Author丨He Xiaobai
Edit丨Zhang Weixian
Picture Source丨TuChong
The entertainment industry has been pushed away by the Internet.
at 8 pm on May 27, on a rolling grassland, Luo Dayou appeared on time in the WeChat video account screen, and the song " Wild Lily also has spring " officially started.
At almost the same time, Stefanie Sun also appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room. This is an indoor performance covered with red curtains, and the huge Douyin logo appears on the TV next to Stefanie Sun.
"Shenzhenzi Sun's Douyin Online Chat Meeting" collided with "Luo Dayou Video Account Online Concert". The same time and different platforms forced many users to make "choose one of two".
"Actually I'm a little nervous." Stefanie Sun said before the singing. The first song is "Rain or Fallen Still".
On the other side of Luo Dayou's live broadcast room, 68-year-old Luo Dayou sang 20 songs in a row, followed by a host interaction, and finally joined the "Enke" session, returned to the scene and sang another song, and the entire live broadcast event ended.
In fact, Stefanie Sun, born in 1978, had an unexpected confrontation with music godfather Luo Dayou, which is likely to be a traffic war deliberately driven by Internet giants.
and this is just the overture of the battle.
"breakthrough"
This "confrontation" seemed nervous from the beginning.
Luo Dayou’s WeChat Video Account concert will be announced on the evening of May 24. The next morning, Douyin launched Stefanie Sun’s online chat conference promotion. Both events are scheduled to be 8 pm on May 27.
Objectively, online concerts have become a trend after the epidemic.
As early as the beginning of the outbreak, Lady gaga jointly planned and organized the global charity online concert "One World: Together at Home" with WHO and other institutions, which had a huge response.
In the domestic market, Stefanie Sun received more than 600 million likes in just 16 minutes of singing at the "Tik Tok Summer Song Festival", and the total number of viewers of the seven performances of the Summer Song Festival exceeded 40 million.
At the end of 2021, the classic group Xicheng Boys entered the Video Account to hold an online concert, reaching 20 million views, and PCU (up to simultaneous online) of 1.5 million people. Subsequently, popular concerts such as Mayday, TVB, and commemorative Leslie Cheung were logged into the Video Account.
Before Luo Dayou's concert, Tencent launched two Jay Chou's concerts to re-screen. Before that, the online concert of Cui Jian achieved a sensational screen-sink effect.
companies chose to start a war at the same time, which also has a background of intensifying market competition. It's like an encounter on the eve of a peak showdown.
According to the results, Stefanie Sun had been broadcasting for more than an hour, with about 240 million viewings in the live broadcast room, and Luo Dayou had been broadcasting for more than two hours, with nearly 35 million viewings in the live broadcast room. In fact, since the calculation methods of Douyin and video accounts are different, the former uses PV (page views) and the latter uses UV ( independent visitor numbers), and the two companies cannot directly compare the data.
From another perspective, simply comparing the number of viewers is not very meaningful, because the attention in the live broadcast room is ultimately determined by multiple factors such as the scale of celebrity audience and the strength of platform promotion. Therefore, if the platform wants higher data, they can also do it. The
variable is that the video number rises too quickly. The growth rate of
video number is amazing.
started to be launched in internal testing in January 2020. In just over half a year, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong revealed that the daily active users of video accounts exceeded 200 million. According to data from the Video Light Research Institute, in December 2021, the DAU of WeChat Video Account has reached 500 million, a year-on-year increase of 78%. Its user size is between Douyin and Kuaishou (main site + super fast version).
According to Questmobile data, during the same period, the monthly active users in the short video industry were 920 million, an increase of only 5.5% year-on-year. Aurora data shows that in December 2021, the MAU of the Douyin/Kuaishou main website was 628/307 million respectively. The traffic of
video number has grown rapidly, relying on the huge WeChat ecosystem.
However, Video Account is not an independent app, and it doesn’t make much sense to simply compete with Douyin and Video Account for user scale. To be precise, video accounts are just a new product of WeChat, just like official accounts, circle of friends, and mini programs. Regarding this, Zhang Xiaolong confirmed in early 2021. He said at the time that Video Account is not Tencent’s strategic focus, but WeChat is doing it itself, and the company did not even hold a meeting to establish a project for this.
