A water
"From 0:00 on March 5, 2021, except for the authorized service of musicians on the web terminal yinluo platform to maintain operations, other operations (of Shrimp Mi) will be stopped, the server will be shut down, and login will not be possible at that time and in the future."
After "no comment", the farewell of shrimp rice officially entered the countdown. The vast, detailed and professional shrimp rice quku will no longer exist. "Even if you turn shrimp into a music museum without a player," his wish was dashed. The shutdown of the server meant complete death, and the most comprehensive music encyclopedia in the country, painstakingly written by many people for twelve years, was about to disappear. The community spirit that Shrimp Rice once prided itself on had disappeared even earlier.
Announcement of the shutdown of Shrimp Music
The story of Shrimp Mi is a typical example of a musical idealist who fails to marry capital and is finally abandoned. But in its twelve-year life cycle, it has also broken through a number of promising paths, provided a spiritual home for a large number of true music lovers, and helped a number of excellent new musicians find listeners and a way forward. It also missed opportunities, lost the copyright war, lost the favor of capital, and consumed ideals and vigor in frequent management changes and internal friction, and finally came to an end.
The defeat of shrimp rice has long been laid, and those who have invested their feelings and time in it are only looking forward to a turnaround. In June 2019, Shrimp Rice was merged into the innovative business group under Alibaba Entertainment. In September of the same year, Alibaba invested $700 million in NetEase Cloud, becoming the largest investment in the history of NetEase Cloud Music. Ali's move is almost equivalent to announcing the abandonment of shrimp rice, and supporting NetEase Cloud, which focuses on social networking in the comment area, to become the number one player. The bitter thing is that Shrimp Mi once had the most active and professional music community in the country, but around 2015, it weakened the function of the music community and gave up its unique advantages without foresight.
The relationship between Shrimp Mi and Ali began in 2013 and has an earlier relationship. In January 2013, Shrimp Rice was acquired by Ali. For Shrimp Rice, four of the five co-founders who were former employees of Alibaba, the acquisition is equivalent to returning to the old department with greater independence.
2013 was a turning point in China's online music market. The exclusive copyright war began, and various platforms joined the scuffle for exclusive copyright. At that time, shrimp rice's achievements were OK, at least to get the exclusive copyright of Rolling Stone, Huayan, Believe In Music and other companies. In August of the same year, Liu Chunning, former general manager of Tencent's online video department, "parachuted" Ali and became the president of the digital entertainment business group and became the director of Shrimp Rice. After arriving in office, Liu Chunning first moved the shrimp team from the independent space of Hangzhou "in the city" to the Xixi Park of Ali headquarters, and then led the acquisition of 30 million daily active users of Tianxiang, merging it with Shrimp Rice to form Ali Music. Every day is the main public, shrimp rice still keeps a niche high-end market, Liu's plan looks perfect, but it does not succeed. Liu Chunning does not seem to be able to truly understand Shrimp Rice, nor is he able to include the high-end users owned by Shrimp Rice into Ali's e-commerce map.
Shrimp Mi planned the "farewell ceremony"
Around this time, users who are deeply involved in shrimp song lists, databases, and music communities feel changes. The people in charge of the database are no longer "programmers who love music", the docking song list jun has left, and the professionalism and enthusiasm of the newcomers who have taken over have decreased significantly. The database system created by the founding team of Shrimp Rice in the early days is standardized and meticulous, and the introduction of musicians and the classification of music styles have been continuously improved due to the open user modification function, and there is still no platform in China to compare. This is the best part of Shrimp Rice, which has gradually declined after undergoing acquisitions and personnel changes.
In 2015, Liu Chunning was arrested and expelled for being involved in commercial bribery while working at Tencent. A week later, Ali announced the establishment of Ali Music Group, with Gao Xiaosong as chairman and Song Ke as CEO. Gao Song and his two people whimsically upgraded the daily beautiful sound to a giant called "Ali Planet", which is known as breaking industry barriers for musicians, circulating industry resources, and integrating music production, performance, venue leasing, ticket purchase, and advertising. However, just as they were committed to building the "world's largest music platform", the National Copyright Administration issued the "strictest copyright order" in history, requiring the platform to remove unauthorized music works.
"Ali Planet" disdains the raging copyright dispute, calling it "backgammon" and obsessed with its own go-like layout. At the same time as they dreamed of "the world's largest", Kugou, Kuwo, and qq music merged, and Tencent Music Entertainment (tme) was established. NetEase Cloud seems to have become another shrimp rice, but it is more rough and grounded, and it has risen with algorithms and music social networking. At this time, the shrimp rice began to "gray" in a large area, there was no copyright, and the songs in the user's song list were quickly swallowed up by gray.
According to iResearch's "2016 China Online Music Industry Research Report", in 2016, the coverage rate of qq music's entire matrix in music copyright reached 90%, while Ali music only had 20%.
On December 11, 2016, after the Ali Planet app was opened, a pop-up window appeared to download shrimp music. After the product, which was only two points in the app store, died, Shrimp Rice looked unbound, but the team's momentum has irretrievably declined, employee turnover is frequent, and Shrimp Rice culture has dissolved.
Shrimp Mi Music Visual China Infographic
Built in a swamp, the Shrimp Rice Brilliant Music Library is a mirror flower and water moon supported by ideals and enthusiasm. After turning to Ali, it had the opportunity to rely on capital maturity and growth, but it was not the same as time, and the personalities of the two sides were incompatible. In the copyright war, it unfortunately bumped into the "Ali planet" and was further marginalized.
According to the "2020 China Online Music Industry Report" released by Fastdata Pole, Shrimp Music's monthly active users in October 2020 were only 22.36 million, about one-tenth of qq music with the highest monthly active number, and a quarter of NetEase Cloud Music, which ranked fifth in mainstream music apps.
Disappearing with shrimp and rice, there is also the professional and pure communication atmosphere of the early Internet community, the selfless investment in building a knowledge base, and the sincere joy of meeting like-minded partners. NetEase Cloud's comment area is short and close, and qq music is also wonderful, but it is not the same thing as the former shrimp rice.
October 2020 China online music app monthly active data, from fastdata pole "2020 China Online Music Industry Report".
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Yan Zhang