Author/Before the banquet
"If you want to do a divine comedy, you can directly all in Douyin, and when Douyin is on fire, brand owners, variety shows, and offline performance agencies will flock to it."
"But at the same time, I smashed seven or eight hundred thousand to do song marketing, and there was no splash at all, and there were many people."
In the face of the weakening vitality of the explosive short video Divine Comedy and the increasingly difficult situation, how can music companies actively seek change?
"Super Idol's smile, not as sweet as yours." The noonday sun in August is not as dazzling as you..." A small sweet song "Love 105 Degrees of You" inadvertently caught fire, and the fire was a mess.
The double label of advertising song and zero marketing makes it unique among many douyin divine songs. Two years ago, the musician Ah Yan composed this advertising song for Watson distilled water, and the response to Watson's official Douyin was mediocre after a wave of promotion, but it was not expected to be seen again in another way two years later.
The turning point occurred around May 10, several celebrities have adapted the cover song "105 ° C", which has triggered a craze for cover songs on the whole network in a short period of time, and Ouyang Nana, Nai Wan, Guan Xiaotong and other stars have also joined the "cover singing army", and users have further broken the circle through dialect version cover songs, with gesture dance, chorus and choreography. So far, its topic has been played 2.83 billion times.
In the era when marketing was king, songs with zero marketing seemed a bit out of place. Relevant practitioners told the owner that almost all of the songs of Douyin will be marketed, and there are also many people who smash into 700,000 or 800,000 to do marketing, and zero marketing is a bit timid. Although the song has the possibility of "natural fire", it is rare to be able to explode to the extent of "105 °C".
At the same time that natural fire has become rare, the penetration and vitality of the Divine Comedy are gradually decaying, once the popularity of "Out of the Mountain" and "Green" lasted for one year, and now, the Divine Comedy can be successful for half a year.
The promotion cycle of the song has also been shortened accordingly, and 4 weeks is the longest period in the industry. If the song still shows no signs after 4 weeks, it will be completely abandoned by the team.
Image source Little Antlers Think Tank "2021 China Music Marketing Development Research Report"
After interviewing copyright content companies, publicity companies and platform parties, chopped pepper entertainment investment found that to some extent, douyin Divine Comedy is becoming more and more difficult to do, in addition to the increasing number of content disks and user aesthetic changes, it is more due to the lag of most companies' marketing ideas, resulting in the emergence of songs, it is difficult to have matching operational means.
The content pool has increased, and it has become more difficult for the Divine Comedy to "manufacture"
"If you want to make a divine comedy, you can directly all in Douyin, and when Douyin is on fire, brand owners, variety shows, and offline performance agencies will flock to it." What radio stations hit the charts, major streaming media platforms brush the charts, send records to sign and sell tours, all do not need. Li Ke, ceo of a music copyright content company, introduced it to the owner.
TikTok Fire = National Fire, as far as the Divine Comedy is concerned, this is getting closer and closer to a truth. In recent years, with a huge user base, personalized recommendations, diversified interaction and powerful music attributes, the short video platform has completely subverted the traditional publicity game. Li Ke called it a cross-border strike, just a short video platform, but reshaped the marketing strategy of the traditional music industry.
"In the past three years, the company specializing in song marketing and copyright promotion in Douyin, not to mention the previous 10 times, must also have a 5-8 times."
With the continuous increase in content disks, it is obvious that the hit rate of blockbusters is getting lower and lower. In the past, 5 million new songs may be pushed a day, and now the number may be 10 million, 20 million, but the hit is always only 100, and no one guarantees that the songs they push will stand out from 10 million.
But the company can roughly feel the pattern through a lot of data analysis every day. Its own songs are transparent on all platforms, and a song does not require heavy investment, and the company will consider it from multiple dimensions such as forwards, comments, and likes.
In terms of content, the blockbuster has no more than three characteristics: one is simple, the lyrics have no connotation, suitable for all ages; the second is catchy, the music blogger Fan Guan summed up the short video Divine Comedy from 2019 to 2021, and found that 26 songs only use 3 kinds of harmonies - all use the most common routine chords; the third is to adapt to the short video gameplay, most of the Divine Comedy production has made room for the subsequent short video publicity, such as the creation of lyrics will consider whether the content fits the gesture dance.
From the market, the company will have a special analysis team to grab data from the Internet and platform every day. If the "stay up late" theme is relatively popular recently, the songs in the background of the library management will have category labels (such as folk songs and freshness in style; love and affection in the theme), and the operators of the backstage library will match the songs that match the tone of "staying up late" and then do marketing.
If there were no similar genre in Curry, producers and songwriters would create songs to fill the gap in the market.
The head of the copyright content company, their fixed producers, songwriters and external collaborators, can always reach more than 60. The output is also quite amazing, the signed works plus cooperation and submission works, can produce 500-1000 songs per day, so that the company has to hold auditions every day to make a preliminary screening.
Whether it is the decay of the vitality of the Vibrato Divine Comedy, or the increasing difficulty of track players to push the hit, to a large extent is the lack of marketing thinking.