As of the end of March, WeChat's monthly active users reached 1.288 billion, while at the beginning of last year, WeChat's daily active users reached 1.09 billion. Based on such a user base, it is not difficult for WeChat to create a product with a daily active users of over 100 million yuan. The difficulty is whether it can be achieved in the way WeChat wants.
WeChat products attach great importance to the natural growth in the cold start stage. Because in Zhang Xiaolong's view, a content product can only achieve self-circulation if it reaches a certain level of user. So at the beginning, WeChat did not provide too much resources for the video account. It was not until the data began to rise later that the weight of the video account gradually increased. At first, many people thought that this was another attempt by Tencent to use short video applications for the positioning of video accounts, but now, more and more people are beginning to understand that video accounts are not that simple.
Last year, Zhang Xiaolong said on the first anniversary of the launch of the video account that what video account needs to do is infrastructure. Later, WeChat gave a more official description - atomized components. This is actually a meaning. What video account needs to do is not a short video platform understood by the outside world, but a carrier of video content in the WeChat ecosystem.
Zhang Xiaolong said that future videos should not be in the form of files, but in a structured form that can be marked and interact. Video accounts are similar to public accounts, but the public accounts are the carrier of articles. If there is no official account, everyone may have to share articles in the form of documents.
Tencent’s financial report shows that in the first quarter, the MAU of WeChat platform reached 1.288 billion. As an important atomized component in WeChat, Video Account has currently achieved the ability to connect to various functions such as instant dialogue, mini programs, official accounts, circle of friends, enterprise WeChat , etc.
According to CITIC Securities calculations, relying on the WeChat traffic pool, the potential active users of video accounts still have considerable growth space. You can refer to the DAU of the Moments Circle DAU of approximately 780 million (according to the data disclosed by WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong in 2021). What’s more important is that in terms of commercialization, Douyin and Video Account have entered the stock competition.
In the first quarter, Tencent’s social network revenue was 29.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.0%, and the same month-on-month, accounting for 21.5% of the total revenue. The growth of social networks reflects the increase in revenue from live streaming services of WeChat Video Account, but most of them are offset by the decrease in revenue from live streaming music and live streaming games.
In addition, Tencent’s advertising revenue was 18 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6% and a month-on-month decrease of 16.4%. Behind it is weak advertising demand.
, but Video Account has great room for expansion in this market.
According to CITIC Securities, referring to the scale of Moments advertising and Kuaishou advertising, it is estimated under the neutral assumption that video account advertising in 2023 is expected to contribute about 37 billion yuan of incremental revenue elasticity throughout the year.
is also vigorously entering the market on the e-commerce side. On May 27, it announced that it will start the "6.18 Video Live Good Things Festival" at 20:00 on May 31.
According to the WeChat public course data in 2022, in 2021, the GMV of live streaming on video accounts increased by more than 15 times compared with the beginning of the year. Among them, private domain accounted for more than 50%, with an average customer unit price exceeding 200 yuan, and an overall repurchase rate of 60%. Data from the
Visual Light Research Institute shows that in 2021, the scale of mini program GMV has reached 2.8 trillion yuan. The institution predicts that in the next three years, WeChat e-commerce (including mini-program e-commerce, video e-commerce, public account e-commerce, community e-commerce , etc.) will reach 10 trillion yuan.
As the overall environment gradually enters the stock market, the live broadcast, advertising, e-commerce and other directions that video accounts have focused on, and are hitting the key points of Douyin everywhere.
"We will continue to seek a balance between user experience and commercialization, and on this basis, maximize the release of commercialization capabilities." Tencent President Liu Chiping said at the current financial report call.
Author丨He Xiaobai
Edit丨Zhang Weixian
Picture Source丨TuChong
The entertainment industry has been pushed away by the Internet.
at 8 pm on May 27, on a rolling grassland, Luo Dayou appeared on time in the WeChat video account screen, and the song " Wild Lily also has spring " officially started.
At almost the same time, Stefanie Sun also appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room. This is an indoor performance covered with red curtains, and the huge Douyin logo appears on the TV next to Stefanie Sun.
