Profile: Xu Huanliang, founder of Qida Music, founder and former CEO of Sea Butterfly Music, music gold medal producer. Adu, Lin Junjie, BY2 mentors, artists who have personally cultivated and won popularity include: Chen Jieyi, Cai Chunjia, Adu, Lin Junjie, BY2 and Southeast, etc., and have produced many golden songs including "Jiangnan", "A Thousand Years Later", "He Must Love You" and so on.
From the "new ballad era" in the 1980s and the "sea butterfly peak era" in the new millennium in the 1990s, Xu Huanliang is now leading a group of young people to start a business and plunge into the wave of digital music "mobile Internet". Xu Huanliang likes to go to different cities, observe different groups of people, and also like to travel alone for a while, and the brave boy Xu Huanliang is working hard to build a music company that belongs to his mind. Xu Huanliang, a 35-year-old "over-aged naughty boy" who "looks" but looks like a 35-year-old, with talent and a "winner in life" posture, turns the bow of the ship in front of the times, "goes with the trend of the Internet", and drives to the next destination of his career.
Qida Music: O2O+ content investor + social platform
Pure white round neck pull-over T-shirt, bald head, very thin little man, Xu Huanliang appeared, he smiled and shook hands with everyone, gently asked: "What about my netizens?" "The chat begins with a greeting.
"Where are you from?"
"Chongqing, good place, I'm from Hainan!"
“？！……”
Xu Huanliang, a gold medal music producer who speaks "Singaporean" Mandarin, with a childlike naughtiness, always smiles gently, will tell you a joke very seriously, and will also listen to you with a very "cute" expression, and then think, with a sad face, with a slightly serious tone: "Put it down, you can get it!" ”
At one time, Xu Huanliang hated that the draft had created too much "music garbage", and the record industry became a "transfer trader"; at one time, Xu Huanliang was sad that traditional record companies were gradually reluctant to invest in content for short-term interests, and his heart was "full of complaints"!
In 2014, Xu Huanliang once again dumped the "garbage" and cleared it to start over. This time, he wants to be a content company exactly as he wants.
Xu Huanliang said with a smile: "What needs to be done in the Internet era is not to become bigger, but to be refined." We want to be an online singer in the 4.0 era, a community and an incubator, and truly complete the O2O model. ”
"Rebellious" engineering student becomes "naughty" music producer
"Most people have good and bad memories on file, but I like to take out the garbage, and when a guy smiles a lot, he'll be relaxed. For me, music has a three-dimensional touch: there is a picture, there is a temperature, there is a feeling. ”
Xu Huanliang's musical life begins with the "new ballad era", which was in the 80s of the last century. Looking back at the history of pop music, can the well-known singers: Sun Yanzi, Adu, Lim Chun Kit, Hui Mei Jing, Chua Kin Ya, etc. represent Singaporean pop music? It is undeniable that these Singaporean singers have left their own strong mark in the Chinese music scene. But if you go back further, it is necessary to mention Xu Huanliang's youth.
"I studied mechanical engineering in college, I wasn't a liberal arts student, but I formed a singing group during college and have been on the path of music ever since." Xu Huanliang recalled that in that era, when an engineering student embarked on the road of a young man in literature and art, a thick "incredible" was revealed between his eyebrows.
Xu Huanliang was a singer of the more famous "New Ballad Era" at that time, he participated in the formation of the orchestra "Water Grass Trio", the other two members Xu Nansheng and Huang Yuancheng, and later in 1986, the three friends gathered two other friends Wu Jianfeng and Zhang Jiaqiang to create Sea Butterfly Music together. Since then, Sea Butterfly Music Productions has published music for most of the "New Ballad Era" singers.
In the early 1990s, Xu Huanliang began to plan for the Taiwanese market to create songs for Taiwanese artists. But when he went to Taiwan to make records, he found that he had encountered a big problem. For Taiwanese musicians, why should they find a foreigner to make their own records? Faced with cultural pressure, Xu Huanliang was forced to keep running bookstores, starting from bestsellers, observing and analyzing what books young people in Taiwan were reading and what they liked.
Later, Feng Feifei, Cai Qin, Xu Wei, He Dulin, Tai Zhengxiao and a number of other well-known Taiwanese singers at that time all cooperated with Xu Huanliang, and he also had a successful case in the Taiwan market, "Chen Jieyi", Xu Huanliang single-handedly composed and produced "heartache", which pushed this singer from Singapore to the status of a first-line singer, which was popular in the Chinese music scene at that time.
