"Resurrecting" shrimp rice may just be a good expectation for users

If people think that after the copyright is opened, Shrimp Music will have the hope of "living", this may be a misunderstanding.

Wen 丨 Li Shi rhymes

Editor 丨Gao Honghao

Alibaba applied for the trademark "Shrimp Music Entertainment" through its Singapore holding company on July 6. Founded in 2006, the music player was officially shut down by Alibaba on February 5 this year after 15 years of operation.

On July 24, the State Administration for Market Regulation ordered Tencent to resume market competition by revoking exclusive music copyrights, stopping payment methods of copyright fees such as high advance payments, and not requiring upstream copyright owners to give them conditions that are superior to competitors without justifiable reasons. Alibaba's previous trademark application has been interpreted by the outside world as the imminent return of Shrimp Music.

Ali has not responded to the matter.

If people think that after the copyright is opened, Shrimp Music will have the hope of "living", this may be a misunderstanding. Because Shrimp Music is not "dead" because of copyright issues.

Other platforms are considered the copyright of the moat, which is not so important to Shrimp Music. A former executive of Ali Music once told "LatePost" that Shrimp Did not actively participate in the copyright war and could not provide the most complete songs, but the number of songs needed by users was actually limited, and Shrimp's recommendation algorithm could make the ultimate use of the existing song library to meet the needs of users.

Even in the shutdown phase when copyright is reduced to the minimum, Shrimp Rice still has more than one million daily active users. This is the ultimate embodiment of the user power of Shrimp Music in addition to copyright.

Of course, when the opponent competes for exclusive copyright at a higher price, it objectively aggravates the dilemma of Shrimp Music. But it should be noted that Ali is never short of money or resources. It can also be grabbed, just unwillingly.

An Ali entertainment person once told "LatePost" that shrimp rice is a typical big entertainment problem. Entertainment is not Ali's main channel, it can not obtain a large amount of resources to invest in content, so the product loses market position, which further weakens the confidence of the group, forming a vicious circle.

Even NetEase Cloud Music, which entered after the market and backed netease, has never reduced its investment in music copyright. At present, the NetEase Cloud Music Library has more than 60 million pieces of music, which is comparable to Tencent Music.

From a deeper perspective, the underlying product logic of Shrimp Music is to adhere to the music itself. A former music investor once told "LatePost" that Chinese users listen to about 200 or 300 songs a month, while French users listen to 1200 or 1,400 songs a month, behind which is the gap in musical aesthetics.

And only making music players, it is difficult to make money. Even Spotify, which Shrimp Music wants to be, increased revenue by 20% from 2018 to 2019, but operating loss increased by 60%. Over the same period, Tencent Music's revenue increased by 28%, and its operating profit increased by only 14% – not by music payments but by social entertainment.

Tencent Music has built a music industry chain, through the linkage of the national K songs, live broadcast revenue, so that the entire platform to turn losses into profits; NetEase played its own comment area to shape NetEase Cloud Music into a music community with a larger market space, while increasing investment in podcasts and audiobooks - the copyright of these contents is scattered, the cost is lower than music.

If the shrimp don't follow their path, it's almost impossible to survive. But if they become them, the shrimp rice is no longer shrimp rice. Therefore, "resurrecting" shrimp rice is a beautiful expectation of users, but expectations can only become expectations.