"Shenzhenzi Sun's Douyin Online Chat Meeting" collided with "Luo Dayou Video Account Online Concert". The same time and different platforms forced many users to make "choose one of two".
"Actually I'm a little nervous." Stefanie Sun said before the singing. The first song is "Rain or Fallen Still".
On the other side of Luo Dayou's live broadcast room, 68-year-old Luo Dayou sang 20 songs in a row, followed by a host interaction, and finally joined the "Enke" session, returned to the scene and sang another song, and the entire live broadcast event ended.
In fact, Stefanie Sun, born in 1978, had an unexpected confrontation with music godfather Luo Dayou, which is likely to be a traffic war deliberately driven by Internet giants.
and this is just the overture of the battle.
"breakthrough"
This "confrontation" seemed nervous from the beginning.
Luo Dayou’s WeChat Video Account concert will be announced on the evening of May 24. The next morning, Douyin launched Stefanie Sun’s online chat conference promotion. Both events are scheduled to be 8 pm on May 27.
Objectively, online concerts have become a trend after the epidemic.
As early as the beginning of the outbreak, Lady gaga jointly planned and organized the global charity online concert "One World: Together at Home" with WHO and other institutions, which had a huge response.
In the domestic market, Stefanie Sun received more than 600 million likes in just 16 minutes of singing at the "Tik Tok Summer Song Festival", and the total number of viewers of the seven performances of the Summer Song Festival exceeded 40 million.
At the end of 2021, the classic group Xicheng Boys entered the Video Account to hold an online concert, reaching 20 million views, and PCU (up to simultaneous online) of 1.5 million people. Subsequently, popular concerts such as Mayday, TVB, and commemorative Leslie Cheung were logged into the Video Account.
Before Luo Dayou's concert, Tencent launched two Jay Chou's concerts to re-screen. Before that, the online concert of Cui Jian achieved a sensational screen-sink effect.
companies chose to start a war at the same time, which also has a background of intensifying market competition. It's like an encounter on the eve of a peak showdown.
According to the results, Stefanie Sun had been broadcasting for more than an hour, with about 240 million viewings in the live broadcast room, and Luo Dayou had been broadcasting for more than two hours, with nearly 35 million viewings in the live broadcast room. In fact, since the calculation methods of Douyin and video accounts are different, the former uses PV (page views) and the latter uses UV ( independent visitor numbers), and the two companies cannot directly compare the data.
From another perspective, simply comparing the number of viewers is not very meaningful, because the attention in the live broadcast room is ultimately determined by multiple factors such as the scale of celebrity audience and the strength of platform promotion. Therefore, if the platform wants higher data, they can also do it. The
variable is that the video number rises too quickly. The growth rate of
video number is amazing.
started to be launched in internal testing in January 2020. In just over half a year, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong revealed that the daily active users of video accounts exceeded 200 million. According to data from the Video Light Research Institute, in December 2021, the DAU of WeChat Video Account has reached 500 million, a year-on-year increase of 78%. Its user size is between Douyin and Kuaishou (main site + super fast version).
According to Questmobile data, during the same period, the monthly active users in the short video industry were 920 million, an increase of only 5.5% year-on-year. Aurora data shows that in December 2021, the MAU of the Douyin/Kuaishou main website was 628/307 million respectively. The traffic of
video number has grown rapidly, relying on the huge WeChat ecosystem.
However, Video Account is not an independent app, and it doesn’t make much sense to simply compete with Douyin and Video Account for user scale. To be precise, video accounts are just a new product of WeChat, just like official accounts, circle of friends, and mini programs. Regarding this, Zhang Xiaolong confirmed in early 2021. He said at the time that Video Account is not Tencent’s strategic focus, but WeChat is doing it itself, and the company did not even hold a meeting to establish a project for this.
As of the end of March, WeChat's monthly active users reached 1.288 billion, while at the beginning of last year, WeChat's daily active users reached 1.09 billion. Based on such a user base, it is not difficult for WeChat to create a product with a daily active users of over 100 million yuan. The difficulty is whether it can be achieved in the way WeChat wants.
