Behind the toll of digital music: which forces are in the game

The popularity of digital music charges has come to the point of June 5.

A few days ago, shrimp Music Network chief market Officer Wang Public said that, from June 5 onwards, the Shrimp music network, Baidu Music, QQ music, Cool dog music, Dom music, I music and other music sites will trial comprehensive fees, the transition period of 2 months, including monthly listening, monthly download, listening to high-quality music.

However, when the reporter calls the music website, in addition to shrimp, other music sites have not received the relevant notice, most of them are still on the sidelines.

Behind the rumors of digital music charges, what is the power in the game?

Ali behind pushing the shrimp to pay Alipay is the biggest beneficiary

After being acquired by Alibaba, the shrimp music became the music division of Ali. After the acquisition, Alibaba not only became a strong backing for the shrimp, the two also reached a consensus, to the development of shrimp music to cover the entire industrial chain of the Internet music platform.

To move the traditional record industry to the Internet, the shrimp must get more resources from the record companies and independent musicians, such as copyrights, channels and other resources, which need to be mutually beneficial to the copyright party. Now, the fixed payment of the purchase of copyright has been unable to meet the needs of the recording industry, music sites can not afford to operate at a loss, and ultimately, by the copyright side, the music site occasion to the toll of the product was born.

"Most consumers do not want to pay, music sites at this time played an innocent role, as if the copyright party was forced to create, but in fact, both are vested interests." An insider told reporters.

The anonymity of the industry, the shrimp are willing to stand up for the first charge, there are multiple reasons: first, the shrimp music has always been value-added services, users of the pay service is relatively high acceptance; second, the Shrimp net music content through the user upload, and then pay to download the mode of light is criticized, Shrimp is just want to borrow the genuine fee products launched for their own washing white; More importantly, the first shrimp to introduce digital music paid services, not only to make the shrimp in the record company on the one hand, but also to help pay treasure in the digital music payment field layout, Alibaba, has a very important significance.

Are Chinese consumers buying it?

Chinese consumers can accept to pay for the internet to listen to the development of the video web site, the status quo, years ago began to promote the pay VIP service, but now, advertising is still the main revenue of the video site.

Chinese consumers have a long history of ignoring music rights, and taking space to a friend's home to record songs during a cassette is a normal and even pleasant thing to do. With the improvement of living standard, the appreciation of high quality music no longer extravagant, but this time, MP3 download.

From MP3 to many lossless formats, consumers ' demands for music quality are improving. In order to raise the threshold of the industry, the music website also began to buy copyrights to copyright, expand music and improve audio quality.

But none of this is conducive to boosting the record company's revenue from copyright.

Some established record companies have also begun to explore the spread of digital music, such as Rolling Stones, stars, and other star records, and have achieved better results.

At the beginning of this year, star album set up the digital music Mall Music Circle, the music circle in charge, star Foreign star enterprise director Shang Sakura has said that users of genuine music to the pursuit of high-quality, is its fundamental power to pay for it.

If so, how few music enthusiasts are willing to pay for high quality music, and how much help the record industry can bring?

In addition, can the music website provide high-quality music licensed by the genuine? Today, most of the high quality of music Web services using 320K audio output, can reach the level of genuine CDs, however, this is by the existing network bandwidth, storage restrictions, users have to download according to their own needs of different sizes, different quality of music. As a result, genuine digital music cannot be equated with high quality music.

In this case, more users will choose to listen to 96K of low quality music for free and are unwilling to pay.

Is the copyright party buying it?

The reporter calls each big music website, because time is hasty, the music website to the charge rule opinions.

In the current market situation, pricing can not be step, which has a consumer acceptance problem, but also the copyright party and the site's cooperation issues.

In some Asian countries and regions similar to China, they have opted for a monthly + single download payment form.

According to the Rolling Stone mobile general manager, singing committee member Xinhua, in Japan, users can listen to a small piece of music, and then decide whether to pay for download, monthly service from dozens of yuan to hundreds of yuan. In Korea, a single download of about 2.8 yuan/first, monthly about 50 yuan/month. Taiwan is cheaper, with a monthly subscription of about 30 yuan.

Xinhua that the domestic temporary monthly fee of 5 yuan more reasonable, the price includes online audition and download services.

Will the music Web site's next payment scheme be acceptable to both the user and the copyright owner?

From the user's point of view, compared to a single paid download, the monthly service is easier for users to accept, while more conducive to the site to retain users and maintain user activity.

But from the interests of copyright owners, monthly model settlement is more troublesome, must be the month of all the income, to spread to the entire music of each song of the audition volume, in accordance with the proportion of the test volume to settle, the calculation is very complex, also not transparent.

To pay for copyright, it seems to be another progress of China's Internet, however, if the damage to consumer rights, the formation of vicious market competition, it is a setback in China's internet.