In 2003, Sea Butterfly Music entered the mainland and launched "Adu" and "Lin Junjie", which achieved great success. In 2006 and 2007, two rounds of capital entered The Sea Butterfly, and the company developed in the direction of becoming an "entertainment group", but it also gradually deviated from Xu Huanliang's concept of operating the music industry - content is king!
Xu Huanliang never thought that one day, he would leave the company he founded. On April 18 this year, Xu Huanliang published a long microblog of more than 3,000 words, "Have You Left the Sea Butterfly?" Officially announced its departure from Sea Butterfly Music, this long Weibo instantly detonated the market, retweeting more than one million.
Why? In that long "departure" article, Xu Huanliang recalled his thoughts after leaving the position of CEO of Haidi in January: 25 years after entering the Internet, almost all industries and lifestyles have been "Internetized", why is the music industry so slow?
"Sea Butterfly originally entered the music market with good content, but in the process of more than 10 years of change in the entire music industry, the traditional model is gradually disappearing, and new business models are still being found." In the process, many people forget the essence of music because they can't see the dawn on the other side of the tunnel. ”
Not only Haidi, in fact, all record companies are helpless, the Internet subverts the traditional profit model, "draft" makes people in the industry more impetuous, the entire industry faces a cruel reality: no one has the courage to invest in content, the entire music industry recycling the big slippery slope, there is no advantage to speak of.
"People's memories are selectively archived, most people are good or bad, but I like to take out the garbage, because to keep absorbing new things, you have to keep taking out the garbage." 」 Xu Huanliang's personality is cheerful to be full of innocence, and he does not lose the shrewdness of a businessman, and his life style is "phased clearance". He is still full of confidence in doing "music content", and for Xu Huanliang, there is a "three-dimensional" feeling: there is a picture, a temperature, and a feeling.
"Sometimes people think it's far away to change the world, but it's not, because to change lives is to change the world." Xu Huanliang believes that the long-tail effect of music far exceeds that of other industries, and the next round of investment will be the music industry.
Qida Music: Don't sign artists, focus on content
"Do not sign artists, pay attention to content investment, play the long tail effect of music, the direction of Qida Music is: O2O + content investors + social platforms."
When he first left Haidi, xu Huanliang had not yet thought clearly about many things, and the first thing he did was to "think in empathy" and embrace the Internet, which was the direction he had to explore after leaving Haidi Music.
"The post-90s are very different from the previous post-80s and post-70s, the post-90s have the Internet as soon as they are born, and although they are young, they are very knowledgeable, although not profound enough." So I hope to use so many years of my experience in making music to resonate with post-90s musicians and change the music industry. ”
In July 2014, Qida Music began to officially operate in Beijing, before that, Xu Huanliang produced two songs for the two enterprises of "OnePlus Mobile Phone" and "Mengniu" - "No Will Be" and "Little by Little" by independent musicians after the 90s, using the power of music to help the company position and also help the singer to win an unprecedented promotion budget, and win-win for the three parties.
"We are an open platform that will do all kinds of cooperation with mature singers, new singers or online singers, and we position ourselves as a content investor + digital promotion platform." Xu Huanliang said: "What needs to be done in the Internet era is not to be bigger, but to be refined, our strength is to do a good job of content, the meaning of qida is 'huge and small and big', and the company's value lies in the industry big + Internet thinking." ”
Qida Music next cooperated with the agency of the mask singer "Echo Brother", and planned to use three years to build Echo Brother into a first-line singer, breaking the spell of "Internet singers can't board the big stage of 10,000 people", so that Internet singers evolved to 4.0 and became the representative of real O2O singers.
A social platform called "Qida Musician" is under intensive development, where fans who like music can make friends, grow knowledge, and publish new works. As for more content, the mysterious "incubator", Xu Huanliang did not want to be public, he said mischievously and modestly: "Our team members, led by the product managers of the previous Alibaba system, will know when they are made!" ”
Look forward to it!
Attached is an illustration of amusic's business model for copyright management:
"Music Finance" dialogue With Xu Huanliang: The long-tail value of the music industry far exceeds that of movies, and investment will shift to the music industry
"Music Finance": From the "new ballad era", to the founding of "Sea Butterfly Music", to today's creation of "Qida Music", you have been in the music circle for more than 30 years, how to see the changes in the Chinese music scene in the past 30 years?
