Global entrepreneur: can mobile internet save music

Liu Yan

In the traditional Internet music model, it seems that every party in the music industry is unhappy: The record side complained about the rampant piracy and too little, internet companies rely on advertising revenue and game transport is difficult to pay the expensive copyright fees, musicians are divided into the approximate number of only between 3% to 5%.

When more and more stakeholders find it difficult to gain revenue from free online songs, the mobile Internet is regarded as the most tacit connection with music, and is being favored by more and more people in the industry.

Mobility and music have a natural fit. Looking at the mainstream music channel, Apple App store itunes was originally developed from ipod itunes, the ipod is the evolution of the demand for people to move songs; pandora50% traffic comes from mobile The bulk of Spotify's paid income comes from mobile music payments. China's special market environment makes Mobile's advantage more obvious, when more and more Internet music companies want to find out the mobile profit model outside of advertising, China Telecom operators ' ringtones business has been a significant source of revenue for many record companies for a long time.

The Ministry of Culture "2011 China Network Music Market Annual Report" shows that 2011 total network music market size of more than 30 billion yuan, online music market revenue scale of 380 million, wireless music market size of 2.4 billion yuan.

Almost all musicians and distributors will agree that the future of the music industry is on the mobile internet, but few people can say the specific opportunities for mobile internet.

Can mobile internet save music? Opportunities are not just in the simple mobile Internet, based on technology development and market environment quietly changed, a mobile internet shuffle has been quietly started.

Destruction

In the music model of the Internet, the related fields can generate income, but the music itself does not make money. The current business model of the Internet has the following three major categories:

-Advertising revenue and game transport. In which the game of transport refers to when users enter the Internet music Company's agent game, the user's consumption in the game by the music company and the game operator split.

-Fan economy. Based on the heavy user generated profit model, such as concert ticket agent.

-Value-added service charges. For example, QQ Music launched Green Diamond, users can fly in the QQ space their favorite music, such as yy music, 9158 and other online broadcast, it is more similar to social-related pan music, through the interaction between users to provide value-added services.

Most of the revenue that Internet companies earn is limited to the first. Music as a valuable product, itself difficult to obtain income, only through advertising and a small number of value-added services to obtain revenue. It used to be able to pay for music by buying tapes and CDs, but now there is no alternative entity charging method. The only way musicians can earn money is to collect royalties, but they face the rampant piracy problem. Last year, the record industry accounted for only $200 million in revenue, but piracy amounted to $1.8 billion. To step back, even without piracy, the Internet is not much of the advertising revenue is difficult to make the music market cake bigger.

Cool music has tried to pay, but the founder and CEO Thunder told the global entrepreneur, the genuine cost of a lot of costs, but less than one out of 10,000 paid users, the situation is not optimistic.

The internet has never lacked the innovation, the basic service free time, the shrimp music relies on the personalized service to try to charge, but the technology development lets its charging pattern also encounters the bottleneck.

This is a company set up by four Alibaba people and a musician who is responsible for technology, except COO Wang. Deep study of the shrimp music business model, you will find that this is a "music Taobao", and Taobao is not the same, it was 4 years ago, the beginning of the venture, has done Alibaba recently only high-profile do based on large data, "precision marketing."

Shrimp music as an internet platform allows musicians and users to "trade" freely. Each download of a song, the user will pay directly to the musicians, it changed the current music "singer-record company-distribution-user" sales channels, direct to the singer-oriented users, users pay to download songs and music to deal with the singer, shrimp only charge platform fees.

If you are an independent musician, you will be able to run your own songs after signing the copyright agreement with the shrimp music, and if it is a record company, the two sides pay for the royalties by the number of downloads.

You will not be curious, there are so many free to download music places, the user why to go to the shrimp music? Wang that this is the shrimp music to provide users with higher quality of genuine music and more personalized needs.

In addition to the new model, shrimp music set up a large data based cloud service platform, accurate analysis of user behavior, for users to recommend favorite songs. Wang summed up the biggest innovation of shrimp music is: deep excavation of the core needs of users. This is Alibaba is now in the big data business, shrimp in the beginning of the venture has taken into account this demand. "For an entrepreneurial company, the requirements for technology and the server are high, but we made up our minds at the outset." "Wang said.

