The little shrimp in the industry

Absrtact: More than 10 years ago, Baidu shook hands of magic wand, through the music download grabbed a large number of gold, and became the Chinese search industry hegemony and even the Internet industry three mountains. But today, online music is only billions of of the market, and the huge

More than 10 years ago, Baidu shook the hands of magic wand, through the music download grabbed a lot of gold, and became the Chinese search industry hegemony and even the Internet industry three mountains.

But today, online music is only billions of of the market, and the huge audience market is simply out of proportion. More afraid of the industry chain in a few parties are falling into the 0 and game: The most upstream musicians are subject to the rampant piracy, unable to obtain the worth of income, have to choose to change careers or to provide a lower level of music, publishing companies do not get the normal copyright benefits, packaging artists have to reduce the input, the online music site to pay for copyright, But it doesn't get the benefit of downloading music. And consumers are in a dilemma, money may not buy good music, free music market is full of shoddy products.

This is not normal, so many internet companies in the music with the copyright owners shouting music fee slogans, but now seems not successful.

The little shrimp in the industry

June 5, 2013, the Shrimp Music network announced, from this day onwards, including shrimp, Baidu music, QQ music, Cool dog, DOM, coolness and other music websites, will try to download the music fee.

The story looks more like a shrimp solo, and after that day, most online music sites still offer free music downloads. Even the shrimp, also admits that the original free service can continue to use, and all online audition services are free category.

But in the Shrimp net CEO Wang Hao seems to be genuine and the charge of the online music site is bound to be the future trend of development.

This May, the shrimp net launched the VIP service, the user pays the ratio to reach 5 per thousand, to the shrimp at this stage 20 million of the user's accumulation to look, already have up to 100,000 of users to join the ranks of the pay, Wang Hao on netease Technology said: "If the proportion of pay can rise to 5%, the domestic music market will reach tens of billions of scale,

In Wang Hao's view, the shrimp want to change the music industry chain of copyright rules, so that the upper reaches of the industrial chain of the production of music people really make money, the musician platform is the next step of the first attempt.

The beta product, which was launched in May, is expected to be officially released in July. At a small media conference held by the shrimp, Wang Hao explained the significance of the product to the shrimp and the music industry.

The Music Man platform is currently focused on independent record companies and independent musicians. After applying to become a shrimp musician, their own copyright music will be promoted through the shrimp platform and earn 100% of the proceeds, the shrimp do not participate in income sharing. Using this platform, musicians can set the single selling price, in the exclusive group with the fans to produce more direct communication, access to records, peripheral products or tickets display ads, more importantly, the music can be in the background statistics to see their music audition volume, download volume, divided into income and the amount of fan interaction and other types of data.

Wang Hao said that the shrimp network does not consider the platform for profit at present, because only the scale bigger, can really subvert the industry. In the future, shrimp and musicians will be more diversified, such as supporting independent musicians to go to more music festivals, support them to do commercial performances, and even recommend them to record companies, but the shrimp themselves will not sign artists, involved in the field of performing Arts.

But the shrimp behind a towering tree, Wang Hao also said: "Now basically still rely on Ali's injection." ”

A natural problem, do not have the tree site what to do?

The Magic wand of Baidu

It was a completely different story more than 10 years ago, when Chinese musicians were enjoying their golden age. According to Wang Hao's introduction: "Chinese record selling the best time is the 90 's, Xintianyou can sell 4 million copies." But in the internet age, everything has changed. ”

The most intuitive change is that people are no longer to listen to music to buy records, music is the status of the collection of records is much higher than use value. 2003, at that time, more than 500,000 users of the music website, "Nine days Music" began to transform to do "the fees of Authentic music website", the average user pays 30 yuan a month, according to the data, which would have been a winning win, with less user spending compared to traditional albums and a successful return on music sites. But Baidu then launched the MP3 Search service, so that nine days of music was fatally hit. Data show that its user churn rate of more than 90%, and music applications generated by the flow of Baidu won the peak.

When it comes to the history of Wang Hao also very helpless: "During that time, the entire record market interest chain has been completely broken." Later, all record companies became conservative. ”

Nine days of music to make online music sites do not see the hope that any music site, if the full music fee download, its traffic will be greatly reduced, and now the cornerstone of the online music site is traffic.

No one to follow

The little shrimp is a terrible habit. Baidu Music more than 99% of the songs can also be free to download. And the public saying of QQ music is: "Have not received any official notice of government related department, QQ Music still provides free online audition and Green Diamond business model." "As for the music bus, a listening music network and other websites, it is still free to download."

According to the data show, Baidu Music previously provided three kinds of quality MP3 download: 128k casually, 192k to log in to the next, 320k of paid downloads. And now, 128k, 256k, 320k can download casually, only the lossless FLAC format only charges. Such behavior makes people feel embarrassed.

The industry has many media have believed that the reason online music can not take a comprehensive fee model is because consumers do not want to pay. In fact, when the internet did not rise in those years, many consumers are willing to spend a lot of money to buy tapes and CDs, but when the internet emerged, consumers began to get used to the free lunch, naturally no one is willing to pay for music.

A comparable object may be an online video site, and video sites have been hit by a lot of similar shocks. But with the growing sophistication of the video industry, free video drives value-added services or higher-quality paid videos are becoming the object of choice for consumers. In the hottest video site, the popular TV series copyright can even sell millions or more of the sky-high price.

These may be useful for online music websites. What's more, even if all the online music websites are charging, don't people listen to music?

However, this still faces a lot of problems, no one followed the shrimp to explain the music site is falling into a game, no charge may die later, charges may now die. So, online music sites are still painfully watching.

Where's the money?

Domestic copyright protection has been criticized, the music field has not escaped the Hugh of piracy. According to the industry, in Europe and the United States, Japan, Korea, almost all of the audition site can not provide free download, netizens may try to listen online, but to download must spend money, if the site provides free download, is illegal. Foreign music sites also provide a variety of monthly download services.

Illegal downloads will be severely punished, in this regard, a domestic media in 2009, a report can prove: "A graduate student of Boston University for illegally downloading 30 copyrighted songs, the federal jury was convicted of a fine of 675,000 dollars." "The student, named Chow Tennans, admits he illegally downloaded and forwarded 30 songs, belonging to four different bands." The federal jury found him "intentionally illegally downloading" and violating intellectual property rights, so he fined 22,500 dollars for each song, totaling 675,000 dollars.

Strict copyright rules allow the copyright party to obtain sufficient profits. In Japan, Korea and other countries, music copyright party in the proportion of the split can reach 90%, in Europe and the United States, the recording industry, the proportion of the total is more than 70%. And online music sites also have good benefits, in itunes, for example, as of this February, the total number of users downloading songs from itunes broke through 25 billion, if the itunes song on the general price of 0.99 U.S. dollars to calculate, Apple will be able to make nearly 30% of these more than 8 billion dollars. Wang Hao introduced his experience in different regions: "In Japan, manufacturers of production burners have to pay a portion of the money to the copyright organizations, because the burner may produce piracy." In Hong Kong, coffee shops have to play music, have to apply in advance, how long and how loud the volume has a clear control. ”

At present, the main profit model of online music web site is advertising revenue, social value-added services, download business, but the relevant data show that the current part of the income is not much. What is more frightening is that copyright costs have gone up in recent years, with data showing that both cool dogs and shrimp have more than tens of thousands of copyright investments. Can not make money but also a lot of investment, when can online music really find their own business model?