WeChat products attach great importance to the natural growth in the cold start stage. Because in Zhang Xiaolong's view, a content product can only achieve self-circulation if it reaches a certain level of user. So at the beginning, WeChat did not provide too much resources for the video account. It was not until the data began to rise later that the weight of the video account gradually increased. At first, many people thought that this was another attempt by Tencent to use short video applications for the positioning of video accounts, but now, more and more people are beginning to understand that video accounts are not that simple.
Last year, Zhang Xiaolong said on the first anniversary of the launch of the video account that what video account needs to do is infrastructure. Later, WeChat gave a more official description - atomized components. This is actually a meaning. What video account needs to do is not a short video platform understood by the outside world, but a carrier of video content in the WeChat ecosystem.
Zhang Xiaolong said that future videos should not be in the form of files, but in a structured form that can be marked and interact. Video accounts are similar to public accounts, but the public accounts are the carrier of articles. If there is no official account, everyone may have to share articles in the form of documents.
Tencent’s financial report shows that in the first quarter, the MAU of WeChat platform reached 1.288 billion. As an important atomized component in WeChat, Video Account has currently achieved the ability to connect to various functions such as instant dialogue, mini programs, official accounts, circle of friends, enterprise WeChat , etc.
According to CITIC Securities calculations, relying on the WeChat traffic pool, the potential active users of video accounts still have considerable growth space. You can refer to the DAU of the Moments Circle DAU of approximately 780 million (according to the data disclosed by WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong in 2021). What’s more important is that in terms of commercialization, Douyin and Video Account have entered the stock competition.
In the first quarter, Tencent’s social network revenue was 29.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.0%, and the same month-on-month, accounting for 21.5% of the total revenue. The growth of social networks reflects the increase in revenue from live streaming services of WeChat Video Account, but most of them are offset by the decrease in revenue from live streaming music and live streaming games.
In addition, Tencent’s advertising revenue was 18 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6% and a month-on-month decrease of 16.4%. Behind it is weak advertising demand.
, but Video Account has great room for expansion in this market.
According to CITIC Securities, referring to the scale of Moments advertising and Kuaishou advertising, it is estimated under the neutral assumption that video account advertising in 2023 is expected to contribute about 37 billion yuan of incremental revenue elasticity throughout the year.
is also vigorously entering the market on the e-commerce side. On May 27, it announced that it will start the "6.18 Video Live Good Things Festival" at 20:00 on May 31.
According to the WeChat public course data in 2022, in 2021, the GMV of live streaming on video accounts increased by more than 15 times compared with the beginning of the year. Among them, private domain accounted for more than 50%, with an average customer unit price exceeding 200 yuan, and an overall repurchase rate of 60%. Data from the
Visual Light Research Institute shows that in 2021, the scale of mini program GMV has reached 2.8 trillion yuan. The institution predicts that in the next three years, WeChat e-commerce (including mini-program e-commerce, video e-commerce, public account e-commerce, community e-commerce , etc.) will reach 10 trillion yuan.
As the overall environment gradually enters the stock market, the live broadcast, advertising, e-commerce and other directions that video accounts have focused on, and are hitting the key points of Douyin everywhere.
"We will continue to seek a balance between user experience and commercialization, and on this basis, maximize the release of commercialization capabilities." Tencent President Liu Chiping said at the current financial report call.
The key to Douyin defense lies in traffic, and online concerts have become an excellent breakthrough.
The dispute over user duration
From the perspective of audience perception, the effect of the two activities is immediately judged.
was a competition on the same stage that should have been evenly matched, but Douyin lost the video account, which surprised many people. The point where Douyin failed
lies in the operation of the content. This time, Douyin designed a "chat meeting", and chatting is naturally an important part, but Stefanie Sun's interaction with the host caused a lot of complaints from the audience, and the subsequent letter reading session, the scene was also very awkward.
What's worse is that at the end of the live broadcast, Stefanie Sun's live broadcast room even suddenly interrupted. The live broadcast room only resumed after more than ten minutes. Stefanie Sun sang the song that had just been interrupted again, and then the chat meeting ended in a hurry.
