In January 2021, Shrimp Music announced that it would stop serving on February 5 due to business development adjustments, making this online music product, which had 20 million registered users as early as 2013, fade away with a considerable number of people's youth memories. At that time, there was a view in the industry that strategic mistakes, copyright losses, and user shrinkage were all reasons why Xiami Music was constantly surpassed by competitors in this track, and before that, for online music platforms, the importance of music copyright was self-evident.
In fact, in the domestic market, music copyright only began to be gradually valued by various platforms only in 2015, and the National Copyright Administration also issued the Notice on Ordering Online Music Service Providers to Stop Disseminating Musical Works without Authorization that year. Subsequently, major online music platforms have successively rolled off the production of more than 2.2 million unauthorized music works, and this track has gradually entered the era of "exclusive copyright".
However, in July this year, with the State Administration for Market Regulation ordering Tencent Holdings Co., Ltd. to remove the exclusive copyright of online music and other penalties in accordance with the law, Tencent, which holds a number of exclusive copyrights such as Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner Music, officially announced on August 31 that it "gave up the exclusive licensing right of music copyright".
Less than a month after Tencent's move, Damai, Ali's performance ticketing platform, announced the launch of the music content label "Shrimp Music Entertainment". It also makes Shrimp Mi Music return to everyone's vision again, and in the eyes of the outside world, this is obviously another attempt by Ali in the music track.
It is reported that the launch of the Shrimp Music label is not a restart of the Shrimp Music APP. According to the information disclosed by Damai, the business of "Shrimp Music Entertainment" will revolve around content, scenes and musicians, and will bring music performance activities including concerts, music festivals, and Livehouse tours. Yin Liang, general manager of Ali Music Product Center and former operation of Shrimp Music, will continue to serve as the manager of Shrimp Music Entertainment.
According to Yin Liang, "At present, the consumption habits of Chinese consumers are shifting from purchasing consumer goods to experiencing experiences, and users are no longer obsessed with how many performances they have watched, but are more concerned about what kind of unforgettable experience they have experienced." Shrimp Music Entertainment will take 'seeing the difference' as the main purpose of the brand spirit, organize content innovation and research and development of IP in all scenarios and multiple tracks, build a new consumption complex, and lead the innovative development of live music." From the current point of view, Xiami Music Entertainment has clearly emphasized the development of IP, expanded its business line to offline music performance activities, and continued to integrate online and offline resources to serve original musicians.
In fact, as early as 2018, the Prospective Industry Research Institute pointed out in its music industry analysis report that "the size of the music performance market has reached nearly 7 billion, and the consumer group continues to be younger." It shows that the box office revenue of theater performances reached 2.583 billion yuan, the box office revenue of large-scale concerts and music festivals was 3.985 billion yuan, and the income of Livehouse was 250 million yuan, and among the consumer population, the post-95s accounted for more than 65%.
It is not difficult to find that Shrimp Music Entertainment creates IP, tries offline performance activities, cultivates independent musicians and other businesses, one of which is to rely on the resources of the original Ali Entertainment and the B-end business "Sound Snail" that Shrimp Music has not closed, and the second is to further expand the audience by trying businesses such as livehouse.
In recent years, Ali Entertainment has successively launched the OST of six film and television dramas such as the online drama "Si Teng" and the movie "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery", and has held popular film and television IP concerts such as "Chen Qingling" offline. For livehouse and other entertainment methods loved by young people, Ali's Fliggy also launched the "Fliggy Desert Hertz Music Festival" this summer, connecting Northwest Travel, Taobao Intangible Cultural Heritage Merchants, Musicians, and Music Lovers to explore the IP form of tourism destinations such as "Travel + Live". These attempts undoubtedly provide a certain possibility for the development of Shrimp Music from online to offline.
In addition, as early as September 2019, NetEase Cloud Music announced that it had obtained a total of 700 million US dollars in B2 round financing from Alibaba and Yunfeng Fund, and then in August 2020, its vinyl VIP annual card rights and interests have also joined the Ali 88 VIP ecological rights package. Therefore, under the continuous deepening of the cooperation between Ali and NetEase Cloud Music, it is obviously natural for Xiami Music to try new music business after it closed the online music service.
Tencent, which gave up the exclusive music copyright, has focused more on campus musicians and other aspects. On September 25, QQ Music announced the launch of a new campus music label "Hello, University Sound", which fully supports the growth of campus musicians in terms of traffic, financial support, and professional guidance. In the near future, it has also cooperated with Huawei, Xiaomi and other brand mobile phones to provide content sources for the latter's music APP.
In addition, as a "newcomer" to this track, ByteDance has recently been rumored or will launch an independent music APP "Feile" in the domestic market. Previously, there were rumors that it had upgraded its music business to a P1 priority business, and was on a par with the game and education businesses, and had begun testing the music agency distribution platform Galaxy Ark.
However, whether it is Tencent's changes to this business, or ByteDance's "foolishness", or NetEase Cloud Music's continuous "step by step" for copyright, it obviously means that this track is expected to usher in great changes in the future.
According to relevant statistics, the average monthly active users of China's online music industry have grown from 79 million in 2016 to 251 million in 2020 and are expected to reach 353 million in 2021. Analysts at Ai Media Consulting believe that "as online music platforms gradually build a diversified content ecology and expand music scenes, new formats of online music will continue to emerge." At the same time, according to the relevant reports distributed by Alibaba apps, among the active users of online music applications, young users under the age of 25 account for the highest proportion, reaching 41%, which also means that the rejuvenation of users has also become one of the characteristics of online music APPS.
Therefore, some insiders believe that The business "resurrection" of Shrimp Music Entertainment's choice to build music scenes from offline concerts and offline live is undoubtedly an attempt to meet the needs of young users. But whether it will restart the Shrimp Music APP in the future, or in what form it will continue to develop, in fact, there is still time to give an answer.
In the second half of the online music field, in addition to the fact that copyright will no longer be a problem, how to provide users with a better experience and meet the needs of rapidly changing users is or will be the magic weapon for platforms to get more users in the future.
【The picture of this article comes from the network】