text | Shen Songnan
edited | Siwen
is just a concert re-screened several years ago, which attracted attention, discussions across the Internet, and even hot searches, causing media to report. Jay Chou’s influence on has not faded due to time at all. Although there are still two days before the re-screening, fans can't wait. The single QQ music channel shows that more than 12 million users made reservations.
This concert, which was jokingly called "large-scale disc playback live" by netizens, is the peak of preheating, and it is worthless for Tencent Music executives to make a grand announcement on the occasion of the Q1 quarterly earnings call on May 16.
Jay Chou’s concert re-release poster
Of course, in recent years, online concerts are no longer new for music fans. In fact, as early as 2014, when Jia Yueting was still operating LeTV in China, it led the cooperation between Internet companies and offline concerts - users spent 30 yuan to watch the live concert of Wang Feng in real time, which led to 75,000 on-demand broadcasts in three days, generating more than 2 million yuan in revenue for LeTV.
On April 15 this year, the older generation of rock singers Cui Jian held his first online concert on the Video Account, with a total of 45 million viewers, breaking the previous viewing record of the Western Region Boys' online concert. Going further forward, on April 1, on the 4th anniversary of Hong Kong Star Leslie Cheung, the restoration video of Leslie Cheung's "Hot Love" concert was re-screened, with a total of 17 million viewed.
Just yesterday, on May 17, Zheng Jun also held an online VR (Virtual Reality, virtual reality technology ) concert on ByteDance's Pico video platform. Of course, even a novel gimmick like VR is actually just an "old antique" many years ago - the 2016 Faye Wong 's "Fantasy Music" concert, which incorporates 360° panoramic, VR and other technologies throughout the process and broadcasts online.
online concert mode has been repeatedly explored and tested in the mobile Internet era. Nowadays, it has been optimized from the hardware, technology, operation and other aspects, bringing the audience an audio-visual experience that is increasingly close to offline standards. As short video platforms have climbed to an unprecedented level from user scale to user duration, the business logic behind online concerts has also quietly changed.
Fans, musicians, performers, hosting platforms and other parties collaborate with each other. Money, reputation, users, and reputation each get what you need in the carnival.
Free online concert, who is caring
This time Jay Chou’s concert is re-screened and is open to fans for free, but not every online concert is like this. At least in the early stages of the epidemic, more brokerage companies and platforms still frequently choose the payment model. I hope to get intuitive income through online concerts and alleviate business difficulties.
On August 22, 2020, the TFBOYS "Sunlight Travel" 7th anniversary concert launched by NetEase Cloud. Data shows that the number of tickets sold in this session exceeded one million, of which the lowest ticket price was 30 yuan and the highest was 860 yuan. At the same time, the peak number of online users was 786,000. Even if calculated at the lowest ticket price, the organizer still had ticket revenue of more than 30 million yuan.
NetEase Cloud & TFBOYS Test Online Concert
Previously, the "BANG BANG CON The Live" online concert of the Korean idol boy group BTS was broadcast in 107 countries, and through 756,600 paid audiences, it received US$20 million (about 22 billion won).
Concert tickets for top singers have always been in short supply. The venue has a limited capacity, and it can only satisfy a certain number of fans in the end. The imagination of paid online concerts is that although the ticket price is low, it often has a large payment scale of tens of millions of viewers.
As a comparison, Jay Chou started the "Magic Family" concert in 2013, which took 2 years and 7 months, with a total audience of 1.8 million, and a box office of 7.245 billion New Taiwan dollars (calculated based on the latest exchange rate on May 18, it is approximately RMB 1.648 billion). It can be seen that even compared with Jay Chou, the online concert is no less than the ability to make money by selling tickets.
But now online concerts have been running for more than two years, and major Internet manufacturers have entered the market one after another. Tens of millions of box office revenue may no longer be their priority.
Take the Jay Chou concert re-screened as an example. According to public information, the copyright of the concert video may belong to Jay Chou’s personal Jiwei Music Co., Ltd., and the concert subcontractor that deeply bundled Jay Chou’s IP, Superstar Legend Group Co., Ltd. . (The latter's prospectus of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange shows that its event planning and IP business revolves around "Jay Chou", including the planning and hosting of music, variety shows, concerts, etc.). The cooperation method for re-screening in
can be simply summarized as: Tencent Music purchases copyright from the concert copyright owner, and re-screens online with the help of Tencent series multiple streaming channels.
includes the previous Leslie Cheung concert re-release, as well as the online concerts of Cui Jian and Mayday. The concert is becoming the main marketing move of WeChat Video Account this year. Not only Tencent , but also "DOULIVE" under Douyin , and NetEase Cloud Music's "hard ground LIVE" have held many online concerts since 2022. Consistently, none of these platforms choose the paid model.
Internet platform can make money by selling tickets, but it is not necessary. Compared with a one-time transaction such as ticketing revenue, the platform attaches more importance to long-term user value, and payment will limit the reachable user scale.