Many ByteDance internal employees told reporters that Douyin has rich experience in live broadcasts, so why does it still have sudden interruptions? Especially in such an important live broadcast event, they also don’t understand it.
did not make an official response to why the live broadcast was interrupted, and Stefanie Sun's team said after the live broadcast that it was because of the condition of its transmission equipment.
No matter what, in this important contest, Douyin was defeated. Video accounts have also repeatedly flooded the screen with the form of online concerts, and the user scale has further increased. If
is regarded as the 2.0 era of short videos, then in the 1.0 era, Douyin once defeated a number of opponents, including Tencent, and became the "No. 1 in the industry".
Previously, Douyin was launched in September 2016, with daily active users exceeding 400 million in January 2020, and daily active users exceeded 600 million in August 2020. It should be pointed out that 600 million daily active users are not a single Douyin App, but also includes Douyin Volcano Edition, Douyin Speed Edition, etc.
According to market estimates, in August 2020, the daily active users of Douyin's main website were about 500 million, and that daily active users ranged from 0 to 500 million. Douyin took four years, and this speed was enough to be proud of the Internet industry, but the video account shortened this time to two years.
has a relatively stable "Doufast" pattern and the industry began to enter refined operations, the video account represents Tencent's fierce killing again. By understanding this, you will understand that what video accounts value is not the user scale, but what it really wants to compete with Douyin is the user duration.
In the past few years, short videos have been an important growth pole in the mobile Internet field. According to QuestMobile data, in 2021, the total user time of the short video industry (25.7%) has surpassed instant messaging (21.2%), becoming the industry that accounts for the longest network time for people.
A few years ago, the status of instant messaging seemed unshakable, but in just a few years, short videos have gradually taken the length of time for users who originally belonged to other fields. From the enterprise level, this is also Douyin snatching away user time from Tencent products.
Tencent once made strategic mistakes for short videos, and later tried to make up for it under the general trend, but basically retreated step by step. At least before the video account appeared, Tencent really seemed a little at a loss about Douyin's traffic growth.
But now, with the video account, Tencent finally has a short video content carrier that is promising. In the first quarter of 2022 financial report, Tencent listed Video Account as the company's strategic growth field. Tencent's management also stated that Video Account is very important to Tencent's overall business. Through the continuous growth of Video Account, it will help Tencent create greater value in content and the entire ecosystem.
Social is the largest variable
User duration also determines the commercial value. Tencent management said that in the future, as the various products of the WeChat ecosystem will be better connected, including WeChat official accounts, mini programs and video accounts, users will have longer time on the platform and will also increase more monetization opportunities.
Among them, for the commercialization of video accounts, Tencent management believes that if video accounts can be monetized very well, it will play a very important role in promoting the company's growth.
In fact, this Luo Dayou concert was the second commercial attempt by Video Account to promote the concert format. The first was Cui Jian’s concert. The sponsors of these two concerts were Jihu Auto.
According to the reporter, compared with Cui Jian’s concert, Video Account opened more brands to the brand during Luo Dayou’s concert and tried more marketing methods, especially the linkage with other WeChat ecological products such as mini programs, circle of friends, enterprise WeChat, etc., which further amplified the commercial value of Video Account.
is different from video accounts. Douyin actually made some small thoughts at Stefanie Sun’s chat meeting, such as closing user rewards and not having any brand sponsorship. Douyin may hope that this event will be more pure and thus win people’s hearts, but it was a bit unsatisfactory due to other problems.
However, this head-on competition is just the tip of the iceberg of Douyin's competition with Video Account. From the perspective of the short video industry, Douyin is still far ahead in terms of content and commercialization, and Video Account is a catcher.
An industry insider told reporters that at present, the core competitiveness of video accounts and Douyin is WeChat ecological resources, especially the social relationship chain of the WeChat platform, but this is also a double-edged sword, with both pros and cons. The advantage of
is that it provides a lot of power to the video account. For example, many platforms have actually tried online concerts, including Tencent Music, but those who have truly achieved the goal of breaking the circle are broadcast live on the video account. This is because Video Account has social sharing capabilities that other platforms do not have, and it can seamlessly connect in WeChat chat, Moments and other scenarios. As for the disadvantages of
, video accounts may hinder the further development of their content because they have too strong social interactions with acquaintances. Just imagine, if a user knows that the content will be seen by many acquaintances before publishing the content, will he think about whether the content is suitable for being seen by acquaintances.
