"You always say that I am an old antique, and I can't tell the times and only love the heroes in the book."
The time goes back to February this year. A folding fan, a long shirt, the "post-00" singer Yi Treasurer this time is the first time on the CCTV stage, but there is a complete calm between the eyebrows. Combined with the technique of "singing in the middle of talking, singing with speaking" in the Beijing opera, this "Old Antique" not only has the harmonic structure and arrangement of popular music, but also runs through the wind bones from the OG in the old Beijing hutongs.
This song won the full house, and Wang Peiyu, Wu Kequn, Zhen Zidan and other predecessors gave thumbs up.
On the other side of the stage, a boy in glasses and shirt jeans watched all this silently and breathed a sigh of relief. The boy's name is Zhou Mingcong, and we used to call him "Xiao Onion", a member of Tencent's musicians.
"Old Antique" is from the Tencent Musicians Force Program of dialect folk songs global selection of "Sheng yin memory" TOP 30 works, as another new work of the "New National Style" music group "A Small Onion", it has not been a month, this song has received more than 10 million hits on the whole network, and many listeners have used it in the short videos of leisurely life such as courtyards, bowl tea, flower watching, and bird walking.
After such a lap, Xiao Onion had one more hit single in his hand, and the total number of auditions of his personal music works reached 280 million!
【Hot song creation or incubation of personal IP, how to choose musicians?】 】
Talking about his musical development over the years, Xiao Onion himself also feels that "it is indeed very smooth".
I met him in the "Force Project" held by Tencent Musicians in 2018, when Xiao Onion was still a fledgling and thorny creator, and as soon as he came up, he said to me: "The vision of a small onion is to be the purest and most authentic national style." ”
He saw a slight doubt on my face, and he was even more excited: "Sakura Sensei, I usually read your music reviews... But I think you probably don't know much about the national wind. There are indeed a lot of 'pseudo-national styles' in the market, mixed with fish and dragons. My members and I are all students of traditional opera, and we will stick to our own way, find our audience, and let more people like traditional culture. ”
Looking back now, Xiao Onion did indeed do it, realizing the haikou he boasted.
Since entering Tencent Musician 4 years ago, a small green onion has been a continuous masterpiece, and the number of song plays has skyrocketed, and it has quickly jumped into the 100 million mark. Talking about his own growth, on the one hand, he is very confident in his own creation, on the other hand, he also owes it to the strong support of Tencent's musician platform.
"In fact, if you want to talk about the original musician platform, Tencent musicians should be regarded as the latest players to enter the game." We all know that Tencent is a big company, but before I moved in, I didn't really think I would make a home here. As Xiao Onion said, Tencent musicians are indeed "late strikers".
Prior to this, there have been many platforms that support young creators through various original incentive programs, or match them with more mature music producers, arrangers, recording studios, or direct cash rewards.
But the times are changing, when the threshold of music production is getting lower and lower, the sharing of high-quality music production resources brought about by globalization subverts many traditional concepts, young musicians no longer worry about how a song should become a more high-quality studio work, they are fully capable of realizing the ideas in their minds, "what kind of help should an original musician platform provide for musicians", Tencent musicians who came to Shanshan can think more deeply about this problem.
"My biggest feeling is that Tencent musicians are IP creation logic, everything revolves around the logic of creators, rather than the 'hot song logic' of chasing short-term interests." Shallot said.
"For a lot of young musicians, we didn't really have any fame at the beginning, just because the work had potential and was heard by everyone. I have also been exposed to other platforms, and I always feel that their obsession with 'hot orders' is very deep, but on the contrary, the importance of 'people' is relatively low.
I fully understand that it takes a long time to incubate and cultivate a new person, and there is a high risk, and it is indeed not as good as 'making songs'.
But over the years, I can really feel that Tencent musicians are patiently accumulating works for our members. Especially in the model of a label like a small onion, I keep having new members come in, like the righteous treasurer is my new member, and at the beginning it was very simple and needed to be rebuilt. We kept running into each other, and that's why we had "Old Antiques." ”
【In the face of musicians waiting to be fed, how does the business middle office work?】 】
People-oriented, this is the perception of the onion onion on the front end. But if we raise the perspective, among Tencent musicians, in the past four years, musicians who have grown explosively like a small onion are by no means alone.
Like Lunsang, Yixun, etc., they have achieved hundreds of millions of views growth; Bobbbier, a pop new musician who has been stationed for three years, has increased the number of plays by 1.07 billion, an increase of 4800 times, and its number of fans has increased by 572,800, an increase of 920 times.
If you simply understand all of this as a simple judgment such as "because Tencent Music has traffic", "QQ Music, Cool Dog, Cool I will give them traffic", it is inevitable that you will think too simple.
