Author | Punk Editor | Fan Zhihui
On April 13, Yinyue Tai issued an announcement to officially announce its official return.
According to the official Weibo account of Yinyuetai, it will bring "new interaction and experience" and "high quality as always", return to the "original intention", return to "the love of music, the passion of youth and the beauty that is very warm when you think of it", and return to "the best products, the most loving content and the cleanest and refreshing community"!
Subsequently, #Yinyuetai is really back#, #Yinyuetai APP has been opened for download#, #TFBOYS won the first award given by Yinyuetai#, #Times Fengjun welcomes the return of Yinyuetai#, and other related Weibo topics appeared on the hot search.
But under the excitement and feelings, many fans and former employees appeared to point to problems such as fraud, shady scenes, and salary arrears.
Missed the Yinyuetai of the times, is it really ready to come back this time?
"Hibernation" in the afterglow of the fan economy
"Only the fan economy can save the music industry."
In 2016, Zhang Dou, the founder of Yinyuetai, said confidently in an interview with China Economic Weekly, "The barbaric era of the music industry is about to pass, and the next 5 years will usher in a big outbreak." ”
At that time, Yinyuetai was the pan-entertainment social and sharing platform with the highest "fan concentration" in China, and Zhang Dou, who had been "soaking in the fan pile", should not have expected that his vision of the fan economy was so accurate.
Pinch your fingers, the fan economy in Zhang Dou's eyes, no more, no less, only broke out for 5 years.
In 2021, when the peak in Zhang Dou's eyes arrived, the milk that gurgled down the drain completely drowned out the fandom of the fan economy. The ensuing chain reaction pressed the stop button for the intensifying draft and call.
The business of idols, like milky white bubbles emerging from those milk, shattered in the sun, is like a dream.
Time goes back to May 27, 2019. Kunyin Entertainment issued a statement on Weibo saying that the company's artist ONER sold the music entity album "Allergy" on Yinyuetai, and more than 10 million yuan was diverted by Zhang Dou, a legal person of Yinyuetai, for other purposes.
Zhang Dou also admitted to embezzlement, and because Yinyuetai has not yet settled the cost to the logistics company, many ONER fans "Kunyin Girl" did not receive the album. For a while, Zhang Dou's Weibo was quickly occupied by ONER fans, demanding that Zhang Dou return the arrears.
That year, the fan economy was very lively, but all this had nothing to do with Yinyuetai, it fell at the moment when the fan economy was at its strongest.
On April 6, 2019, UNINE debuted in "Youth with You", and "Creation Camp 2019" was launched, and netizens jokingly called "Today is the anniversary of show fans". During the same period, the management of Yinyuetai's affiliated enterprises changed frequently, and after the personnel replacement, Zhang Dou withdrew from the core management.
In June 2019, RISE debuted on the stage of "Creation Camp 2019". At this time, Yinyuetai moved away from the office location Sanlitun SOLO. Employees broke the news that Yinyuetai owed employees wages, and the most people were owed more than 100,000 or even 200,000, and many employees were applying for labor arbitration.
Zhang Dou once publicly said that the fan economy has been waiting for 7 years. Unexpectedly, Yinyuetai also fell at a time when the fan economy was gaining momentum.
In 2020, talent shows are still full of gunsmoke, and programs such as "Youth with You 2" and "Creation Camp 2020" still appear as promised, but the remaining problems after the barbaric growth have also appeared.
In the past, "light yellow long skirt, fluffy hair" caused heated discussions, the level of idols was questioned by the whole Internet, and the endless news of house collapse is also testing the patience of show fans; After there is "Am I not standing tall enough?" "Let the public pay attention to the career problems of idols, too many players have unsustainable careers, and they are "vegetarian" after a flash in the pan. Not to mention, fan groups and data groups use the name of responding to the support list to carry out illegal fundraising, and frantically test the boundaries of the law.
Later, after the "milk pouring turmoil", the Cyberspace Administration of China launched a series of special actions to carry out a series of special actions to rectify the chaos of the "rice circle", standardize the online behavior of celebrities, the institutions behind them, and official fan groups, and severely crack down on irrational voices and responses to online fan groups. The fan economy turned into chaos in the rice circle, and the star-making industry that once supported the rapid flow of capital collapsed.
Two years have passed, and the fan economy that once allowed the platform to settle down is no longer there, but problems such as employee arrears, debts of Kunyin entertainment and logistics companies, and corporate legal persons that are restricted from high consumption are still firmly pressed on Yinyuetai.
On April 14, after Yinyue Tai announced his return, Zhang Dou issued an apology. The first is to respond to the incident that EXO was overtaken in the last minutes of the fifth "Yinyue V List Annual Ceremony", apologizing for the fact that Yinyuetai "did not have a perfect mechanism"; The second is to explain the misappropriation of the proceeds from the sale of ONER albums, guaranteeing that "the debts owed will never be shirked, and we will do our best to repay them one by one."
