How to achieve differentiated development of shrimp music entertainment that pursues quality?

Author | Punk Editor | Fan Zhihui

At dawn, the sea and sky are the same.

At 5 a.m. on August 27, I was rumored to appear at the sunrise session of the 2023 Aranya Shrimp Music Festival. The instrumental sound corresponds to the sound of the waves, and the melody salvages the audience from the dream.

Just 6 hours before the rumors took the stage, the goatskin band, which had returned to China after many absences, brought an ultimate rock performance. Lead singer Brett threw mics, high-fived, and even knelt and lay down 100% into the show.

Offstage, the audience sweated and burst into tears, not only setting off the climax of this Aranya Shrimp Music Festival, but also looking at the entire music festival market, it was the most seething scene.

From the unparalleled lineup to the two-day and three-night experience by the sea, Aranya Shrimp Music Festival has contributed a landmark music festival model with both industry reputation and public reputation to live performances.

In the aftermath of the music festival, looking back at the layout of Shrimp Music Entertainment (hereinafter referred to as Shrimp Music Entertainment) in the performance market since its establishment two years ago, it is not difficult to find that it has already precipitated its own unique development methodology based on music festivals, concerts and Livehouse.

Diversified and consistent content investment methodologies for labels

"We grew up listening to this music APP and slowly learned a lot of things, no matter what form and how it exists, we believe that the most pure and simple heart will reside in the hearts of those who understand."

On the stage of the 2023 Aranya Shrimp Music Festival, Kong Yicia, the lead singer of the tour band, confessed to Shrimp Music like this.

Then, the melody of "Lost Song" sounded, and all fans who have used and loved shrimp music feel a long-lost feeling. Shrimp Music has served content with an almost reverent attitude, connected users with ingenuity, enlightened a group of literary and artistic youth, and become synonymous with "quality content" in their hearts.

In September of the same year that the APP was shut down, Damai announced the establishment of the "Shrimp Music Entertainment" content label and started the professional operation of performance content. For barley, inheriting this name is not simple, which means to continue the insistence on quality of shrimp and undertake the user's expectation and love for shrimp.

To this end, Damai continues to expand the influence of the label with a diversified investment layout, and at the same time outputs differentiated content that matches the brand's tonality to the market. At present, quality performances have been completely covered in the three categories of music festivals, concerts and livehouses, aiming at the characteristics and pain points of different scales and types of performances, and continuously deepening consumer awareness.

As the first self-made music performance IP of Shrimp Music Entertainment, the Shrimp Music Festival condenses its insights and thoughts on the label's tonality, the needs of music fans and even the entire domestic performance market.

From the immersive viewing of two days and three nights, many details highlight the difference of the shrimp music festival.

On the one hand, the theme of the Shrimp Music Festival is "Life Without Definition", so that countless young people yearn for freedom and the spiritual homeland of the wilderness concrete, and become a refuge for everyone outside the life of the inner roll; On the other hand, the Shrimp Music Festival cooperates with Aranya to deeply integrate the music experience with the natural landscape, humanities and art, and truly make the festival an ideal lifestyle.

In addition to the self-made music festival, Shrimp Music Entertainment has also continued to increase investment in the festival to strengthen the connection with the upstream of the content. The 2023 Tianjin Bubble Island Music and Art Festival, which just ended in early August, has the investment participation of Shrimp Music Entertainment. In the eyes of many music fans, the Bubble Island Music and Arts Festival and the Shrimp Music Festival have some similar tones, such as an international lineup of artists, iterative and upgraded live experiences, and the coupling of music with other art genres.

In this regard, You Jia, vice president of Damai, said, "In the internal layout of the music festival, we focus more on music works that are relatively head-notch, have a certain influence in the industry, and are relatively more in tune with the shrimp music entertainment label. Based on this concept, this year, Shrimp Music Entertainment also participated in the investment in Suzhou EDC Music Festival, MTA Tianmo Music Festival, etc., and the entire music festival content layout is also moving in the direction of diversification.