As Xiao Onion himself said, "For musicians, traffic is never enough; no matter how much traffic you are given within the platform, like a recommendation bit or something, you will be too little." Now the spread of the music market is actually a lot of dimensions, your songs should be exposed in variety shows, in the OST of movies and TV series, in the short video platform to have exposure - but everyone knows, now to promote a song on the short video, how much does it cost? It's going to cost millions, right? ”
Therefore, what Xiao Onion, as a musician, does not perceive is the "business middle office" ability of Tencent musicians.
The concept of business middle office first came from e-commerce. For example, when the scale of an enterprise is gradually expanding and standardized management is required, we will use the ERP system (BTW. The record distribution company I served, Star Alien, was the first company to use the ERP system in the record distribution industry 10 years ago, which also helped it greatly improve its efficiency and become the first in the industry that year; when the supply chain expanded and we wanted to connect with more suppliers, we would go to SRM; when the warehouse management reached a certain scale, we would meet WMS... Well, I know that the readers of this article are not interested in these, you just need to know that when the business goes to a certain scale, there will be crossovers and overlaps in various business sectors, constantly "repeatedly building wheels", and the cross-waste of various resources. When I switched the logic to the music industry, the common pathologies are:
· The person in charge of publicity felt that we lacked such a blockbuster song, so he began to direct the songwriting of musicians;
· The business brokers felt that the publicity was too bad, so they decided to outsource a publicity supplier to do it themselves;
· The project felt that the copyright docking was too unreliable, so he decided to contact the platform to see if he could get more resources;
This abounds.
Therefore, the "business middle office" came into being, and you can understand that this is an organization that can support multiple front-end services, and has strong coordination and unified deployment.
We all know that in the link supported by original musicians, you must have the following links that cannot be bypassed: music production; song distribution; digital album sales strategy and payment strategy; copyright incentives; advertising sharing system; live broadcast revenue (gift tipping); short video distribution; tour sponsorship; business cooperation; cross-industry cooperation; music festival cooperation; brand endorsement cooperation...
All of the above business segments are indispensable links for original musicians, and music is not a greenhouse vegetable, you can't use the same mold to apply to everyone, how to get a relatively standardized, but with an executable way of working? This is the role of Tencent Musician's business middle office.
Otherwise, you simply can't cover the impressive results of more than 230,000 original musicians gathered on Tencent's musician platform in the past four years, generating a total of 1.66 million music works, and averaging millions of plays per musician.
Take a small green onion as an example, they are typical musicians who "do not lack professional music production capabilities, and the most lack of accurate user exposure crowds". Xiao Onion Ziyun: "I don't really value copyright income, nor do I value how much performance fees I can have; I want more performance opportunities, appearance opportunities." Therefore, the invisible hand of Tencent Musician Business Middle Office matched the following resources for them, only saying that it was recent:
Performance Resources:
After the self-righteous treasurer "Old Antiques" was exposed on CCTV and received unanimous praise, in May 2021, he first participated in the Tencent Musicians' Original Ceremony; the following in June, he went to Macao to participate in the "Centennial Style, Don't Forget the Original Heart - Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China Youth Song Festival". "Being able to perform on the same stage with Zhou Shen, Zhang Liangying and Xu Song is a great inspiration for us."
Cross-border resources:
Zhou Mingcong, the manager of a small green onion, as a music producer, created the IP theme song of Tencent Musician x Quick Look Comics. In this "collection of world views" campaign initiated by Quick Look Comics, Xiao Onion fused his national style and national comics, both of which are the most popular parts of the current young culture.
Media & Vocal Resources:
Onion himself is a person with a strong sense of mission for traditional culture, and you can feel this in every chat with him. In view of Xiao Onion's strong output personality, Tencent musicians in addition to letting him have a burst of lectures in the self-made video program "Musician Talk", they often arrange salons and forums. "At the China Internet Copyright Protection and Development Conference held at the Beijing International Hotel a while ago, I was invited by Tencent and was the only musician here."
Public Welfare Resources:
Tencent musicians have been actively involved in the construction of public welfare music culture, collecting 3585 public welfare songs through various projects in the past four years, and thousands of musicians have created songs for the epidemic in 2020. Along with Xiao Onion's own sense of mission, he also participated in a trip to Shaanxi organized by TME, came to a small county town, and gave the children his National Style Music Lesson, which Was very impressed by Xiao Onion.
As mentioned above, Xiao Onion actually doesn't need to care about what the business middle office is, he just needs to dock, match the resources he needs, and then make his own music, that's all.
[Insist on "free range", do not engage in killing chickens and taking eggs, everyone is willing to play with you]
Since the platform is so powerful, does the platform use data to push you back? Hint at you? Let you do those, you know, now very popular "short video national style songs"?