Furthermore, an important recommendation logic for video accounts is that friends like it, that is, the content you like will also be recommended to friends. With this logic, will you also consider whether this content is suitable for friends, colleagues and even bosses before like it?
So, the content of the video account, liked or recommended, may be "selected" content and is not "real enough", which will make some popular or vulgar content more difficult to discover.
Zhang Xiaolong made a prediction in 2020 that the traffic allocation ratio of video accounts in the future will be 1:2:10 attention, like and machine recommendation respectively. The reason why
made such a judgment was that Zhang Xiaolong explained that the content can be divided into two types. is knowledge information that requires brain power to understand, which is learning; the other is consumer information that does not require brain power to consume consumer information, which is entertainment. Friends like it is because friends force you to obtain knowledge information that you may not be interested in, which belongs to the learning category; machine recommendations are the system to suit their preferences and allow you to browse consumer information you like very comfortably, which belongs to the entertainment category.
From the user habits, content that does not require brainpower will definitely account for a larger proportion. So if the traffic of content liked by friends in the video account is higher than that of the machine recommendation, this is actually not reasonable enough, and it also means that the content richness of the video account is not enough, and the content recommended by the machine is not that large.
But how to enrich the video content will be a major challenge for the video account. At present, browsing video accounts, the proportion of real original content is not large enough, and it is more about some content that is transported and edited. And in this regard, Douyin has already come out.
As for social relationships, this is what Douyin is eager to obtain. Whether it is a lawsuit with Tencent or trying to make social products by itself, Douyin's purpose is to have a stronger connection relationship for itself and users, or users and users.
Previously, Douyin added a "Friends" column to its products, hoping to strengthen social interactions among acquaintances based on address books, while the "Nearest" column hopes to promote social interactions among strangers based on location relationships.
2021, ByteDance China CEO 6 Zhang Nan once said that TikTok is gradually changing from an entertainment method to a social method, and then to a lifestyle. Coincidentally, WeChat’s slogan is “WeChat is a lifestyle.”
Therefore, Douyin's goal may be to become WeChat, and the video account is the key "weapon" for WeChat to face the challenge of Douyin.
"Head Game"
is like this, the story returns to the music circle.
For the two competitions, executives of a leading music company admitted to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that Douyin has first-mover advantages in all aspects, but the video account also has highlights.
"Video account has two advantages, WeChat ecosystem, and it is not Douyin." said the aforementioned executive.
He believes that although Douyin is neutral in content production, the user's mind is still fixed. The result is that many music types are restricted on Douyin, so Cui Jian and Luo Dayou performed on the video account.
, and Douyin chose Stefanie Sun, who matched its tone. The background of
may be related to the two different algorithm foundations. is different from short video platforms based on content and tag distribution. The video account gives great weight to social networking. Under the "friend" tag after the cold start, the sorting of short videos is arranged based on the order of "liked" by friends, and displays the avatars of three liked friends. The distribution logic is similar to that of friends in the circle of friends.
is based on WeChat’s huge user base, which makes the video account inherently more diversified in tone. Of course, the Douyin algorithm iterates very quickly, and there is a considerable probability that this problem will be solved. On the other end of
, the hot online concert is still far away from most musicians.
The aforementioned executive does not hide the fact that at present, the size of online concerts is limited and the business model is single. But he also revealed that the company he works in has good online projects and is ready to cooperate with the video account.
Zhang Fengyan's working group released by the "2021 Chinese Musician Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") shows that up to 92.26% of musicians have not participated in similar online performances. The report collected 1,007 questionnaires from frontline musicians and interviewed 296 musicians.
reasons include the business model of restricted online concerts. At present, this performance format is mainly sponsor revenue. Given the current market environment, it means that only a very small number of top musicians may be included in the scope of sponsor consideration.
According to "Financial World" weekly , Cui Jian's online concert naming fee is at the level of tens of millions of yuan. The title of the performance Jihu revealed that on that night, Jihu WeChat index reached its highest in history, with a peak of more than 54 times higher than before the event. The company chose to continue to name Luo Dayou's performance.
