Millions of fans up the main stop change, the assessment has become stricter, the revenue has shrunk, and the B station has become a chicken rib?

Text | Li Jiajia Editor | Yi Fangxing

The million-fan up owner who has been chasing for many years, just started a new series, and it will stop after one issue, and this is not an April Fool's joke.

This result was unacceptable to fan Zhou Hui. She remembers that day, seeing the withdrawal statement issued by the UP owner "I am a weird king", she was a little stunned, because the newly opened "Point Through" series "only told us at the end of last year."

On Station B, "I Am Weird Lord" is a slightly more unique existence. Unlike other UP owners who make videos on games, music, animation and other themes, he is famous for his reasoning, with about 2.65 million fans and a group of niche reasoning fans. Fans like to call him "Ah Wei" and are tolerant enough of him - because he loves to drag things too much.

▲ The last update of Awei's work was on March 25. Figure / Ah Wei's authoring homepage

This time, on March 29, the video of "The Mystery of the Greek Coffin" produced by Ah Wei finally returned, and it was delayed again. This book was once known as the Bible of mystery novels, and many people learned the fun of reasoning after watching this video of Ah Wei. The video response is also good, with an average of more than 400,000 views per issue, but it is difficult for everyone to imagine that this will become the last video before Ah Wei stopped changing, and in a sense, it will also be the last time he dragged it out.

Some fans commented: "Sherlock Holmes fell down the waterfall... Will he come back? ”

Just like all suspense films have foreshadowing, the foreshadowing of a monster stop has long been buried. A month ago, he published a long article about the difficulty of receiving advertisements and the inability of income to cover expenses, and repeatedly apologized in the article, saying that he had to work harder. On March 30, in a live video, Ah Wei suddenly announced that his company had been dissolved, all employees had left, and "there was no money."

Like a monster, the plight of no money hovers over many up masters like vultures. For many years, the way for the ups of station B to obtain revenue has been simple and rude, one way is to receive advertisements, such as Ah Wei, because they can't receive ads to stop changing; Another way is to participate in the Creative Incentive Program.

The full name of this program is the "Bilibili Creation Incentive Program" launched since 2018. It will directly send money to the UP owner based on data such as the number of plays, likes, coins, etc. At its peak, station B used to have the highest video playback revenue on the whole network, almost reaching 1 yuan in income from 300 plays. But now, that earnings have fallen sharply with the naked eye.

The B-station music area up master "Aya-aa He has 18,000 fans and reached a total of 379,000 views in the collaborative video submitted in August last year, but in the end, the creative incentive only received a total of 57 yuan.

"The same number of broadcasts could have at least doubled two or three years ago." Aya said.

Aya was actually reluctant to participate in the project, which he felt was an "artistic persistence." And the assessment is very strict. For a 10-minute long video, if the creation incentive is not turned on, the user will still "+1" after watching it for 20 seconds. But after it is turned on, this will not be counted in the number of views, "it may take the user to watch 60%-70% of the content to count the number of views."

Many of his friends who are UP owners will have similar complaints. For the UP owner of the music area, from listening to the score, practice, recording, editing, to publishing, the 2-minute video, sometimes it takes more than 4 hours. After working hard for half a day, the disparity between input and income can be seen.

In addition to the head and middle up masters, over the years, it is also countless small up owners like Aya that have become the source of the works of station B. And if in the end, the number of broadcasts does not go up, and the creative incentive continues to decline, the day when you only rely on generating electricity with love and losing your enthusiasm for renewal will come sooner or later.

▲ July 11, 2021, Shanghai, Bilibiliworld2021 was held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center. Up master performing on stage. Photo / Visual China

Business dilemma

As a fan of "Weird Jun", Zhou Hui felt that it was a pity, she thought after seeing the stop, she should have done something for UP before, but she didn't seem to be able to do much.

As a fan, the most common thing she can do is only "one-click three-in-a-row". Over the years, a large part of fans' love for station B is due to the insistence of station B, because the CEO once said that station B does not add patch ads. This also means that Station B voluntarily gave up a large part of its commercial benefits.

This abandonment has led to some costs, including a strict assessment system. In the discourse system of station B, "one-click three consecutive times" refers to liking, coin and collecting at the end of the video. Now, begging people in the video for "one-click three times" has almost become the standard for UP owners. In a sense, behind it is the assessment anxiety of UP masters.

The decline in the main income of up, as an aspect of the business ecology of station B, can be said to be achieved through a series of complex mechanisms. In recent years, Station B has greatly adjusted the incentive system many times, not only increasing various assessment indicators such as user conversion verification, but also changing the weight of each indicator. At the time, a comment said: "This adjustment has changed from video quality to who can accept advertisements better." ”

In the memory of fan Zhou Hui, Weird Jun almost did not take over advertisements. So much so that "A monster can't receive ads", which has almost become a meme in the barrage to ridicule him. Some fans, leaving a message under his video program "Point to End 39", said that now looking back at the video, seeing the empty advertising rental space, a burst of inexplicable sadness, because "such a high-quality video, no one is willing to advertise."

