording, the staff felt a little stuffy in the shed, asked if he wanted to take off his coat, Yawen shook his head decisively: "This is the clothes I designed for Ryoji, I guess he is such a person, wearing a gray sweatshirt and wearing a hat with his head down", which shows his dedication to the role.
In addition, the "White Night" audio drama is co-directed by Jiang Guangtao and Yuan Mingzhe, with well-known performance artist Wang Mingjun as the narrator, as well as Baomu Zhongyang, Zhao Lu, Hu Liangwei, Zhu Rongrong and other all-star casts.
Yuan Mingzhe sighed, "This is a wonderful group portrait play, each character in the recording process from cold blur to clear flesh and blood, like a colorful picture, in this wet, dim world, together paved the background of this play." ”
It can be seen that multi-person sound drama is not a simple individual broadcast book, but an audio drama that requires directors and actors to cooperate and customize the exclusive background sound effects according to the plot and character psychology.
02 The "Four-Dimensional Methodology" of Himal's Fine Sound Drama: Stars, Dubbing, IP, Theater
In addition to "White Night", in recent years, Himalaya has continuously deepened in the field of high-quality sound drama production by cooperating with top dubbing agencies, expanding high-quality IP, creating high-quality theaters, and inviting stars to join the four dimensions, and has also invested more on-site and off-site resources for publicity.
Recently, the Himalayas officially announced that Zhu Yawen, the previous annual champion of "Sound Immersion", became the sound ambassador of the fine sound drama. Qin Hao, Wan Qian and other high-quality dubbing stars who shined in this show have also cooperated with Xima to create high-quality sound dramas, and Xima has also carried out in-depth cooperation under the title of "Sound Immersion 2".
Up to now, more than 500 celebrity artists have settled in the Himalayas. Zhou Xun, Cai Kangyong, Yi Qianxi, Wang Yibo, Chen Kun, Gao Yuanyuan, Wu Xuanyi, etc. have all set up their own exclusive programs in the Himalayas, and the output content covers entertainment, humanities, emotions, public welfare and other fields.
Himalaya is committed to normalizing and scaling celebrity cooperation, and using the influence of celebrities to reach more users. For artists, they can also accumulate good works in the Himalayas, which is a two-way empowerment cooperation.
For example, Zhang Guoguo's "Dream of the Red Chamber" and Wang Gang's "Journey to the West" have reached 78.27 million and 6.41 million respectively, and Liu Mintao's "Ancient and Modern Women's Illustrated Book" has also reached 52.83 million plays, all of which have received high word-of-mouth evaluation.
In addition to star supporting, Himalaya also maintains close cooperation with major top dubbing agencies and studio artists, such as the recording team of "White Night", "Photosynthetic Building Blocks", the "729 Sound Factory" that recorded "Three-Body", 8082Audio, Sound Excellence, etc.
Jiang Guangtao, the founder of Photosynthetic Building Blocks, said, "The general film and television drama dubbing must be strictly lip-synced, and some voice actors cannot even sign their names. Himalayan sound dramas give us voice actors more room for artistic expression and increase the demand for young voice actors. ”
In terms of expanding IP, Himalaya has reached cooperation with more than 300 publishing houses and institutions, including People's Literature Publishing House, Reading Group, Yilin Publishing House, Republic of China Bookstore, Guomai Culture, and CITIC Publishing House. Among the massive copyrights owned, there are both ordinary finished product licenses, exclusive heavy licenses, and joint copyright development.
In June this year, Xima became the audio strategic partner of Shanghai Film Group, and the two sides plan to launch 100 sound dramas in the next two years.
The content of this 818 event covers all kinds of IP. For example, the classic historical sound drama "Yongzheng Dynasty" jointly created by the well-known screenwriter Liu Heping has exceeded 9 million in the first month of its launch, ranking first in the Himalayan film and television hit list. The cumulative playback of the previous "Three-Body" and "Qing Yu Nian" sound dramas also exceeded 87 million and 230 million respectively.
Himalayas has also tried the innovative path of game IP adaptation of sound dramas, and recently Blizzard Entertainment officially authorized "World of Warcraft" high-quality audio dramas to launch Himalayas, with more than one million plays a week.
In the future, Himalaya will also launch the "Awakening Era" sound drama linked with the original film and television drama team, the exclusively authorized "Zhen Huan Biography" and other qing palace classic series of fine sound dramas, and the animation "Fox Demon Little Red Lady" audio drama linked with Tencent Animation Dream...
"We can analyze the large amount of listening, interaction and research data in the station to gain more accurate and continuous insight into user needs." The production team of Xima said that they created the corresponding three high-quality sound theaters according to market analysis, strictly screened albums, and worked together to elaborately produce them, and established their own label IP.
Among them, the "White Night Theater", which focuses on fine suspense, and the "Echo Theater", which focuses on classic literary works, have exceeded 100 million in cumulative playback; the former covers the sound dramas of the series of works of well-known suspense writer Zijin Chen, and the latter includes "The Earl of Monte Cristo", "Jane Eyre", "Little Women" and so on.