In the form of LiveHouse, the vision of shrimp music entertainment is also broad. From 2021 to 2022, he has participated in the production of nearly 200 Livehouse performances, involving more than 20 groups of artists, including rock veterans such as Face Band, Wan Xiaoli, and Zuo Xiaocurse, as well as powerful newcomers such as Yan Renzhong, Zhang Xingte, Jude and Yang Yunqing, and the style is widely covered by rock, rap, jazz, pop, etc.

In 2023, new investments will be made in projects such as Mr. Turtle's "Never Look Back" 2023 tour and Zhao Yongxin's birthday meeting, and through the launch of operational activities such as "Go to the Waves Live House Performance Season", more people will return to the music scene and help the performance break the circle.

At the same time, Shrimp Music Entertainment also continues the original spirit of "finding light" in its content strategy, and will pay attention to more artists in the growth stage, so as to better participate in the process of artist growth and send them to a bigger stage.

Taking musician Yan Renzhong as an example, in the past two years, Yan Renzhong has chosen to cooperate with Shrimp Music Entertainment on his national tours. In the first round of tour in 2021, Shrimp Music Entertainment selected 1,000 livehouses in ten cities for him; Subsequently, in the second round of tours, Shrimp Music Entertainment selected the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall with 2,500 people and the Suzhou Sports Center Gymnasium with a capacity of 5,000 people for him according to data changes, and they were all sold out. The role of the shrimp music entertainment label in expanding the number of fans and serving the growth of full-service musicians can be seen.

As for the concert, in addition to participating in projects with its own traffic such as the Lehua Family Concert, Shrimp Music Entertainment has also participated in the production of Han Hong concert, Zhong Hanliang concert, Lin Zhixuan concert, Yu Jiayun concert, Wang Lixin concert and many other projects with great potential, with its own comprehensive operation capabilities, to help the project obtain greater development space.

During the landing of Zhong Hanliang's concert, the combined role of "schedule management", "city prediction", "venue cooperation", "market promotion" and "ticket service" of Shrimp Music Entertainment played a vivid role.

In terms of city selection, the best first landing city Shanghai was selected through multi-dimensional data evaluation; On the announcement, the emotional cards of the theme concept of "Time Machine" in concerts such as "reunion after five years of absence" and "going to a long-lost reminiscence" were used to arouse the memories and enthusiasm of fans; In terms of sales, with the help of the advantages of Damai community operation, the influence and attention of the concert are continuously expanded through social sharing and communication. In the end, Zhong Hanliang's concert Shanghai station tickets were quickly sold out.

"Damai has resources in major cities and stable full-link service capabilities such as landing, sales, and publicity, which is an important reason why artists and content parties choose to cooperate with us." You Jia believes that the platform capabilities and operational advantages can help high-quality projects in the market pay more attention and send them to a bigger stage.

From Wu Qingfeng's stage finale at the Tianjin Bubble Island Music and Arts Festival, to Zhong Hanliang's meeting with tens of thousands of fans at the Shanghai leg of his concert tour, to Mr. Turtle's evening of hot carnival in Livehouse in Kunming, Yunnan, as a common producer behind the scenes, Shrimp Music Entertainment has both feelings and business, creating rich and diversified content products for fans through content self-production and investment, and linking quality performances to the most suitable audience.

Agile and innovative performance marketing system

Once the enthusiasm for the three-year performance was released, the popularity of the domestic performance market was obvious to all.

According to monitoring data from the China Performance Industry Association, in the first half of 2023, 506 large-scale concerts and music festivals were performed, with box office revenue of 2.497 billion yuan and an audience of 5.501 million people. Among them, there were 428 performances in the second quarter, an increase of 448.72% month-on-month, the box office revenue of performances was 2.231 billion yuan, an increase of 738.6% month-on-month, and the number of audiences was 4.8233 million, an increase of 611.71% month-on-month.

The blowout of the performance market has made the drawbacks of homogenization of the lineup increasingly prominent, and the influx of non-professional organizers has also made the experience of the performance scene widely criticized. At the same time, the enthusiasm of music fans has not decreased, and vertical genres such as rock, hip-hop, and electronic music continue to win the love of young people and enter the mainstream vision, and overseas artists have also continued to set off a boom.