Although some fans feel that whether to accept orders or not, it is also related to the irregular update of a monster and the commercial value of reasoning the audience, but for a "top 100 UP master" with more than two million fans, this still reflects a cruel reality - even if you are highly recognized, kill the siege, and achieve the top position among similar anchors, you may still not receive advertisements, and you may still be "poor to death".

When the cake is limited, for the UP owner, in order to get more people's "one-click three-in-a-row", it is necessary to endure more fierce competition for involution.

Station B has many divisions, and there are more subdivided areas under each zone, such as under the light music area, as well as the performance area, music scene, etc., and each area is becoming more and more volumed. For example, a few years ago, when the cooperative label talked to Aya about cooperation, in addition to sending various professional equipment for promotion, it would also pay a good promotion fee.

But now, just sending equipment and not giving promotion fees, there are already many ups rushing to take orders.

The UP owners took the advertisement and ridiculed it as "just dinner". But now, the difficulty of "chaban" is getting higher and higher. Aya clearly felt where the tide was going. A brand with a good cooperative relationship with Aya, three or four years ago, it would not look for Douyin artists to do promotion, but all the well-known bigwigs in the industry on station B. But in the past two years, they have been frantically doing Douyin.

"I said I have 10,008 followers on station B, and it sounds OK. But Douyin's side is a scoop, and there are a lot of accounts with 200,000 or 300,000 fans. Although Aya believes that "the value of 20,000 fans on station B is greater than the 200,000 fans on Douyin", he also understands that for a manufacturer, according to the data, the latter must be more attractive.

This also means that there is a potential hidden danger in the commercialization of station B - if this phenomenon continues, some high-value delivery channels that were valued by brands in the past risk of being abandoned.

The encounter with the up lord "G Sangdong" is also an example. Since 2017, he has been a self-media blogger on all platforms, with 64.1w fans on station B, and even millions of fans on other platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin. But since the beginning of this year, he has not received any ads on station B, and on other platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, on average, he can receive four or five advertisements a month.

Once, a senior media of an advertising agency talked to "G Sengdong" that now, 890% of the combined money of all customers of the entire company is invested in Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and the remaining 120% will be divided on other platforms.

And station B is in this "other platform".

In addition to the difficulty of receiving orders from the up owner, the advertising of the B station itself has also been complained by some practitioners. Sumer, who has many years of experience in the content industry, said: "Customer pool, conversion, and efficiency improvement are what station B should consider, not torture the up. ”

It also has to do with her own unpleasant experience. A few years ago, Su Mo, who was still a new user, saw an advertisement on station B to learn to draw and fill in the information, and immediately received a call from the institution, "When the institution learned that I just wanted to know first, it instantly turned its face and said, 'Don't buy what phone you write!'" ’”

After this episode, she felt that this type of advertising was actually a little inconsistent with the tone of station B: "First, there are a large number of high-quality free tutorials on station B, and second, there are many users on station B, all of whom are college students with little money, and painting classes of thousands of yuan are actually very expensive for them." ”

▲ October 13, 2021, Shanghai, China, 2021 Gold Reward, Zhang Zhendong, vice president of Bilibili, mentioned winning certain growth at station B. Photo / Visual China

The battle for video traffic

In addition to internal concerns about commercialization, for Station B, external competitors are also like wolves.

In recent years, as an old user of station B for many years, Zhou Hui herself has clearly felt the dissipation of patience - brushing long videos is no longer a pleasure, but requires double speed playback and drag progress bars. In the fragmented time that she doesn't want to use her brain, she prefers to click on a short video that can be brushed in tens of seconds.

Even the "Weird Jun", which she likes very much, used to watch each episode as soon as it was updated, but now she waits for the collection and finishes it in a one-time play.

In the era of short videos, the user's mind is domesticated into a fast-paced mode, which is a sad thing for station B, and it is also fighting.

Cheng Hai is another old user of station B, his favorite is the science and technology area and living area of station B, but he now finds that station B is getting shorter and shorter video, "will recommend you a lot of irrelevant and strange content, especially short videos, once, I clicked into a video on the homepage, it was a person holding a long branch cutting grass, dozens of seconds, the number of views was terrifying, I was inexplicable." ”

For station B, if it wants to keep up with the "trend", it has to also make short videos, and it has to change from the horizontal screen of the past to the vertical screen of the short video era, and even the traffic distribution is tilted to that side. For old users like Cheng Hai, this is undoubtedly losing its own characteristics.