At the same time, given the huge difference in offline and online experiences, it is also difficult for non-head singers to implement the paid model. For e-commerce, it is difficult for musicians to accept.
The aforementioned report shows that 33.27% of musicians' main source of income is music performances, and performances are second only to music production, becoming the second largest source of income for musicians. Live performances are also an important publicity method for musicians.
These are all goals that are difficult to achieve in online concerts.
In fact, musicians are also embracing short videos.
The report shows that in 2021, 64.75% of musicians uploaded short music videos, a year-on-year increase of 10% compared with 54.08% in 2020. Among them, more than half of the musicians have used the Douyin platform to spread music, accounting for 55.21%. Among the digital music platform selections with the best promotion effect of
, 33.37% of the musicians who chose Douyin accounted for 33.37%, second only to Tencent Music, ranking second.
Douyin Music’s "2020 Douyin Music Ecological Data Report" released by Douyin Music shows that the top ten hit songs in 2020 have a total playback volume of 94.5 billion, which is equivalent to the average 67 times per person in China.
"Many friends around me have chosen to release TikTok for their works, and the probability of being popular is even greater. Technology is changing the content." A well-known music producer sighed to the reporter of 21st Century Business Herald.
accepts the changes of the times, which may be part of art itself.
This issue editor Liu Xiang Intern Zhan Huinan
According to the reporter, compared with Cui Jian’s concert, Video Account opened more brands to the brand during Luo Dayou’s concert and tried more marketing methods, especially the linkage with other WeChat ecological products such as mini programs, circle of friends, enterprise WeChat, etc., which further amplified the commercial value of Video Account.
is different from video accounts. Douyin actually made some small thoughts at Stefanie Sun’s chat meeting, such as closing user rewards and not having any brand sponsorship. Douyin may hope that this event will be more pure and thus win people’s hearts, but it was a bit unsatisfactory due to other problems.
However, this head-on competition is just the tip of the iceberg of Douyin's competition with Video Account. From the perspective of the short video industry, Douyin is still far ahead in terms of content and commercialization, and Video Account is a catcher.
An industry insider told reporters that at present, the core competitiveness of video accounts and Douyin is WeChat ecological resources, especially the social relationship chain of the WeChat platform, but this is also a double-edged sword, with both pros and cons. The advantage of
is that it provides a lot of power to the video account. For example, many platforms have actually tried online concerts, including Tencent Music, but those who have truly achieved the goal of breaking the circle are broadcast live on the video account. This is because Video Account has social sharing capabilities that other platforms do not have, and it can seamlessly connect in WeChat chat, Moments and other scenarios. As for the disadvantages of
, video accounts may hinder the further development of their content because they have too strong social interactions with acquaintances. Just imagine, if a user knows that the content will be seen by many acquaintances before publishing the content, will he think about whether the content is suitable for being seen by acquaintances.
Furthermore, an important recommendation logic for video accounts is that friends like it, that is, the content you like will also be recommended to friends. With this logic, will you also consider whether this content is suitable for friends, colleagues and even bosses before like it?
So, the content of the video account, liked or recommended, may be "selected" content and is not "real enough", which will make some popular or vulgar content more difficult to discover.
Zhang Xiaolong made a prediction in 2020 that the traffic allocation ratio of video accounts in the future will be 1:2:10 attention, like and machine recommendation respectively. The reason why
made such a judgment was that Zhang Xiaolong explained that the content can be divided into two types. is knowledge information that requires brain power to understand, which is learning; the other is consumer information that does not require brain power to consume consumer information, which is entertainment. Friends like it is because friends force you to obtain knowledge information that you may not be interested in, which belongs to the learning category; machine recommendations are the system to suit their preferences and allow you to browse consumer information you like very comfortably, which belongs to the entertainment category.
From the user habits, content that does not require brainpower will definitely account for a larger proportion. So if the traffic of content liked by friends in the video account is higher than that of the machine recommendation, this is actually not reasonable enough, and it also means that the content richness of the video account is not enough, and the content recommended by the machine is not that large.