Onion replied, "No, not really." ”
"Of course I look at the data. But I don't do certain things because I'm data-oriented. As I said when I first met Sakura-sensei, my current views and attitudes haven't changed much at that time. Of course, I was more open than I was then.
In addition to using opera to combine popular music, such as "Old Antiques", I am also using folk song minor tunes from all over the world to combine popular music. A member of the shallot tree went to Yunnan to collect wind, and in some places the folk songs only have language, no words, and I want to use it in my music. There are also folk songs like Northeast China and local folk songs in Beijing, which are also parts that I want to expand. In fact, China's traditional culture has a wide range, and it is all points that can be combined. I don't limit myself to one style, I can have a diverse presentation. ”
"However, a small onion is always an IP that revolves around how tradition and popularity complement each other, and some of our songs may become popular on the Internet, but we are definitely not a group that does 'net red songs'." I don't know any traffic passwords.
In my imagination, I want to become the deyun society, that is: you may not understand crosstalk, do not have much research on crosstalk, but you definitely know The Deyun Society, you know that his level of crosstalk is definitely good. I hope that a scallion can do the same in the future. When you mention the music of the national style, you can think of us. ”
Xiao Onion also jokingly said to me: "I found that Tencent musicians are quite good in this regard, basically adopting a free-range policy for us, and indeed never let me copy those short video Internet celebrity songs." Tencent musicians have never tried, throw me a song, let me copy a song out. You say that this is a long-term fishing for big fish, no matter what, I think this is what inspires musicians to create. ”
In my opinion, it is the "free-range" of Music Tencent musicians, the laissez-faire at the creative level, and the silent service and support on the business stage, which has brought together so many young, excellent and eclectic musicians.
Among them, I was impressed by Chen Yimiao, a 17-year-old girl with national style, who came from an erhu family and won all the erhu awards in China at a young age, and was the only berkelly full scholarship recipient in Asia in the past 5 years. Chen Yimiao quickly found a good friend here, she and Xiao Onion, who is also an "old antique", hit it off, and the two collaborated on a single that is being produced.
In addition to the one-shot with Chen Yimiao, Xiao Onion's work "Easy to Know" in Tencent Musicians' "Bole Project" project will also be sung by well-known musician Zhou Chuanxiong, and the song is expected to be released in September.
Another talented girl who has been a Musician in Tencent for nearly 4 years, EnjiA Wei Enjia, is also a singer I like very much, many people may have heard her name because of her and her alumnus Yu Jiayun's "You", as an author, she has written songs for popular musicians such as Zhang Yixing, Zhou Bichang, Yu Zhen, etc. As a musician, she has excellent skills and delicate emotional expressions.
Wei Enjia said that Tencent musicians provided great help when she first returned to China and was the first Bole in her career as a musician.
There are many excellent musicians on the platform, in short, respect for music, people-oriented, long-term operation, I think this is the success secret of Tencent musicians can attract many talents to join.
【Tencent Musician's Fourth Anniversary, Still on the Road】
After four years of development, Tencent Musicians has accumulated a large number of excellent original musicians.
Tencent musician
#腾讯音乐人四周年 Promotional Video [Celebrating] When the inspiration bursts, we can't hide our excitement. As we pondered the song, we couldn't sleep through the night. The road to composing music, we are lonely. On the road of loving music, we are never alone. If everyone is a song, then our pursuit is only one: to find the #tune of our own
The video number
On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the establishment of the platform, Tencent Musicians, together with TME live music performance brand TME live and TME's "10 Billion Studio", has officially launched the "Force Stage Plan".
From August 2021, there will be "city stages" in different cities every week, and musicians who stand out from them will take the "call stage" for that season. Participating musicians have the opportunity to perform on the same stage as star guests.
At present, the first special guest performances announced are Trojan Horse, Zhu Jingshi Akini JING, Second-hand Rose Band, Good Sister, Taiyi, VaVa Mao Yanqi, Commes Orchestra, White Paper Band, etc. From October onwards, the pop stage, rock stage, and New Year's Eve stage will continue to be launched, followed by rap, national style, folk songs, electronic music and other theme stages.
The ultimate excellence will have the opportunity to stand on the stage of TMEA's year-end festival and compete for the Outstanding Musician of the Year award.
When the Tencent Musician Project was first established four years ago, as Xiao Onion said, "I never thought I would put my home here", but in this way, Tencent musicians have steadily come to the present with every step of the way.
For the Tencent musician platform, no matter how many excellent musicians there are, it is not too much; for musicians, it is not too late to join.
We can feel that behind every data released by Tencent Musicians on the fourth anniversary is a warm story about growth and dreams, and it is all the growth of local music that trusts each other and is sincere and hardworking.
In this era full of opportunities and challenges, every moment is a new starting point, we firmly believe that good music is still on the road, believe in music, but also represent and believe in the future.