Xu Huanliang: China's music industry is divided into several stages, before the reform and opening up is a stage, that period China is very vague about the outside world, know more is Teresa Teng; after the reform and opening up to 1989 is a stage, this is an era of rock and roll, can be called "rock and roll first year"; after 1989 is another stage, that period of Hong Kong and Taiwan songs a large influx, indirectly gave birth to China's "campus songs", including the old wolf's "You at the same table", etc., gradually the various factions converged into a river and began" The prototype of the pop music "market.
In 2006, Supergirl, Li Yuchun and Zhou Bichang opened the era of "talent singer"! Almost every six months, a group of "new celebrities" have emerged, and these fast-food singers have quickly grabbed the beach in the commercial performance market and online platforms, and spent eight years gradually forcing the original invading Hong Kong and Taiwan singers out of the commercial market. At the same time, grassroots Internet singers and independent orchestras of music festivals are also poised to develop after a long but full accumulation of potential! However, no matter where they start, these post-80s and post-70s are still more or less affected by the "post-Hong Kong and Taiwan pop music" generation, and the real way to get rid of the Hong Kong and Taiwan effect is the post-90s, many of them have listened to European, American, and Korean songs since childhood, and their feelings about music are very direct and "animalistic". So I think China's post-90s generation will explode with energy that has never been seen before.
"Music Finance": In recent years, traditional record companies have eaten the old books, and the living space has become increasingly narrow, why are record companies left behind by this era?
Xu Huanliang: In many ways, traditional record companies are separated from the footsteps of this era.
The first division: The "big" of traditional record companies is "huge" in record distribution channels. However, in the Internet era, it is to be flattened, and the platform directly docks with the content side, without the need for lengthy channels.
The second division: In the past decade or so, many excellent content talents have been disappointed in the music industry because they can't get what they deserve, and they have left. The music industry has lost a lot of good talent. Even if left, many people's living conditions are out of touch with the Internet, and the Internet is probably just receiving emails.
The third division: many people who think of "Hong Kong and Taiwan" also want to use the operation mode of Hong Kong and Taiwan to operate the mainland market, for example, after making a song, they must shoot A MV, they must find a famous director to shoot a MV, they can't broadcast a TV station, KTV can't receive money, and the video website doesn't pay... Why shoot? I didn't think it through.
The fourth division: many eager "computer children", after learning a few tricks, they turned into a one-handed musician, although there are many iron fans, songs are also popular, and they are also very happy, but when they close the door, they still wonder why they can't reach the European and American Hallyu that they envy - making something punch and textured?
"Music Finance": Excellent talents have left the industry, and some people have gone to the more lively film and television industry. Do you think music really has little commercial value compared to the film and television industry?
Xu Huanliang: Today, when we look at the more mature markets such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan, the "long tail effect" of the music industry brings far more profits than movies. In the transformation of China's economy, the value of intellectual property rights is inevitable. If you look back at history, the development schedule of all countries in the past 10, 50 or even 100 years has been the same, and the cultural industry and copyright mechanisms, usually the film industry is ahead of the curve, and the music industry has followed.
At present, the investment in the music industry that everyone sees pays more attention to "buying and selling old copyright assets", which is the stage of the Internet platform "dominating the land and killing opponents", which can be understood as raising the operating threshold of the music platform, integrating and eliminating illegal networks, and then setting up a new business model. Just like in the early days of industrialization, the infrastructure such as railways and airports must first be built, and then loaded into the means of transport, and it cannot always be old goods.
When we like a movie, we can't watch it ten times a day; but when we like a song, we can listen to it more than ten times a day. The charm of music lies in its ubiquity and the ability to recreate itself countless times after being seated.
When we talk about the music industry, we must understand its essence - intangible, invisible, untouchable, so we need a carrier. When technology evolves, the carrier and the track are changing, and every new change, good music content makes more money. The key is not how many songs you have, but how many times can your music library go through the evolution of technology and still stay? More critically, how to produce more valuable and good content through various changeable tracks in the future, and bring out more "long tail effect"?
Music Finance: You think the draft makes the whole industry more impetuous, and no one cares about good content anymore. Singing talent shows have been ten years to today, this year's "The Voice of China" is still vigorously making money, how do you see the vitality of singing reality shows?
Xu Huanliang: The draft was originally a good thing, but when the draft flooded, it gave birth to too many "instant" song aristocrats, and seized the space of the content party that was seriously engaged in making music in the wolf-up commercial performance market and online platforms. The tragedy is that these fast-food aristocrats finally became overproduced because of overproduction, on the one hand, let the people who do commercial performances happy, go through a batch of new goods, on the other hand, let the long-term loss of record companies, helplessly also become intermediary dealers, lost the motivation to make music seriously.
