Wen 丨 Number Entertainment Dream Factory, author 丨 Li Wenfeng, editor 丨 crab boss
As the originator of the bullet screen website, the niconico animation (hereinafter referred to as the n station) that inspired China's ab two stations is gradually disappearing from the vision of Chinese netizens in recent years. Occasionally, it appears, but it only appears in the historical development of the public discussion b station, as a background for information.
Born in 2006, n-site once registered 60 million members, paid members of more than 2.5 million people, was once a video site that can achieve profitability throughout the year.
The "bullet screen function" and the massive up master secondary creation originated from the n station have created countless brilliant achievements for it, which not only inspired the establishment of the two stations of China AB, but also attracted many Young Japanese people to submit articles here, including the singer Yonezu Genshi who later became a fire, and won the popularity of many well-known IPs including Hatsune Mirai and Oriental Project.
However, the good times did not last long, since 2016, there have been a series of problems in the N station, resulting in a decline in the number of paid members. According to the latest financial report of Kadokawa Group, although the number of valid registered members of n station is as high as 80.17 million, the actual paid membership scale has only fallen to 1.61 million, and it is difficult to have a rebound momentum.
According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Kadokawa Group lost 4.3 billion yen in fiscal 2018 (April 18 to March 2019), and the important reason for the deficit was the sluggish game projects of its parent company, N-Station, and the sharp decrease in paid membership of N-Station.
This huge loss led to the resignation of both Tsuneyoshi Kawakami, then president of the Kadokawa Group, and Takashi Araki, then president of Takumiku. But the turmoil of management is not the end, another value of attention is that users on n stations began to have an "aging" tendency.
Kadokawa Group's latest annual report shows that 70% of users under the age of 40 in the n-station, of which 40% are in the 10-30 age group, and the monthly active volume is 6.46 million. These data seem to be good, but if compared with four years, in 2016, the proportion of n-station users in the 10-30 age group was about 53%, and the monthly active life was as high as 8.68 million. As a station that was once loved by young people, its appeal to Japan's Generation Z is declining.
According to the data of the Institute of Social Research, under the 74.9% awareness rate of N Station, only 10.1% of users use it monthly (at least once in January); while the monthly usage rate of Youtube users is as high as 65.4%, and the two sides have opened a gap of 6.5 times in the Japanese market.
This also makes the outside world deeply curious: what is the factor that makes this former two-dimensional overlord lose the love of young users as the core? What are the warnings and reference significance for domestic a station and station B?
In 2006, the Japanese game company Takumiku founded "パケラジ2.0" based on Youtube, which was later renamed NicoNico Animation.
Also as a UGC website, compared with youtube, Japan's N station has become a holy place for two-dimensional users and embarked on a unique path. Two-dimensional enthusiasts gathered here to create and build a unique cultural trend, including mad, virtual katsuhime Hatsune Mirai, various fandom videos, and otaku culture.
In December 2009, under the implementation of the "premium member" charging system and advertising and other measures, N station achieved a single month profit. At the final account presentation meeting the following year, Xia Yegang, who was a director, said with great pride: "The profitability of user-contributed video websites is unheard of in the world, and n station is the first case." ”
On October 1, 2014, Kadokawa Co., Ltd. (i.e. Kadokawa Group) and Takumiko Co., Ltd. merged to operate kadokawa dwango. The next year, the number of registered users of the n station exceeded 50 million, and the number of paid users reached more than 2.5 million.
However, this merger and reorganization did not bring a bigger stage to the n station, but after the number of paid users of the n station reached a record high of 2.56 million in 2016, it began to decline.
The contradiction between n stations and users is also becoming increasingly prominent: many users feedback that the experience of using n stations after landing is getting worse and worse, and there are serious problems with video quality and fluency. Although it has tens of millions of registered members, but the n station has been criticized for neglecting to upgrade bandwidth and servers, once the user becomes more, watching videos on the n station has become a rather painful experience.
To this end, N station had planned to launch a new version of "niconico (く)" to solve this problem, but for some reason, the iteration of the new version was repeatedly postponed. Until a year later, in 2017, the N station finally held a new version conference, but the impatient Japanese users have long since stopped appreciating it. On the n-station screen at the press conference site, it was full of all kinds of "completely unsolved" "What is he talking about?" "Waiting for the barrage, at one point, made the atmosphere of the scene very awkward.
But then, most users are still disappointed to find that the problems of n-station video quality and latency have not been solved. Behind this incident, what is exposed is the N station's calculations in cost input and commercial acquisition, and suffers from gains and losses. For the contradiction of user feedback poor viewing experience, the solution given by n station is: kryptonite gold. Let paid members have a smooth playback experience.
The poor viewing experience has accelerated the departure of many users, and even many premium members of n stations (540 yen per month including tax) have plummeted by 360,000 in 2017.
Through the kadokawa Group's report for fiscal year 2017, it can be observed that although sales increased by 0.5% over the previous quarter, operating profit decreased by 62.6%, and it was N Station, which undertook the company's web services business, that dragged the overall hind legs.
In the subsequent fiscal year 2018, Kadokawa Group's sales decreased by 10.4% from the opening forecast to 207 billion yen; operating profit decreased by 76.3% year-on-year to 1.9 billion yen; and overall there was a deficit of 4.3 billion yen.