The "Quasar Theater", which focuses on science fiction and sound theaters, including the "Three-Body" radio drama, "The Wandering Earth", "Ender's Game", etc., has also achieved good results.
In the next step, Himalayas will also introduce the contemporary literary sound theater "Book Island" around famous writers, bringing users works by masters including Mo Yan, Zhang Ailing, Wang Xiaobo, Lin Yutang, Jia Pingwa, Shen Congwen, Lu Xun and so on.
The high-quality content of high-reputation IP, combined with the heartfelt interpretation of top dubbing agencies and celebrities, has jointly created a himalayan audio drama boutique matrix to meet the daily spiritual needs of users.
03 Spiritual Food Incubator
Why does Himalayas attach so much importance to fine sound dramas?
With the continuous expansion of the audio market demand, the number of online audio users in China has reached 640 million in 2020, of which more than 60% of users said that they had purchased online audio services, and it is expected to reach 690 million in 2022.
After years of continuous cultivation, Himalaya has established a rich and diversified content ecology from the initial knowledge payment to audiobooks and podcasts. As of the first quarter of 2021, Himalayas had more than 280 million sound strips, with a total audio time of 2 billion minutes, which could be listened to by users for 3900 years without repeating.
However, audio platform competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and from the user level, consumption upgrades as the public's demand for high-quality spiritual experiences increases. Create a large number of high-quality content as a product moat, in order to continue to attract new listeners, enhance user stickiness.
A few years ago, Himalayan anchor Yaju and others began to break the original single-broadcast form in the form of multi-person broadcasting, expanded audiobooks into audio dramas, and became the forerunners in the circle.
Since then, multi-person audio dramas have integrated the narration rendering of audiobooks and the sense of dialogue with the drama, and have quickly won the love of young users with the characteristics of short recording cycle and large imagination space.
It is reported that Himalayas currently has more than 1,000 high-quality audio dramas newly launched every year. Among them, the number of high-quality audio dramas of "Qing Yu Nian" is as high as 230 million, and the corresponding single-person studio book is only 22 million views.
"It is an ecology that is precipitated in the massive user listening data and is most in line with the public's sense of hearing." The Himalaya production team said.
On the other hand, high-quality audio dramas are often deeply combined with "stars, IP, and two innovations", which also brings out-of-the-loop traffic, revenue and brand value to the Himalaya platform.
"We require at least one unique innovation for every high-quality sound drama." A relevant Person from the Himalayas said, "We will create a theme song for every big drama, such as "Three-Body Problem", which adds the theme song "Sea of Dust" that Mao is not easy to sing. In addition, we have also gathered character voice exhibition sketches, audio drama video theaters, etc. ”
This year, Himalaya announced the formation of a situation of "creating dreams with music and dramatic changes in the situation", which also heralded the arrival of the year of "drastic changes" in audio content.
The brand-renewed Himalaya wants to provide users with "spiritual food every day", which also shows that Himalaya will focus on creating high-quality content in the future and providing users with high-quality spiritual food.
Indeed, high-quality sound dramas break down the boundaries of different circles of users to some extent, and users can obtain quality content in a more relaxed way and enjoy the "spiritual shelter they carry with them".
In addition, in order to better create high-quality content, Himalaya continues to support and promote the development of relevant talents, technologies, copyright institutions, etc., and has formed an increasingly prosperous audio drama ecology behind this.
In terms of industry talents, Himalaya has set up a special xibo education to continue to incubate and support sound anchors; it is also cultivating professional screenwriters, post-production, and soundtrack artists.
The two grassroots anchors who grew up on the Himalaya platform, "Purple Placket with Sound" and "Niu Dabao", were listed on the Forbes China Under 30 Elite List in 2019, which is the first time that an audio anchor has appeared on the list.
There are also some head anchors, such as Shen Nianru, Beimu Yousheng, "Xima Iron Triangle", etc. have set up their own studios with the support of the platform and launched sound dramas directed by them; the independent cooperation model of one-person group bureau and team creation is becoming more and more mature.
Himalaya's innovations in TTS (speech synthesis) technology are also driving the industry. Not only has a series of multi-emotional, multi-style, and multilingual models been developed, but many mid-head anchor sound libraries have been recorded, which can generate a variety of realistic and natural sounds to express different emotions, themes and channels.
On the other hand, "reverse publishing" is one of the actions of Xima's innovative output and feedback industry. Specifically, it refers to the licensing of popular audio content on the platform to traditional publishing institutions in the form of text, and the representative cases include "Yu Qiuyu Chinese Culture Compulsory Course", "Speak Well", "Cai Kangyong's Emotional Intelligence Lesson" and so on.
Inspired by the rapid development of platforms such as Xima, the publishing industry has also begun to increase investment in this field. Insiders of New Classic Culture said, "As a traditional publisher, we are unanimously actively embracing electronic and audio-based because we firmly believe that no matter how the times change dramatically, high-quality content can grow new wings through new media." ”
It can be seen that audio, especially the sound drama in it, has become a thriving new industry; Himalaya is not only a "dream space" for the sound drama industry, but also a "spiritual food incubator" that meets the needs of users of different interests and ages.