But how to enrich the video content will be a major challenge for the video account. At present, browsing video accounts, the proportion of real original content is not large enough, and it is more about some content that is transported and edited. And in this regard, Douyin has already come out.
As for social relationships, this is what Douyin is eager to obtain. Whether it is a lawsuit with Tencent or trying to make social products by itself, Douyin's purpose is to have a stronger connection relationship for itself and users, or users and users.
Previously, Douyin added a "Friends" column to its products, hoping to strengthen social interactions among acquaintances based on address books, while the "Nearest" column hopes to promote social interactions among strangers based on location relationships.
2021, ByteDance China CEO 6 Zhang Nan once said that TikTok is gradually changing from an entertainment method to a social method, and then to a lifestyle. Coincidentally, WeChat’s slogan is “WeChat is a lifestyle.”
Therefore, Douyin's goal may be to become WeChat, and the video account is the key "weapon" for WeChat to face the challenge of Douyin.
"Head Game"
is like this, the story returns to the music circle.
For the two competitions, executives of a leading music company admitted to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that Douyin has first-mover advantages in all aspects, but the video account also has highlights.
"Video account has two advantages, WeChat ecosystem, and it is not Douyin." said the aforementioned executive.
He believes that although Douyin is neutral in content production, the user's mind is still fixed. The result is that many music types are restricted on Douyin, so Cui Jian and Luo Dayou performed on the video account.
, and Douyin chose Stefanie Sun, who matched its tone. The background of
may be related to the two different algorithm foundations. is different from short video platforms based on content and tag distribution. The video account gives great weight to social networking. Under the "friend" tag after the cold start, the sorting of short videos is arranged based on the order of "liked" by friends, and displays the avatars of three liked friends. The distribution logic is similar to that of friends in the circle of friends.
is based on WeChat’s huge user base, which makes the video account inherently more diversified in tone. Of course, the Douyin algorithm iterates very quickly, and there is a considerable probability that this problem will be solved. On the other end of
, the hot online concert is still far away from most musicians.
The aforementioned executive does not hide the fact that at present, the size of online concerts is limited and the business model is single. But he also revealed that the company he works in has good online projects and is ready to cooperate with the video account.
Zhang Fengyan's working group released by the "2021 Chinese Musician Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") shows that up to 92.26% of musicians have not participated in similar online performances. The report collected 1,007 questionnaires from frontline musicians and interviewed 296 musicians.
reasons include the business model of restricted online concerts. At present, this performance format is mainly sponsor revenue. Given the current market environment, it means that only a very small number of top musicians may be included in the scope of sponsor consideration.
According to "Financial World" weekly , Cui Jian's online concert naming fee is at the level of tens of millions of yuan. The title of the performance Jihu revealed that on that night, Jihu WeChat index reached its highest in history, with a peak of more than 54 times higher than before the event. The company chose to continue to name Luo Dayou's performance.
At the same time, given the huge difference in offline and online experiences, it is also difficult for non-head singers to implement the paid model. For e-commerce, it is difficult for musicians to accept.
The aforementioned report shows that 33.27% of musicians' main source of income is music performances, and performances are second only to music production, becoming the second largest source of income for musicians. Live performances are also an important publicity method for musicians.
These are all goals that are difficult to achieve in online concerts.
In fact, musicians are also embracing short videos.
The report shows that in 2021, 64.75% of musicians uploaded short music videos, a year-on-year increase of 10% compared with 54.08% in 2020. Among them, more than half of the musicians have used the Douyin platform to spread music, accounting for 55.21%. Among the digital music platform selections with the best promotion effect of
, 33.37% of the musicians who chose Douyin accounted for 33.37%, second only to Tencent Music, ranking second.
Douyin Music’s "2020 Douyin Music Ecological Data Report" released by Douyin Music shows that the top ten hit songs in 2020 have a total playback volume of 94.5 billion, which is equivalent to the average 67 times per person in China.
"Many friends around me have chosen to release TikTok for their works, and the probability of being popular is even greater. Technology is changing the content." A well-known music producer sighed to the reporter of 21st Century Business Herald.
accepts the changes of the times, which may be part of art itself.
This issue editor Liu Xiang Intern Zhan Huinan