Marketing ideas come first, which is the top priority of the "marketing treasure book" of Yang Junlong, the founder of Baina Entertainment. Many companies blindly pursue the number one, and it is easy to lose their wives and fold soldiers - spending a lot of unjust money, but the traffic is not driven. He is more willing to find mid-waist masters to cooperate, and then find more bottom masters to shop.
Clarify the marketing ideas, and then carry out a number of screening from the technical level, such as audience age, gender, several tier cities, etc., in order to make the song reach more refined.
Many companies see that the cost of talent procurement is so huge, they have found another way, such as buying film and television clip numbers, interspersed with songs in the series playback, sometimes hundreds of thousands of likes, the drainage effect is also very impressive, or the background music in sports and scenery accounts. Because such sharing numbers are very vertical, they can sometimes achieve unexpected results.
"Bo Hu Said" cross-dressing video
Yang Junlong has a different view, in his view, the reason why the type of cross-dressing, gesture type of the master, mainly in can mobilize the user's initiative, through the guidance, infection of the audience, to achieve a fission-type communication effect. For example, the first wave of marketing of "Bo Hu Said" uses a cover number, the second wave uses an ancient style and a cross-dress type of number, and after the fission spread, the drainage effect may be 5 times that of the sharing number. "Not mobilizing UGC is actually no different from investing in hard and wide."
At the center of the Divine Comedy storm – the copyright dispute
"Short video doesn't just pry the entertainment MCN or the live broadcast industry, it pries up music copyright. Music publicity has been reshaped by it, and the level of interest behind publicity is copyright. Xiaoxu Music founder Lu Xiaoxu said.
At present, most of the monetization methods of short video Divine Comedy come from copyright - through marketing in Douyin, it is diverted to the streaming media music platform, and the traffic is divided;
Another way is to make people fire and connect offline performances, such as nightclubs, commercial performances, etc. As long as the singer has a masterpiece, twenty or thirty national nightclub tours every month, each 300,000 is not a problem, and there is a special agency for offline performances.
As for whether Douyin will be divided, Lu Xiaoxu explained that most small copyright companies can get traffic tilt is already very satisfied, only the head company will have traffic sharing, in the end, it is still the process of power game between the two sides.
The cost of making a song is not high, the average price is about 30,000, but now the promotion cost is rising, and the production cost is ten times as much.
Let's make a hypothesis, if the company invests 50 songs at a time and only produces one hit, then the profit of this hit will cover the cost of all the songs behind it, and the sunk cost is huge.
The benefits of making Divine Comedy are obvious, and many copyright companies' data - 2 songs account for 95% of the traffic of 2,000 songs in the library, but there will still be people willing to cooperate.
When the first wave of marketing ends, if the market response is good, the company can also resell the copyright. The company that took over the order was counting on maximizing the realization through subsequent "fermentation" to earn the spread.
Mention of copyright does not avoid the right to perform. According to the Copyright Law, the right of performance refers to the right of the copyright owner or authorized others to publicly perform the work, as well as the right to publicly broadcast the work by various means.
A phenomenon that used to be very common: when an old song was sung by an Internet celebrity, the new MCN company would go to the original copyright company's authorization and launch a version of the cover song in order to earn traffic share or buyout income.
Nowadays, this matter is difficult to carry out, and the copyright authorization has soared from the past one or two million to six figures.
However, the benefits of singing a song are really considerable, so that many parties flock to it, and the lawsuits do not stop.
According to China Music Finance, "Your Answer" was sung by the singer Ah Yan of Don't Music, but it has never been able to reach an agreement with the original copyright owner Haole Wuhuang on the right to perform. Haole Wuhuang told Music Finance that Don't Music did not abide by the agreement during the cooperation period, violated its right to sing its songs, and showed a lawyer's letter.
The two sides did not give in to each other, and there were hundreds of nightclubs offline to invite Ah Yu to perform, but because the performance rights were not negotiated, this part of the offline income was completely abandoned.
After the above phenomenon occurred, Li Ke summed up three reasons: after the hot songs generated revenue, the result of human nature; the structure of rights in the music industry has undergone tremendous changes; incremental copyright has gradually occupied an important position in the music market.
Streaming music platforms are not willing to just be referees, and in recent years, the end has become more and more frequent - they show great ambitions at the content level, but in different ways: TME is through investment, while NetEase is through self-made teams.
It is reported that NetEase Cloud Music has set up a relevant department of self-made copyright, which has obvious data advantages compared with external copyright companies. When you want to do a blockbuster, the platform can reverse the operation through data feedback: for example, the whole network has invested tens of thousands of new songs, which styles and themes are more popular to drain back to the platform, the platform is clear, and the corresponding production direction will be more focused.
Self-control is not simply to recruit musicians, but to directly go down to the scene to make songs. If the platform is optimistic about the rap category, then it will directly make a large number of original songs for this category, but the exclusivity of these songs must be in NetEase Cloud.
TME is to solve the content problem through investment, and many short video music companies such as Anemone Music have received investment from TME.