In other words, the current domestic performance scene is showing such a core problem: the consumption side and the supply side of live music content are ready, but professional producers and organizers are needed to enter the game to better connect the traffic of the consumer side with the content of the supply side.

In this context, in addition to focusing on the supply of high-quality content, digital service capabilities are also indispensable if Shrimp Music Entertainment wants to build its core competitiveness. As a music performance content label under Damai, the digital construction results of the "performance decision-making platform" have undoubtedly achieved the differentiated competitive advantage of Shrimp Music Entertainment.

Since the beginning of this year, many artists have toured Barley "want to see" more than one million, and the number of people who want to see Jay Chou's "Carnival" World Tour Tianjin Station has soared to 5.4 million, which has become a hot topic on social media. There is no doubt that "want to see" has become a barometer of the popularity of the project and is widely recognized by the outside world, and at the same time, as a direct reflection of user needs, it also provides a "certain" basis for decision-making and value judgment for participants in all aspects of the performance industry.

A few days ago, on the basis of "want to see", Damai launched the "shout TA to open a concert" function, and fans can make a wish in the performance city on the Damai artist homepage. If "want to see" can affect the consumption decisions of platform users, then "make a wish" further transfers part of the decision-making power of the performance to the audience, so that the demand of the consumer side can reach the organizer more in advance and explicitly, so as to influence the tour strategy and planning.

Data show that in just one month after the function was launched, 20 million people participated in the concert to make wishes, bringing continuous traffic supply to platform projects and merchants in a scenario-innovative way. For example, Eason Chan's "want to see" tour increased by 800,000 people, and fans made a wish concert in more than 200 cities; Xue Zhiqian's tour increased by 150,000 users in one day, and many sinking cities were sold out as soon as they were billed. All the data points to the fact that this feature is badly needed in today's performance market.

"For a long time, the cities in which artists will land and how many concerts will be held are the results of the estimation of the agency and the performance organizer based on past experience, and there is no full certainty." You Jia said, "We hope to serve partners through data products such as Want to See and Make Wish on the platform, provide customers with quantifiable data support, and improve the production decision-making method of the entire industry." ”

Relying on the data mining system of "want to see" + "make a wish", Damai has successfully introduced an advanced water storage function for the traditional performance market, from artists paying attention to touring performances making wishes, and then to single-station wanting to see, buying and converting, and users' viewing needs are front-loaded. In this process, the organizer understands the user's city preference in advance, and then guides the city tour strategy, understands the target market, and reduces the decision-making risk of the performance.

At the same time, Damai continues to cultivate the membership system of Taomai VIP, based on the innovative operation of film and performance scenes, and continuously improves the value of the membership system with a variety of value-added benefits such as ticket purchase discounts, fast track, and star meetings, creating the most intuitive experience upgrade for the audience of live performances.

Up to now, the number of Taomai VIP members has reached 20 million, and these highly sticky entertainment consumption users are an important strategic resource after Shrimp Music Entertainment enters the content track, and also bring huge imagination space for the potential fan conversion of the project. The data shows that among the audience of this year's Aranya Shrimp Music Festival, Taomai VIP users accounted for 51%, and the synergy effect of user system and content layout was clearly visible.

In the age of social media, there is a need for faster and more direct access between content, products and users, and live performances are no exception. The functions of the Damai platform such as "want to see" and "make a wish" are supplemented by the precision marketing of Taomai VIP, breaking the single search and shelf mode in the past and forming a marketing system that is both agile and innovative. On this basis, Shrimp Music Entertainment has also continued to win user reputation and market recognition with content and innovative experiences that exceed user expectations.

Talking about the next development plan of Shrimp Entertainment, You Jia revealed, "In the future, we will continue to iterate and innovate in the scale and theme of the performance, meet the demands of different groups of people as much as possible, make the content product system more perfect, and the audience's understanding of this label will be clearer." ”

From music festivals, concerts to Livehosue, we have witnessed too much disorder, and players like Shrimp Music Entertainment who understand both music and the Internet may be expected to export more standardized and digital products in the future and accelerate the industrialization of the entire performance market.

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