Today I brushed a video of a long pose on the Internet, and the protagonist of the video is the well-known musician and teacher Ah Qin of the Fei'er Orchestra. In the interview, he gave us a hot knowledge of science popularization, that is, the question of how to charge popular songs for cover songs by variety shows.
He said that the value of a popular song is definitely judged by its progression. An S-grade work, which is covered once in a variety show, has a grant of less than 150,000 yuan and as much as 300,000 yuan.
Hearing this number, I think most people will be surprised. Cover songs to collect hundreds of thousands at a time? There is such a lot of money!
Ah Qin gave an example of the popular poem "Our Love" that he wrote himself. How much copyright income did this work earn? He said that if you pay attention to how many times you have been covered in the past few years from 2018 to the present, you can probably estimate how much my copyright income is.
I recalled that in recent years, the well-known singers who have covered "Our Love" on TV in recent years include Deng Ziqi, Huang Xiaoyun, Di Maxi, Lin Junjie, Zhang Yuqi, etc., all of which are large-scale programs, and there may be more programs that we have not paid attention to. Roughly calculated, just by being covered on variety shows for more than 3 years, it is not a problem to earn it millions.
There is no doubt that "Our Love" is a successful S-grade work. So, is it that all popular songs that are covered will have such a large copyright income?
Ah Qin gave a negative answer. He said that if it is a B-, C-, or even D-grade work, its copyright value is ten million times different from that of S-grade works.
Oh my God, ten million times, no matter how many times it is, the gap is very huge anyway. Therefore, Ah Qin finally advised his friends who write songs that they must write S-grade works when writing songs, "It is better to spend a month to create an S-grade work than to spend a day writing 100 BCD-level works."
This last sentence is Versailles. If it takes a month to really write an S-grade work, what else is there to say? Write and you're done. 12 S-grade works a year, all directly canonized! The problem is that many musicians may not be able to write an S-grade work in their lifetime.
So, what exactly is an S-grade work? What criteria are the "progressions" of popular songs divided?
Teacher Ah Qin did not say it in the video. Let's analyze it.
Since Ah Qin is directly associated with the monetization of cover songs when talking about this progression, it is definitely not based on artistry as the standard, but on the degree of transmission and commerciality. I believe that the pop music scene does not have a strict criterion for the classification of works, but only a vague concept. Works with a high number of grades are probably works that can bring better commercial benefits after being tested by the market for a certain period of time after the release of the works, and also have a stable reputation.
This must be a comprehensive indicator, and only works that perform well in both aspects can be called S-grade works. Simple artistry is high and there is no good degree of singing, this kind of high and low unpopular popular songs, certainly the commercial value will not be high; and simple singing degree is high, such as the Internet red songs that are popular all over the Internet in the short term, if the musicality of the work itself is more far-fetched, the possibility of being covered on TV will not be very large, even if there is only at that time, it will not last too long.
Both works can only be classified as a grade or b. More popular songs are artistic and lack the degree of transmission, so they can only be divided into c and d.
Just like "Our Love", it has also been published for 17 years, and it has been repeatedly covered on TV programs, which shows that word of mouth is online, and the work is indeed popular and can evoke classic memories. Such a song is considered by Ah Qin to be an S-grade work.
But overall, we find a phenomenon that the most covered songs on TV shows are not these classic good songs (that is, S-grade works), but mainly unpopular songs. Why?
On the one hand, it may indeed be that the unpopular songs are better for singers to play, and the songs that are too classic are afraid of being compared; on the other hand, is it possible that they are also for economic considerations? Because the S-level song licensing fee is too expensive, the unpopular song level is low, and the licensing fee is also cheap.
I believe it is possible. Especially for those singing programs that use more tracks, if there are too many S-level tracks, the light licensing fee is a huge expense, how can it not be considered. We often hear things happen when some TV stations sing songs without authorization. Do you think they really don't know that cover songs need authorization? I definitely know it, but I just think that this money is not small, and if I can't give it, I won't give it first.
In other cases, the program party will dump the copyright responsibility to the performers. For example, after the first stage of "Youth with You 2" last year, there were trainees who cried and cried that they spent more than 100,000 yuan to buy the authorization of "The Sun Never Sets", and as a result, they were still cut by the program team after the performance. Spending so much money on the stage, the result is that no shadow is seen and eliminated, too miserable.
Under this video of Ah Qin, some fans said "Then we Jay Chou is not rich", and then everyone discussed it again. Some people say that Jay Chou has more than 400 works, and there are not too many S-level works, and some people say that Jay Chou's many works are SSS-level...
However, in our impression, Jay Chou's works are not much covered in TV variety shows. Maybe it's really too expensive to sing? But even so, the revenue generated by Jay Chou's work in other channels is a rather frightening figure. The daily playback income of q tone alone reaches 200,000-300,000 yuan, and his total royalty income reaches hundreds of millions of yuan per year.
Lying every year to earn a small goal, you say such Jay Chou, where does the motivation to write songs?
According to the warhead of Nanquan's mother, he has only written 5 poems for Jay Chou, namely "Disintegration", "Maple", "Stranded", "Retreat", "Don't Love Me and Pull Down", which is not a big hit, but with the royalties of these 5 words, he has no worries about food and clothing in his life, because he earns more than 1 million (NT$) every year.
Yes, although Ah Qin said that an S-grade work is covered to earn 150,000-300,000 yuan at a time, but a lot of time is not all in the pocket of one person, the lyrics, songs, original songs and the company will be divided according to copyright agreements. For such a sustained high-yield work, whoever owns the copyright earns it. Just imagine, if Jay Chou's copyright had all been given to Alpha, then Wu Zongxian would have been able to wake up laughing in his dreams all his life.
Ah Qin said that there is a gap of ten million times the income of S-grade works and BCD-level works. It is said that the royal band's famous song "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a cover of 6 million yuan, and the unpopular songs we commonly see in variety shows are generally only a few thousand yuan, or even hundreds of yuan.
In fact, this disparity is not difficult to understand, similar to the difference between each singer's "masterpiece" and "other works". Most singers may derive 95% of their commercial interests from a masterpiece, and other works are really a million times worse than this masterpiece.
It seems that "a song to eat for a lifetime" is really possible, the singer may be, even the copyright owner is possible, and there is no need to sing this song all day like a singer, as long as you rely on copyright income, you can lie down and eat for a lifetime. But the premise is that this must be a high copyright value of S-class, even SS-level, SSS-level work.