Moreover, in the field of commercialization, these competitors are too strong. The up master "G Sangdong" has a deep understanding of this. He found that many short video platforms will provide a variety of ways for bloggers to monetize. For example, you can receive advertisements, you can live stream goods, and so on. In particular, with the development of local life modules on some platforms, there are more monetization channels - for example, there is a noodle restaurant downstairs, the owner can cooperate with the platform, as a blogger with 500,000 followers, as long as he promotes the coupons of this store, he can get a commission every time.

However, the monetization channel of station B is too thin in comparison.

The expectation of corporate performance will eventually be reflected in the stock price. As a senior fan of Station B, Cheng Hai also feels that the stock price of Station B fluctuates particularly much, and sometimes, the proportion of increase can decrease by 50%. "Last November, I bought it at $18 or $19, and after New Year's Eve and New Year's Eve, the stock price rose to $28, and then fell to $19."

"Fortunately, I sold it last week when it went up to $24." Cheng Hai said. But he also does not plan to hold it for the long term, after all, he feels that if he does not see a stable positive business model, then the love of the content of the B site alone is not enough to support his long-term confidence. In his mind, there is currently a specific stock price figure of station B, "if it is lower than this price I will buy, above this price I will sell".

In a sense, the change in the overall business environment is the background of this "up main stop more trendy" keyword to the top of the hot search. After three years of recovery, Aya's job is much busier than before the epidemic, and it takes less time and effort for hobbies with low income-output ratios.

"People have to make a living, and they can only give up those seemingly beautiful hobbies." Similarly, brands are more cautious in their investment, and in the game between platforms, there are winners and naturally there are losers.

▲ On the morning of March 29, 2021, Station B was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and at the listing ceremony of the Shanghai China Art Museum, Station B invited 12 head up masters such as Director Ao, Sister-in-law Baojian, Bi Dao THU, and Pan Style to knock the gong. Photo / Visual China

Go

Today, fans are still waiting for the last two series of videos of "Monster Lord". According to the announcement, it will be updated on April 8 and April 13, respectively.

At the end of the latest issue, it is written "Like as you like, the next issue ends", and at the real end, for station B, there will be a loss of a suspenseful reasoning up master with a good reputation, "I am a weird king", and it will eventually become a memory on station B.

Will he come back? I don't know. But some fans' comments were pushed to the top position of likes - "We can't afford to lose high-quality UP long videos anymore..."

Nowadays, for other up owners who choose to release works on all platforms, the B station has also become a subtle existence, that is, although it cannot earn advertising fees, it seems that there is no need to stop changing.

For example, the up master "G Sengdong", he still remembers that two years ago, when he cooperated with hyaluronic acid advertisements on the whole network, other platforms reacted calmly, but the fan feedback of station B was very fierce: "How can you accept advertisements for medical beauty?" What if it breaks? Today, "G Sengdong" doesn't care much about the growth of fans on site B, "just use it as one of my content distribution platforms."

It is undeniable that many fans regard Station B as their home, and it seems that they have formed a set of value judgments to ensure the purity of their homes. Just like at present, after the user of station B registers, they have to do a set of topics about "barrage etiquette", which on the one hand maintains the uniqueness of station B, on the other hand, for commercialization, this atmosphere makes station B lose some commercial customers.

Compared with other short video platforms, Aya still decided to stay, "after all, I didn't point to how much money I made from this."

He thinks more about emotions. "After accompanying myself for more than ten years, I still have feelings." He has his own insistence on long videos, and maybe content like photography skills can be long or short, but "if a song is only sent for more than ten seconds and is not played, the heart will not be able to get by."

But it is undeniable that Station B, which once had a halo on its head, is now standing at a crossroads again. Taking the data of station B as an example, in the third quarter of 2022, the average monthly active up owners of station B reached 3.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 40%; The average monthly submission volume was 15.6 million, a year-on-year increase of 54%; The number of UP owners above 10,000 fans increased by 75% year-on-year. This data shows the vitality of station B. Now, although "UP main stop more tide" has reached the top of the hot search, compared to the number of millions of UP owners, the number of UP owners currently stopped, no matter from any point of view, is a minority. But it is precisely such a minority that exposes the troubles behind this vitality.

As some fans said, although they are still inseparable from station B, a large part of the stickiness comes from feelings and habits, "because the resources needed are still on it, there is no stronger substitute on the market, but where there are chicken legs to eat, who still eats chicken ribs?" ”

And giving up, after all, is mutual. When waking up, after generating electricity with love, whether it is the up master or the B station, they still have to face the cruel reality of how to be sustainable. As "Weird Jun" finally said in the live broadcast -

"Dreams really can't be eaten."