Today, many operators bought songs, in the library a year also did not play once, on the one hand caused the waste of copyright costs, for artists, many original songs can not be promoted. And the shrimp according to user interest recommended personalized music menu, in two weeks can have 1 million songs, of which 1/3 of the song Library will be heard over 100 times.

For consumers, can be based on their own taste to find more beautiful songs, and for musicians, this precision marketing found suitable for the spread of music channels.

"Every time we launch a new product, someone will copy it, including some big companies," he said. We welcome plagiarism, because they can only copy to the surface and not copy our core system, they copied the speed is far from the speed of our innovation. "Wang is very confident.

Gao, a famous musician, has also lamented that this pay and personalized model is in line with the future development of the music industry and may subvert the existing model of the music industry. This is also the founder of the team's entrepreneurial motives, in Wang words is "see the future, do not make this future will be very difficult to suffer."

With the development of technology and faster buffering speed, this model is now facing the challenge is that users can listen to the online at any time without downloading music, the download looks increasingly unnecessary. The pay-for-music model, which supports shrimp nets, faces challenges and must find new avenues.

Reborn

Wang admits that the reduction in downloads caused by technological development is really a problem for the shrimp. The way out is to do more research on mobile internet and to provide more personalized services, such as the introduction of the cloud based on the synchronization of terminals, so that half of the computer listening to music can continue to listen on the phone, as well as offline listening to music.

Another big problem is the mobile version of the copyright issue. It is understood that if you want to do genuine music, the record companies encounter big music Internet companies, the price may be doubled. If you are developing a mobile client, the copyright for the song in the client is subject to a separate charge.

The opposite of the situation is the early cool music. As early as in 2007, cool or a small company, Thunder realized that the future should be genuine development, so his team went to a number of major record companies to talk about genuine cooperation, the result of the record company is dismissive: "Too small, when you are big again come to us." ”

Copyright issues are more than that. App apps sing it suddenly became popular, the invisible risk of its operation lies in the copyright dilemma. "Sing it is not to solve the copyright problem, Chen (founder) came to me, he did not know the copyright of the song where." "Infinite Star Music Group founder Tang Yueming said. For example, "Love Trading" this song, due to recording, distribution in different companies, its copyright may also belong to the global era, Fuji Pacific (601099, shares bar), EMI and other companies.

At present, the copyright issue of digital music is in this chaotic situation: there is no unified price, the market also do not know each other's offer. For small digital music channels, the company too much business is too small, the record side can only let the piracy rampant, and the larger music business, but was le "gasp".

Another news hit the industry: several major international record companies, including Time Warner, will combine cool dogs, Youku, Baidu Ting, QQ music, shrimp music and many other music service websites, and try to take music download subscription system. This is not the first time in the music industry to yell for fees, the music website Alliance to promote the payment activities will be different from before?

Tang Yueming revealed that at present, this matter is not a simple spontaneous formation, the Ministry of Culture, the press and publication administration and so on to jointly promote all-out efforts to combat piracy, there have been some pirated music websites sentenced to events.

Wang added, the charges, not directly to the user charges, but the record company to channel more charges, through the changes in the cost structure of copyright to force these music services companies to jointly charge users. The change in the cost structure of copyright is reflected in the record company to the internet company charges, the former is a monthly fee, is now a monthly + Pay-per-click, not only every download to charge, users every time to listen to a fee. The aim of forcing internet companies to withstand this pressure is to allow companies to jointly charge users.

In the Internet music market, as long as the mainstream manufacturers have a free, it may break the future to nurture the pay pattern, to adopt a coalition approach, is currently the best way to cultivate user habits.

The promotion of pay events has exacerbated the psychological warfare between internet companies and record companies. The labels, for example, want to raise copyright prices to make more money, internet companies want to keep prices as low as possible to cut costs, and the labels want to use Internet channels to get more promotional positions and channels for singers, and internet companies want to help spread revenue streams or drive down copyright prices. Both sides will keep a balance between marketing and sales.

Wang believes that although the copyright party and the record side of the game has always existed, but based on the former business model of shrimp and this trend is similar to the overall is still a good thing, and for some traditional business model of the Internet music companies may challenge more, the industry will shuffle in 2013.