Two consecutive years of declining performance led to the resignation of Tsuneyoshi Kawakami, then president of the Kadokawa Group, and Ryuji Araki, then president of Takumikoku. Although the subsequent interim results of fiscal 2019 have recovered and Station N has resumed profitability, it has not fundamentally reversed the decline of this old two-dimensional website.
Because the new management's solution to the loss of n stations is mainly achieved by cutting costs. In order to save money, Station N permanently closed the ten-year-old NicoNico headquarters and the live space Nico faire in Roppongi.
But how to save its Z generation of young users on the n station has still not been solved.
Through the data officially released by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the outside world can observe that the n station is not only far behind youtube, youtube has reached a staggering 90% or more use rate among young users aged 10-20 and 20-30 years old, while N station is only used by one-third of Japanese young people. Among Japanese users in the 10-20 age range, the use rate of n-station is even less than that of tiktok.
In the face of the increasing decline in the traffic of n stations in recent years, Niconico President Kurida admitted that it is the communication between n stations and users that has had problems in recent years.
"Originally, a close relationship was established between the n station and the user, but in recent years, there has been a gap. It's all because we're not thoughtful enough. Kurita's "not thoughtful enough" is actually the old and difficult video playback interface of N station, and the poor picture quality.
Different from the business model of B station, the revenue source of n station is mainly through: nicoNico channel (video content), NicoNico super conference (offline activities), Niconico live broadcast (live broadcast) these businesses.
Previously, live video broadcasts such as games, virtual anchors, singing, horse racing and most of the animation dramas on N stations were almost all paid to watch. On some free videos, users don't need to be buffered for long, only paid members can fast-forward or rewind the progress bar of the video, and free members can only see low-quality videos.
This almost forced purchase of membership squeezed out most of the free members. As a result, the traffic of n stations has been greatly reduced, which in turn has affected the group of up owners, the enthusiasm of contributors has decreased significantly, the quality of the content of submissions has also begun to decline, and the number of users who are willing to pay for them has become smaller. This vicious circle has become the most headache problem for n stations at present.
Many up owners have switched to YouTube, which not only far exceeds the daily active volume of n stations, but also far better than n stations in terms of income for up owners.
In 2019, some N station users asserted that the fate of niconico animation will end in two or three years. Many Japanese netizens lamented that the feature that was once advertised on the n station as "there are a bunch of interesting videos" has long gone.
In June this year, Soraru, as the head of N station, said bluntly in a conversation with N station president Kurida that the biggest reason why he still insists on submitting articles on N station is because there is still a group of fans who "hope you can also vote for NicoNico". To put it very realistically, n stations and YouTube are less played and more difficult to increase fans. Therefore, there are not a few voices calling on up owners to stop submitting.
Many people around Soraru were surprised that he was still submitting articles on the N station, and advised him: "When are you going to submit articles on the N station?" The head up owner also admitted: "If this situation continues, I think more people will leave NicoNico." ”
In addition to the unsatisfactory number of broadcasts, another reason why N station owners switched to YouTube is that it is difficult for creators to obtain satisfactory commercial returns on N stations.
As long as you join the Youtube Collaborator Program, you can monetize advertising, subscription tips, etc. YouTube uses the cpm indicator, that is, the "cost per thousand times", the cost of the creator per thousand ad exposures, the higher the cpm, the higher the advertising cost, the higher the cost that the creator can get. This allows creators to harvest a certain fee according to the popularity of the video, which greatly mobilizes the enthusiasm of creators.
In order to save users and up owners, n station has also formulated a lot of similar policies.
In an interview in June, Kurita said that NicoNico itself earns a steady and secure income from paid memberships. A portion of the membership fee is allocated to contributors in the Creator Rewards program, and fees can also be charged on the NicoNico channel. At the same time, in order to make it easier for the owners to make secondary creations. NicoNico also prepared a mechanism whereby the "sub-works" of the second creation were more popular, and the more the "parent works" could receive more revenue.
Kurita likens the popularity of the owner of the up to a pyramid, and the creators of the spire are more likely to get huge views on Google-run YouTube. However, he said that for some newcomers, it is easier to succeed in N stations at the beginning.
"In the n-station submission, the creator of the pyramid waist has more advantages, and there will be more cases than youtube broadcasts." Station N also has tag search skills to filter songs, and you can also arrange them in various orders such as the latest contributions and the most played. Therefore, in recent years, there are many users on YouTube no one to watch, the number of plays can not go, after coming to n station, the number of plays has suddenly increased. ”
Behind Kurita's remarks, after constantly making mistakes and being marginalized, Kurita's station, once the king of the second dimension, has become helpless to pick up some indigestible scraps of Youtube.
This once most popular bullet screen website for young people is no longer glamorous. Also stimulated N station began to make some changes, some live broadcasts also began to no longer harshly restrict non-paying users, in order to improve the picture quality, n station finally began to upgrade servers and bandwidth.
However, these late changes came too late, and the loss of the user base of the n-station was still not fundamentally solved.
But even if the N station becomes outdated, it is no longer so trendy. It is still the largest two-dimensional bullet screen website in Japan, and there are no competitors in the Japanese domestic market except youtube. This may be an important reason why N station has stuck to the rules over the years.
Due to the impact of Japan's new coronavirus self-isolation, the number of recent video submissions of N station even returned to the number of 2016 periods.
But these are temporary. Will the future N station be eliminated within 2 to 3 years as predicted by users, or will it regain the favor of the younger generation of Japanese users with subsequent changes? There are still huge variables in everything.