Daily Q: Did you watch an online concert today?
Recently, Eason Chan casually released a Nine-Palace Grid Weibo, which once again triggered the fans' urging action:
"Selfies are so beautiful! So when is the concert? ”
"I miss the wind of Victoria Harbour, I miss Fat Chen's face, I miss the concerts he always can't open..."
But this time fans won't have to wait too long: Eason Chan is working with the Hong Kong Communion Orchestra to prepare for a charity concert in November – a year after his last online charity concert.
You may have discovered one fact:
More and more top singers like Eason Chan are holding online concerts.
In 2021, the "China Online Music Industry Report" released by Ai Media Consulting showed that due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, online music has gained development dividends, and in the first half of 2020 alone, the scale of users watching online music performances has exceeded 80 million, which shows the market potential.
From Eason Chan 1.0 to Eason Chan 2.0, from Mayday to Sun Yanzi, from "Strawberry Music Festival" to "Bilibili Summer Graduation Song Festival"...
Nowadays, watching an online concert has become a daily routine for fans.
Online concert, after listening to it, I am alive again
In May 2020, Mayday came to Taipei Municipal Stadium.
21 years ago, they held their first large-scale concert here, but today is different:
The concert, titled "Suddenly I Want to See You," was empty in the stands.
"There was no audience, but I could still feel the shouts of thousands — because the blue glow sticks on the 16,000 seats were lit up, and each glow stick represented you watching on your phone and computer."
Even if a year has passed, I believe that everyone must still remember this scene.
According to TME live statistics, more than 35 million people watched the "10,000 people" concert on Mayday online - during the epidemic period, the singing across the screen also made up for the regret that fans could not participate in the offline concert.
Starting from 2020, due to the epidemic, many offline concerts and music festivals have to choose to postpone or cancel.
Online concerts have thus ushered in a wave of "peak period".
Take TME live, a music brand that focuses on online live broadcasting, as an example: in 2020 alone, TME live cooperated with more than 20 well-known singers such as Rene Liu, Lin Junjie, Wu Qingfeng, Mao Buyi, etc., to present a wonderful online concert for the audience.
In addition to individual concerts, major music festivals have also opened online mode:
Modern Sky cooperated with Station B to launch the "House Strawberry" online music festival to let the audience see the singers' homely side; NetEase Cloud Music has launched the Cloud Village Bedroom Music Festival and Hard Ground Live, and the Damai platform has also launched the "Parallel Wheat Live" super concert...
A year has passed, the popularity of online concerts has not decreased, but has increased, and new tricks have been played - just in the form of concerts, there are 10,000 concerts, campus song parties, short video concerts, virtual immersion and other completely different ways of playing.
On June 20, 2021, the "Bilibili Summer Graduation Song Party" held by Station B made full use of its own advantages and invited original music owners and new generation musicians to sing in various iconic locations on the university campus, and a youthful atmosphere came to the face:
In this online song meeting, Zhou Shen sang "Try everything" under the teaching building, the music up master sang "You Were a Teenager" in the dormitory, rappers played rap on the basketball court, and Park Shu and Xu Song launched "Memory Killing" on the outdoor stage...
In addition to the regular music platform, cooperation with short video platforms has also become a major trend for singers to hold online concerts.
On August 27, 2021, "Douyin Summer Song Club" invited lead singer Wu Qingfeng, group leader He Jingyang, Bes Xie Xinyi and others, and launched a special session of "all the staff set off again and sing loudly at the end of the world"; on September 9, 2021, "Douyin Summer Song Club" invited Sun Yanzi, the "unpopular singer" who opened his voice for less than an hour, and received a staggering 600 million likes, which shows its influence.
The online concert name scene in 2021 must be indispensable to Andy Lau's "Forgetting Love Water" -
On July 29, Andy Lau entered the short video platform and broadcast the 40th anniversary of his official debut, with more than 100 million viewers; on September 27, Andy Lau, who ushered in his 60th birthday, also specially recorded a 15-minute mini online concert for fans, singing "Forgetting Love Water", "The Moon Represents My Heart", "Accompanying to the End"...
Even Hua Tsai has opened a live broadcast, and the online concerts in the music circle are "rolled in", will it be far away?
Online concerts, who listens to whoever is on top
For many fans, online concerts are more like "substitutes" for offline concerts:
According to data from the China Performance Industry Association, in more than 800 postponed performances across the country, an average of 66% of fans did not refund tickets, but chose to retain orders, and the order retention rate for first-line artists was 75% -
For them, the sense of ceremony of raising a glow stick in the hands of an offline concert, the sense of cheering with all the fans, and the sense of interaction with the singer's name are unparalleled in online concerts.
However, for more people, there is no advantage or disadvantage between the two.
In 2021, the industry public account @ entertainment hard candy pointed out that with the in-depth operation of major platforms, the differentiated value of online concerts has gradually become prominent - it is no longer a temporary substitute for offline concerts, but a cultural and entertainment product with independent commercial value, and is constantly reshaping the audience's concert experience.