And ONER fans obviously did not buy it, and continued to vent their dissatisfaction under related topics, demanding that Yinyuetai should "calculate clearly with the capital", and some fans even pointed out that it was Yinyuetai's actions that affected ONER's career development. At the same time, people familiar with the matter and Music Herald revealed that at present, Yinyuetai conservatively estimates that there are still hundreds of thousands of employees in arrears.
These historical issues have not yet been clarified, and as soon as he returns, he will be at the center of the whirlpool of public opinion, and the future of Yinyuetai is by no means smooth.
Stumbling in the wind of every era
Judging from the latest online APP, Yinyuetai has changed the track.
The new version of Yinyuetai is no longer positioned as a high-definition MV platform, but has transformed into a short video music platform, using the interactive mode of "sliding up and down + sliding left and right" with short video imprint. In terms of listening experience, the first screen presents a 30-second chorus video first, swipe right to watch the full song video, and swipe up and down to cut the song.
At the same time, users can choose to love, comment, forward, collect and list and other operations on song videos, and the social interaction functions are all available.
Simply put, it can basically be seen as an iterative version of soda music, polka dot music, and MOO, and the main thing is visual listening songs. Obviously, without the blessing of the fan economy, the new version of Yinyuetai chose to return to the content and win back a city with an optimized visual experience and the feelings of old users.
Looking back at Yinyue Tai along the way, Zhang Dou has always been looking for a breakthrough from mining the fan economy to stirring up the music entertainment market.
As early as 2017, the strategic assistant to the CEO of Yinyuetai said in an interview that the positioning of Yinyuetai is not only a MV company, but also will focus on music short videos, "because short videos are a wind outlet, now the playback volume and user activity of music short videos on all platforms are very high, and Yinyuetai is no problem." ”
However, by that time, Douyin and Kuaishou had already risen, and Yinyuetai could not match it in terms of technology and products. Therefore, in 2018, when the two short video giants competed, Yinyuetai hurriedly chased the next outlet and aimed at the blockchain.
After the Spring Festival in 2018, Zhang Dou announced that Yinyuetai would be "all in the blockchain", and planned to use the decentralized and distributed ledger technology of blockchain to upload the various fan data, behaviors and data of various websites on the chain, build the V list of Yinyuetai into the world's first blockchain music list, and launch the first blockchain idol group FBI (Frist Blockchain Idol). However, with the tightening of domestic policy supervision, blockchain has always been difficult to become a trend, and the vision of sworn has also fallen silent.
Now, Yinyuetai is trying to bet on "visual listening to songs", intending to seize the next era.
In the official announcement copy, the official response of Yinyuetai is "Is there still a market for the return of Yinyuetai?" The answer to this question is that Internet music products are currently "more and more irrelevant" and that "short videos are used for music". Obviously, it is hoped that it will differentiate itself from existing short video products through a simple interactive experience and vertical supply of quality content.
However, from historical experience, it is not easy for music products or music services to occupy the market through "small but fine".
As early as 2009, Douban once pushed out the music product Douban FM, which focuses on personalized content recommendations, and the pure music experience is difficult to compete with the rich copyright reserve. In addition to a small number of users with feelings, it is obviously a bit difficult for a wider range of users.
With the lessons of Douban FM, taking the road of pure experience, allowing users to consume more traffic to listen to songs with videos, and more efforts are needed by Yinyuetai.
In addition, in terms of quality content, whether the debt-laden Yinyuetai can afford the high copyright procurement costs is also a question mark.
According to former employees of Yinyuetai, Yinyuetai has returned without solving the core copyright problem. "It's still the same as before, the main focus is on KOC laying content, and the risk of piracy is still there." The interviewee said, "Yinyuetai did not mention its content supply system, that is, the copyright of video content, which was the main reason for its overdraft." ”
On a more macro scale, Yinyuetai returned at this time, but online music has long been different. With the disappearance of the mobile Internet dividend, the online music industry has turned into the stock era, and the appreciation taste and usage habits of users are also becoming increasingly diversified.
With the strong rise of short video platforms and the increase in the music market, its personalized expression mode and strong social attributes are difficult for Yinyuetai to match. Not to mention, how expensive it is to let users leave from the existing major platforms to Yinyuetai, where the cost of user migration is.
Therefore, no one knows where the future of Yinyuetai is.
epilogue
New business meets old troubles, and the only happy thing for the return of Yinyuetai is those "emotional parties".
But online music services cannot rely on feelings to live, and in the 4 years of "hibernation" of Yinyuetai, the industry has already undergone earth-shaking changes. The current situation of online music being divided up by oligarchs, the recovery of historical problems such as debt arrears and salary arrears, the reality is cruel; And those fan service, MV, user upload and other characteristics that Yinyuetai was proud of can only be used to reminisce.
Taking advantage of the emotional effect generated by the return to improve user retention is probably the last hole card in the hands of Yinyuetai. And whether you can stay up until the day when visual listening to songs becomes mainstream is what Yinyue Tai needs time to answer.
Typesetting | vision
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