Text: Li Dan
In June this year, Li Hui, a member of SNH48, appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room and announced that she would join the Qianjinfu Guild as a group broadcast, which caused an uproar.
In the eyes of outsiders, Li Hui, who has a sweet appearance, good singing and dancing skills, and a certain fan base, should lie under the halo of SNH48 and "eat and wait for death", at least maintain a decent idol status, instead of following a group of spiritual little girls to please the big brother in the live broadcast room and lower her value.
But on the other hand, more "former idols" like Li Hui are turning the gun around and gaining fame and fortune again through group broadcasting. "Idol Trainee" student and former TANGRAM member Bei Tunxuan, "Creation Camp 2021" student Gu Liulin, and GNZ48 member Chen Hongyu and other orthodox trainee young people have embarked on the road of group broadcasting, completing the gorgeous transformation from idol to anchor.
And do trainees have an innate advantage in doing group broadcasting? How much money can they make in the live broadcast room? Is group broadcasting a good way out for trainees? To this end, Gu Duo contacted three trainees and agents who had been deeply involved in group broadcasting, and wanted to hear their stories.
Leave the stage and walk towards the group broadcast
In July 2023, Zhou Ran opened Xiaohongshu's private message as usual, and among the messages of many brands seeking cooperation, a particularly different private message attracted his attention. The private message read: "I am a group broadcast agent of a guild, through observing the dance video you posted on Xiaohongshu, I found that you have a lot of potential to do group broadcast, if you are also interested in this, you can contact me." ”
With the mentality of giving it a try, Zhou Ran contacted the group broadcast agent, and it was only after chatting with the agent that he learned that the group broadcast was more like a variety show in the live broadcast room.
"There are 3-5 members in a live broadcast room, and sometimes there is a professional host, and the members perform the program alone according to the process, or perform a group dance together, or form a CP interaction in pairs. In short, there are many forms of performance, and they are more interesting and interactive than solo broadcasts. ”
For example, Li Hui's Qianjin Mansion group broadcast is famous for the enchanting and charming "Eleven Thousand Gold" on the Internet, and the eleven beautiful female members have attracted a large number of loyal fans; and the group broadcast group "Xingchuang 919", which won the attention of netizens by pretending to be a middle-aged uncle, is deeply loved by young people for its abstract live broadcast painting style; and KK and Zi'an, who have recently set off a wave of discussions, both of them are members of the pianist group, and they often show their affection in the live broadcast room and guide the audience to eat CP.
Zhou Ran told Gu Duo that the reason why the group broadcast agent chose him was because he took a fancy to the label of an undebuted trainee. "They want to create a group broadcast group composed entirely of trainees."
According to Guduo's incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 500 group broadcast guilds with names and surnames in the market, of which there are more than 170 guilds in Hangzhou alone, and the rest of the guilds are distributed in Shanghai, Chongqing, Changsha and other places.
Lele, who works as a group broadcast agent in a guild in Hangzhou, explained that although each guild has different selection preferences, it is certain that amateurs who have had trainee experience will be more favored by the guild. "Singing and dancing is the most eye-catching way for group broadcasting. In the early days, the group broadcast started from the flower shaker and the social shaker in Kuaishou, and now the popular group broadcast on Douyin is a variety of ancient style singing and dancing, Korean wave jumping, and there are higher requirements for the basic quality of the group broadcast members. ”
However, not all people who have had trainee experience can be directly selected, even if Zhou Ran is contacted by the agent on his own initiative, he still has to pass a series of professional interviews to join the guild.
"First of all, I had to conduct an online interview, and in addition to the mock card, I also had to send a small video recorded by the original camera to the agent. After passing the online interview, make an appointment to meet with the agent offline, and after all the questions are clearly communicated, you will try out for another week. And wait until these processes are all completed, before you can officially sign a contract with the guild, and the general contract period is 3-5 years. ”
In the past two years, the number of group broadcast guilds has ushered in a surge, and the involution of the industry has stimulated the rapid improvement of the quality of group broadcasting, and more trainees have been discovered by group broadcast agents. After all, compared with amateurs, trainees have absolute advantages in appearance, figure, dance, etc.
For trainees, the election show variety show was suspended, instead of sticking to the longing for the identity of idols and looking forward to a debut opportunity that may not exist at all, it is better to switch to group broadcasting, at least finally win a job.
A job that makes money is a good job
After Li Hui joined the Qianjinfu Guild to do group broadcasting, she won the championship of the group broadcast PK competition four times in a row, and the total amount of gifts and rewards she received exceeded one million yuan, which is undoubtedly an asset leap compared to the fixed salary paid to her by Siba Media every month.
Those fans who were once indignant at Li Hui's abandonment of the SNH48 title gradually accepted that idol Li Hui stepped down from the altar, and worked even more desperately to reward Li Hui, the anchor in the live broadcast room, hoping to realize the dream of being the first in the general election for Li Hui in the Qianjin Mansion. At the same time, the group broadcast format of the major guilds is indeed infinitely closer to the SNH final mode-fans spend money, and the anchors compete for the championship.
Wang Xi, who has been a group broadcaster in a guild in Changsha for half a year, told Gu Duo that her guild holds a guild competition every week. According to the formal stage performance process, more than a dozen or even dozens of anchors are divided into several small groups and take turns to dance PK in the live broadcast room. After the group PK, the individual first place in the group will be selected. The judging criterion is the amount of tipping, and whoever gets the most tips during the performance period is the champion. ”
September 3, 2024 coincides with the birthday of Xuan Xuan, a member of SK girl group, and her big brother threw 903 carnivals to help her win the guild competition that night. According to the price of 3,000 yuan for a carnival, 903 carnivals are 3.5 million yuan, and Xuanxuan can at least share hundreds of thousands. And that's just the income from a guild event.