The point is that the fast-food aristocracy, who was too fast, did not leave any valuable musical works for the industry to accumulate, and eventually became the "music garbage" that destroyed the environmental protection of the industry.
But the draft is not necessarily a bad thing, deng Ziqi is a good example. If there is no "I am a singer", Deng Ziqi may have a long chance to let so many people in the mainland appreciate her and her team. Therefore, the key is whether you are seriously operating music. What the industry needs to accumulate is valuable, nutritious, and can be left behind, not fast food waste.
Music Finance: You've made so many singers and songs, what do you think is living music?
Xu Huanliang: For the industry, not all music has value; only works with the "influence" of the masses are music with vitality. Many times everyone argues about whether "song red" or "human red" is more important? In fact, the general situation of newcomers, more is a song red to make a new person red, the song with people, people red after the new song, repeated will produce a "star effect".
The so-called "vitality" depends on three dimensions – height, depth and length.
Height, that is, whether the song can reach the height of the top few in its specific musical style or focus group? This is a very direct, very "animalistic" response in many cases. Hemp or not? Does it hurt? If it is achieved, it may radiate to other groups of people and produce a mass effect.
Depth refers to whether there is a deep aftertaste effect after listening to this song. This leads to the human, inner and intellectual dimensions. Many times, it is not necessary to need esoteric words, but often the songwriters are simple and simple, so that the listener can sit in the right seat and cannot extricate himself.
Length, is it said that the above two dimensions can stand the test of time, and is it popular enough to last? Some works, although written in the current situation, but the passage of time, still sounds full of resonance, and even let the newcomer reinterpret still does not feel outdated, which is to withstand the test of the "length" of time
。 Some songs were very popular at the time, but no one listened to them after a year, but some songs will be sung by many people after many years, which is the three dimensions of musical works.
Music Finance: You're someone from a traditional record label, and the advent of the Internet has destroyed the business model on which record companies live. But when you started a business for the second time in your life, you chose to explore the opportunities brought by the Internet to the music industry, why?
Xu Huanliang: I grew up as a rather rebellious person, but not a destructive rebellion. I like to look at things from a perspective that others don't see, and I like to find its connection from seemingly unrelated appearances, especially the links of the humanistic or emotional side. I am also a person who is very curious about new things, and I live to learn from old age.
The recycling model of the Internet ecology is multilateral! For example, a platform relies on music to attract users, and the number of users is converted into other consumption on the platform, and the value of music is to attract a large number of users to this platform, so the platform should pay for the music content side. However, after the platform has accumulated a large number of user data, how to monetize these again?
The so-called "copyright" is also the result of the roles of various industrial chains in the last music industry era of human beings - content parties, platform parties, channel parties and users, etc. Sat down to bargain, which has been used for more than a hundred years, rather than keeping the traditional dead brain, it is better to face the new era and jointly explore new ways. Only under the premise of symbiosis of the industrial chain can everyone achieve common prosperity.
Music Finance: Compared with the way mature countries use associations and consumers to fight against the harvest of copyright fees, what is China's operating model?
Xu Huanliang: In the course of the development of the foreign music industry in the past century, an association was organized by the content parties, and the formulation of copyright rules was mostly promoted by the negotiation of the so-called "industry collective association" and the user.
China's model is relatively special, first, in the past few decades, Chinese mainland itself does not have enough industrial accumulation of "high value and large long tail effect"; second, although the number of works of the three major international companies is large, the actual "influence" in the mainland is less than half of the total market share; third, the independent mainstream companies in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland also account for less than half of the total. In the final analysis, no one can say the final word, everyone has their own calculations, can not be cohesive, and the effectiveness of industrial collective associations is not high.
With the passage of time, physical sales are shrinking, karaoke should be too far behind, wireless music has been kidnapped by unreasonable models, and the public broadcast copyright has a long way to go. Only Internet music is growing, and the Internet platform seems to have become the last straw of the music industry, so it can only be destroyed by the platform, first the pirated illegal websites are eliminated, and then the rules are redefined.
In the future, a reasonable music industry model must first ensure that the industry has positive recycling before more talents and funds are willing to invest. A healthy music industry model requires many different people in the industry chain, such as music content producers, live performers, karaoke, traditional media, online platforms, scientific and technological personnel and collective associations, etc., each performing their own duties. And a company like Qida is to do a good job of content.
If we envy the self-confidence that South Korea's music, film and television bring to the Korean nation and the positive chain effect on its electronics industry and automobile industry, we need to recognize one thing early: China's economic development must always go global.
The music industry, too!