In general, this is still a good news for the music industry, advocating genuine music to fight piracy, cultivate the user's habit of use, which is to the music industry injected positive energy, the market is becoming more and more benign.

Pay habits are nurtured not just by governments, companies, but also by the development of mobile Internet, which is paying for exports.

Turbulence is also an opportunity for change. Shrimp music based on the mobile internet and its integration with the internet trend of more personalized exploration is only the tip of the iceberg. The beauty of mobile Internet is that personalized apps can reduce production costs and increase the opportunities for differentiated services. Personalized service is the cornerstone of paid music. Take a look at some of the typical creative explorations.

Provide value-added services

Cool cool in the Apple App Store music class free leaderboard to keep first, but the Thunder on the prospect of paid music, only cautious optimism, the user listens to the basic service will also be free in a period of time, must provide better differentiated services to allow users to pay, such as strengthening the list of operations, launch radio, cloud list synchronization and other functions, Can also be based on the user's network situation, dynamic adjustment of sound quality. The opportunity to move the Internet is that users only download songs, there is no need to register, but to achieve the mobile phone and PC-side synchronization, users have to register. When users start to have their own ID number, with greater stickiness and data, can do more personalized service based on this.

Singer Builds app album

This March, Cao Fang, a ballad singer, made an attempt to make her new album, "Light Rainbow", into a separate app and put it in the Apple Store for a paid download. In addition to the traditional record, "Light Rainbow" more adapted to the characteristics of smartphones, such as a finger stroke, there will be rainbow effects, the lyrics background is exquisite animation illustrations. The album went online for a week and rushed to the top ten in the App Store. The 30-dollar charging software, in which Apple is divided into 30%, musicians and technology developers split the remaining 70%. After the traditional record company and the Internet channel promotion, the general music person can only divide into 3% to 5%. The app album brings in far more revenue than traditional channels.

Personalized marketing of Vermicelli economy

Nine days of music is the first batch of music Web site, with the Internet free music download service, adhere to the genuine nine-day music is not the cost of expensive copyright expenses, once faced with huge losses. The mobile internet has saved nine of days of fading music. Through cooperation with China Telecom, based on the "fan economy" effect of the star, release the personal app download service for individual stars, and combine the star's news, activity notices and songs in app. At present, nine days of music has released more than 200 apps, using old songs free new song charging mode to earn revenue.

Mining user Requirements

The Social K song Application sings, after the on-line short 3 days time, has rushed to the App store free rank Top 10, the fourth day topped the list, now each day has more than million users to be fascinated. Founder Chen repeatedly stressed that the reason for the fire is to find the user wants to sing "just need."

Get through all kinds of terminals

Shi Jianping, founder and CEO of the DOM Network, has been stressing that he is the first music site in the industry to launch a mobile version. As early as 2009, the smartphone has not been as popular as today, Shi Jianping has developed a "happy listening" for low-end smart machines. Until the 2010, the smart machine gradually popular, Shi Jianping quickly developed a Android system for the "multi-meter music." The product that Dom eventually wanted to build was, through a variety of terminals, mobile phones, televisions, networks, cars, anywhere can hear the songs you want, do not worry about downloading, looking for songs, open can easily hear the song, so that the music personalized convenience, into a "enjoy" rather than "preparation."

Car is also a big market

Cool music launched the car mobile music applications, built in the intelligent 3G driving system, open access to the Internet, "cool music" software can enjoy songs, but also launched a dedicated car radio and music channels.

Music Embedded Game Props

Tang Yueming, an infinite star, says the mobile internet will be the market for malleable music, with 360 of game makers looking to work together to embed music in the game. In the future, music may become a game of virtual goods for sale, the vast number of Chinese players, have been accustomed to pay for the game, in which to buy things become a matter of course, music can also become one of the items.

Building a mobile music incubator

Wireless Star Music Group is building a national mobile music incubator. Now one or two people can do a music product, app production becomes more and more convenient, music promotion will gradually move.

Cloud services provide commercial storage

When users are getting used to listening to music with their mobile phones, switching to different terminals becomes more troublesome. Amazon's approach is to provide 5GB of free storage space for new users, and when you want to have a larger store build, pay to buy. In China, the free awareness of the Chinese people is too strong, Amazon based on mobile Internet development of mobile music model, it is difficult to succeed at home.