"20 years is the cusp period of group broadcasting, and almost all of the anchors who started to do group broadcasting have achieved financial freedom. At that time, there were few guilds that specialized in group broadcasting, and there were few people who were willing to do group broadcasting. Now everyone sees that the people around them have made money, so they all come to do group broadcasts again. "Lele is very emotional, although I am making money by doing group broadcasts now, it is far less than four years ago.
And Rao is "incomparable" income is enough to make trainees who have not tasted red covetous, and voluntarily take off their idol's shirt and embark on the journey of group broadcasting.
"Some of the trainees I know have returned to school to study, and some have become teachers in training classes, but more of them still run their own accounts and become Internet celebrities. At present, I am the only one who does group broadcasting, but I am not the only one who wants to do group broadcasting, they didn't know much about the mechanism of group broadcasting before, so they are still waiting and seeing. Zhou Ran said that he didn't think there was an essential difference between group broadcasting and Internet celebrities, they were just eating the Internet.
On the other hand, group broadcasting is a profession that does not limit academic qualifications, and trainees who have given up their studies in order to pursue their dreams can also find their own use in the live broadcast room. not only has appearance, but also knows how to sing and dance, as well as a sense of camera, and the trainees that the idol market can't absorb are the sweets of the group broadcast market.
Even according to Lele, the members of the group broadcast do not need to be too outstanding, as long as they are willing to listen to the opinions of the guild and work hard to jump in the live broadcast room for a period of time, their popularity will accumulate very quickly. "My advice is not to do a group broadcast on a whim, and don't leave the show in a hurry because you don't achieve the expected revenue in the short term. Everything is difficult at the beginning, and the anchor who can persevere to the end will definitely make money. ”
Although group broadcasting is also a bowl of youth rice, in an environment where the vast majority of trainees have to wait for a long time, it may not be as good as being a phoenix tail in the idol market to be a bull head in the group broadcast guild.
Idols? Group broadcast? How to choose
And the most important thing for trainees to pay attention to is that once they step into the threshold of group broadcasting, their relationship with fans is no longer destined to be "simple".
Fans spend money to support idols, they are supporting idols' dreams, and the core of money is wrapped in a layer of utopian candy paper. And fans spend money to reward the anchor in the live broadcast room, which is equivalent to directly buying the anchor's appearance value, emotional value and time value, and putting the interest relationship in front of the stage. This reversal of the relationship between supply and demand is one of the obstacles that many trainees have not dared to easily "go to the sea" to do group broadcasting.
"The essence of group broadcasting is still a special form of live broadcasting, and it is necessary to maintain the relationship between the 'big brother' in the live broadcast room. According to the training requirements of our guild, if you are rewarded more than 100 yuan in the live broadcast room for three consecutive days, you must take the initiative to add friends with the other party and establish private contact. Wang Xi said that unlike idol fans, the anchor's greeting to the 'big brother' is one-on-one, and the idol fans can be determined according to their mood, but the maintenance of the anchor's relationship is a necessary job.
The particularity of this relationship is also an important reason why the current society accuses the group broadcasting profession of not being "decent" enough. Some netizens regard the live broadcast room of the women's group as the scene of the "concubine selection" of straight men, and the money spent on an on-demand broadcast can make the beautifully dressed female idol dance for herself, which greatly satisfies the man's self-esteem.
Lele said: "For a long time, the operation idea of women's group broadcasting was women's consumption, edge economy and ambiguous economy, so the profitability of women's groups was always much better than that of men's groups. After several years of industry development, the men's group broadcast has rolled up in terms of live broadcast theme, anchor style and appearance, and a large number of trainees have flowed into the group broadcast market, which has made the operation idea of the men's group broadcast more similar to the fan economy. ”
Among them, the joy 023 men's group is one of the top streams in the group broadcast market, because some members look like male stars such as Yi Yang Qianxi and Huang Junxi, and have gained a large number of mother fans and rich woman fans, and nearly 110,000 people were online at the same time when the live broadcast room was hot, and nearly 10 million people were rewarded. What's even more miraculous is that the fans in the live broadcast room of the joy 023 men's group are very fond of commenting on the barrage and talking about fans, which is rare in other live broadcast rooms, and fans are completely chasing the joy 023 men's group as a serious men's group.
Due to the changes in operation ideas and fan ecology, the psychological pressure on trainees to change careers to do group broadcasting has also become smaller. Perhaps, this is also the reason why orthodox trainees such as Li Hui and Bei Tuxuan have gradually begun to take root in group broadcasting, and it is also the reason why many trainees have begun to accept the secondary soil of group broadcasting.
"There is a concept in Japanese entertainment, called underground idols. These people don't have the opportunity to be on TV and not be covered by the mainstream media, so they spend most of their time performing regular cabaret performances in small theaters. I think those of us who are trainees in the group broadcast room are probably the underground idols of internal entertainment. Wang Xi said that underground idols are people with dreams who don't mind clearly marking the price of intimacy.
For her, whether it is on stage, in a small theater or in a live broadcast room, her job is to win the audience's love with her own efforts, no different.
In the past, group broadcasting was a vulgar culture that emerged in the era of short videos, and a group of people wearing leggings and stepping on beanie shoes performed the same dance repeatedly in the live broadcast room, which was neither advanced nor noble enough. But now, group broadcasting has become a retreat for trainees, perhaps we should look forward to the day when the good money drives out the bad money, and witness the day when the idol market and the group broadcast market will open up the second vein of Ren Du together.
(Zhou Ran, Lele and Wang Xi in the article are pseudonyms.) ）