The saddest thing about the days is the old copyright company, which has spent a lot of money to represent the songs of Hong Kong and Taiwan singers, and the platform will provide a guarantee of such as 10 million yuan a year, but the contribution of traffic is minimal, and sometimes it is not enough to withstand a slobbering song.
It is reported that from 2019 to 2020, platforms led by TME will cancel the guarantee system in large numbers. The copyright income of all songs is run by a year's real traffic, and the previous premiums have been invested in self-production.
Incubation of KOLs, IP content development,
The long-tail value of the Divine Comedy is fully exploited
When it is becoming more and more difficult to "make" blockbusters, copyright content companies are also actively seeking changes.
The addition of MCN business is one of them, music KOLs are relatively niche, coupled with the advantages of company content and operation, making music experts more easily known.
It is reported that Xiaoxu Music has incubated more than 20 Douyin singing accounts in the next two years under this opportunity, including several accounts with many successful tens of millions and millions of fans.
Interior view of Xiaoxu music
Musicians are divided into singers and anchors, and although they are all related to music, they are very different. The growth path of singers is relatively slow, but after becoming famous, they can receive variety shows and OST, and have more staying power; while the anchor harvest is relatively fast, it is reported that the monthly flow of anchors with 400,000 to 500,000 fans can reach one million.
From the perspective of signing or not, music talents are also divided into signing types and incubation types.
"Because although the incubation cost is high and the cycle is long, once it is successful, the return is very rich, and the company's control over the account is extremely strong." The CEO of a music company confessed.
There will be various problems in the signing number, and problems such as the sense of belonging and the distribution of benefits are not uncommon. In other words, none of the signing masters end up not being chicken feathers. In the game between the future and the company, the weaker the company's sense of existence, the lower the status.
Music masters can not only be fan theory, some masters ate the early traffic dividends, accumulated more than 10 million fans, but in terms of monetization efficiency, many fans of 400,000 to 500,000 anchors monetized more impressive. Because these fans are loyal fans of live broadcast retention, it is possible that the head anchor will flow tens of millions of dollars a year.
When advertisers choose to run, they pay great attention to the fit between product tone and KOL. Most music gurus usually receive ads that are vertical, such as microphones, headphones, etc.
However, the music masters of Baina Entertainment are a few exceptions.
In order to strengthen the ability to monetize content, increase the value of talents, reduce the cost of content production, and expand the field of signing talents, Baina Entertainment has won the quintessential IP of Shiqu Baodi in the Forbidden City, and will work with IP parties to carry out all-round content IP development, covering five major sections such as new media drama synthesis, audio content development, and drama derivative music albums.
Taking the new media drama as an example, the topic of "How the Ancient People 'Double Eleven' Bought, Bought and Bought" was borrowed from the "Qingming Shanghe Tu", and the food story of the ancient literary master Su Dongpo was introduced through "Yan Song Tu". While promoting traditional culture, it also considers the tastes of the current audience, actively promotes the integration of pan-entertainment, and will carry out music and commodity marketing and exploration of goods.
Through the above cases, the brand promotion section of music KOLs has expanded significantly, and FMCG, gourmet, and 3C brand owners will also seek cooperation in the future, on the other hand, the drama content based on unified IP has reached multi-KOL coverage, which invisibly reduces the cost of choreography.
"Learn to Cat Call" originally sang Xiao Pan Pan endorsing the seven cats
In addition to MCN and IP licensing, Baina is also constantly trying to broaden the channels of monetization. Once basically relying on copyright sharing, now more than ten channels have been generated, such as live broadcast platform revenue, cooperation with commercial brands, and the exploration of music and goods. So far, "Learn to Cat Call" has cooperated with 10 brands such as KFC and Seven Cats, of which Seven Cats is the main advertisement of the 2020 David TV Spring Festival. At the same time, Baina also reached cooperation with the Shenzhen government - in order to encourage the public to respond positively to vaccination, launched a slogan "Let's vaccinate together, together seedlings..."
On the basis of broadening the monetization channels, the company will also try its best to extend the value cycle of Divine Comedy. After learning cat barking phenomenon-level explosion, Yang Junlong knew that the first round of marketing of the song was cute girl gesture dance, "spoof" can also be marketed, he designed "learn pig call" and "learn donkey call" and other diss topics, triggering a new round of imitation boom.
The definition of explosive models, for Baina Entertainment, has long been not only at the data level, but also reflected in the influence of the circle of minds. On the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Baina Copyright represented and marketed a series of songs with the main theme of the times, such as Han Lei's "Let the Red Flag Fly", Jackie Chan's "Poverty Alleviation Declaration", "Youth Strong", and Zhou Shen's "China in the Lights". "If you compare it horizontally in the industry, it is difficult to say that its data is a "hit", but when it comes to the main theme song, people will naturally think of it."
"We are not the "blockbuster" production company that everyone thinks, and our goal is to build an industry-wide platform with music as the chain."
Isn't that obvious? Yang Junlong smiled.
Note: Li Ke is a pseudonym in the text