Needless to say, online concerts have always had obvious advantages:
People do not need to spend expensive money to grab a ticket, and they are no longer limited by the time and place of the concert; the concert venue that once could only accommodate 10,000 people can meet the viewing needs of millions or even tens of millions of people after "transferring" to the online platform;
In the process of watching the performance, people do not have to worry about being blocked by the people in front of them, unable to see the singer, and can enjoy the high-definition perspective of different camera positions anytime and anywhere.
Not only that, online concerts can also be combined with 5G, XR and other technologies to create a better stage effect for the audience:
In 2021, in singer Liu Xianhua's TME Live online concert, a virtual animation character Apoki appeared, responsible for the whole process of controlling, promoting and interacting with the host work; TFBoys' seventh anniversary "Daylight Travel" concert combined with XR technology to create an immersive stage effect; THE9's "Virtual City" concert also placed singers in different virtual scenes to perform.
Online concerts that can be watched on short video platforms have lowered the threshold for people to participate in concerts, changed the concert from "exclusive to fans" to "listened to by all", and invisibly expanded the audience group.
The functions of bullet screen, comment, like, gift-giving and so on in the online concert can meet the interaction needs of fans and singers: singers will take time to read and respond to fans' messages, and even temporarily change the songs according to the real-time voting results of fans, which also makes fans more involved.
On the other hand, the viewing mode that can be cut in and out at any time, and the clip highlights of various highlight moments also meet the viewing habits of short video users.
Initiated by singer Lao Wolf and imitating the relay concert of "One World: Together At Home", the relay concert adopted a short video dissemination model: Lao Wolf first posted a 15-second "Tiger's Mouth Escape" in the WeChat circle of friends, and then hundreds of musicians uploaded their own singing clips in the way of "following the post", and finally gathered into a complete concert.
50 yuan a ticket, will you see
In 2021, the "China Future Music Ecology Research Report" released by Ai Media Consulting shows that the scale of China's digital music market will grow to 42.89 billion yuan in one year, online music will receive a new round of development dividends, cloud Live and other online new forms will accelerate the development process, and the development prospects of China's online music market are considerable.
Nowadays, online concerts with a large audience base have also begun to explore new charging models.
On August 22, 2020, NetEase Cloud Music launched TFBoys' "Daylight Travel" Seventh Anniversary Concert - this online concert adopts a charging model, the tickets are divided into 30 yuan, 158 yuan, 860 yuan a total of three files, the most high-end price and the price of the offline concert is not up or down; in addition, the T-shirts, vinyl records, doll blind boxes and other peripherals derived from this online concert have also been warmly welcomed by fans.
On the other hand, the "Light Up Live Action" LIVE live music support project initiated by NetEase Cloud announced that it would create 100 high-quality live-level performances, which were also carried out in the mode of online payment - 10 yuan a ticket, which is also the largest music paid live broadcast project in China so far.
However, in the face of online concerts that began to charge, many people are still in a wait-and-see state.
In a questionnaire survey initiated by the Beijing News, only 5.56% of the audience is currently willing to spend more than 50 yuan on the ticket price for the online concert, and 44.44% of users choose the option of less than 10 yuan.
According to the survey results of Ai Media Consulting, 50.9% of the audience believes that there are phenomena such as broadcast caton and delay in online concerts, and 46.6% of the surveyed users believe that it is difficult to protect the copyright of original works, and these problems still need to be solved.
For the audience, online concerts are still insufficient. For singers, online concerts also mean no small challenge:
In the empty scene, whether the singer can retract freely and smoothly in front of the camera will directly affect the effect of the entire online concert. As Yang Zi, one of the directors of Barley "Parallel Wheat Scene", said:
"Removing the charm of sound, light and electricity on the stage (offline concerts), most musicians are not even as good as the Internet celebrities in the filter. When facing a wider group, netizens are not concerned about your original works, but your 'sense of the net'. ”
Shen Lihui, the founder of Modern Sky, said frankly that in the future, online concerts should also give full play to the advantages of interaction and new media, and cooperate with short video platforms such as Kuaishou and Watermelon Video to attract more audience groups:
"In the past, Modern Sky did live performances, just like sports channels, just one-way content presentation. But now, with the popularity of online concerts, we have to start thinking more about how to reflect entertainment and interactivity. ”
With the development of 5G and XR technology, online concerts are bound to usher in more audiences.
Is the online concert worth a ticket price of 50 yuan? This question remains to be answered.
But it is foreseeable that cooperation with short video platforms will become the norm for online concerts.
Resources
[1] Analysis of the music industry in the "post-epidemic era| Xiao Yan and Yang Jing
[2] Zheng Yanqi, | of live research on online live music from the perspective of communication studies
[3] The short video feature of the online music platform explores | Wu Dan
[4] Spend 860 yuan to watch the TFBOYS online concert, is it worth it? | Burn Finance Studio
[5] Online concerts, sure enough, people who want to do offline concerts to do | entertainment hard candy
In November, New Weekly will hold the 22nd China Video List in Beijing, where academic experts and industry elites will be invited to take stock of the 2021 annual programs, dramas and video performances, and scan the QR code below to register.
About China Video Chart:
Originating in 1999, the "China Video List" sponsored by New Weekly is one of the earliest, most influential and most authoritative TV and video lists in China. In 2013, video began to disintegrate the territory of television, and New Weekly continued to hold China Video Lists with loud voices and profound insights, speaking out about videos and commenting on industry trends.