For Douyin Kuaishou, the value of online concerts lies in using top streams to expand their positions and enhance the platform's voice and resources in the music field; for followers such as Video Account and B Station, using concerts to create topics and events, and then break the circle. This differentiated approach is the key to whether the platform can gain a certain share in the fiercely competitive short video market. At present, the popularity of online concerts of Video Account is unprecedented, but after the surging traffic, the value of precipitation does not seem to be ideal.
Although Cui Jian, Mayday and others have opened video accounts accordingly due to online concerts. However, there are still only content slices from previous concerts on the video account, and no new videos were produced. At the same time, the update frequency was not high, and friends' attention was generally in single digits.
's massive online concert is still more like a pure "event" to the video account, and it will stop when it is over. Even though WeChat continues to set the entrance to the video account, it still does not have the position attributes of celebrities or brands like other short video platforms. So we can foresee that Jay Chou’s concert will be re-released, and on 520, it will create many hot topics for video accounts and QQ music . But the question is, what can be left after it is over?
Tencent Music has held hundreds of online concerts in a year, but judging from the latest financial reports, it has not yet achieved more effective revenue and user scale. As of the first quarter ended March 31, 2022, Tencent Music's revenue was 6.64 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 15.1% from 7.82 billion yuan in the same period last year; net profit was 649 million yuan, also a year-on-year decrease of 33.71%. In terms of the number of users of
, Tencent Music's online music mobile monthly active users was 604 million, a year-on-year decrease of 1.8% from 615 million in the same period last year, and the number of monthly active users of social entertainment was 162 million, a year-on-year decrease of 27.7% from 224 million in the same period last year.
Tencent Music 2022Q1 financial report data
Of course, online concerts are not just lively. Its payment rate to the platform may have a driving effect: Tencent Music’s online payment rate in the first quarter was about 13.3%, which was 12.4% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
According to public data, after the Rene Liu TME live online concert, the overall playback volume of its songs was on the same platform, up 48.7% from the previous day; the second day of the online concert in Mayday, the overall playback volume of its songs increased by 167%.
online concert boosts the number of views, which will naturally improve the monetization efficiency of the platform's music copyright.
high-quality content is always the key to ensuring user retention and payment. It is certainly more than just a gimmick to move out of top star Jay Chou.In the music field where singers are everything, Tencent has taken Jay Chou, Cui Jian, , Yoga Lin and other new generations of singers, and put on stage to perform. The core is still to accumulate users, operate the fan economy, and consolidate the basic foundation of their business.
Of course, the biggest beneficiary of returning to this concert will probably be Jay Chou. Having not released an album for six years, he still can't quit, his distorted figure, and other topics of unrelated music such as NFT stolen have frequently been on the hot searches, and his popularity is as always. Now, there are companies that are willing to pay for the copyright of the concert that has already accumulated dust for re-screening. Fans are asked to recall their youth for free. Why not do it?
named it as the main source of income
Putting the stage online does not mean that it can save concert costs. Qin Tiji, chairman of Poly City Theater and senior theater person, once told the media that "cloud performing arts" is not as simple as having a camera on the stage. If the hardware conditions do not meet the standards, it will ruin the reputation.
Take the MAYDAY 2020 LIVE IN THE SKY online concert held by Mayday on May 31, 2020 as an example. It includes venues with a scale of 10,000 people, live hardware, broadcast teams and other costs, and the total cost is expected to be at least RMB 15 million.
There are no less than a thousand well-known online concerts held by various platforms across the network. The platform can go to the free mode, but for singers and the agency behind it, more and more online concerts depend on the self-consistent business logic behind it.
According to industry insiders, currently has a free online concert model, and its revenue comes from naming, rewards, and sales and sharing of online concert music copyrights.
Take the re-screening of Jay Chou's concert as an example. Pepsi , as the exclusive sponsor, appears on multiple promotional positions and poster pages of the hosting platform's social accounts and apps. In the reservation area, QQ Music also provided an entrance jump to the e-commerce store of Pepsi ; in Cui Jian's online concert, domestic new energy vehicle brands, as the naming agent, made high-frequency appearances in the concert, the peak of WeChat index increased by 54 times compared with before the event, and the customized gifts of car brands were given 1.04 million times; the previous cooperation between Sprite and Tencent TME live, the platform provided the brand with a number of online support, chorus activities and exclusive playlists. Although the naming fee for the online concert of
is not public, it can be expected that it is not low. On the one hand, the online audience size is often dozens or hundreds of times that of offline, and the exposure of brand advertisements is even greater. Secondly, compared with offline, online concerts can provide more diverse and intuitive advertising paths, such as the above mentioned attracting traffic for e-commerce stores and customizing reward props for brands.
As for reward income, taking Cui Jian’s online concert as an example, some industry insiders estimate that it will be around 560,000 yuan. But considering the platform's share of accounts, the singers may not have that many. According to the previous reward revenue statistics from 36Kr for a single QQ music channel, its contribution to online concerts is still relatively limited.
Reward income for some singers’ online concerts on the QQ Music platform: The chart comes from 36Kr
China Performance Industry Association data shows that in the month from mid-February to mid-March in 2022, the number of cancelled and postponed performances has exceeded 4,000. As of March 18, 2022, the number of performances in the first quarter decreased by 25% compared with the same period last year, and the box office revenue decreased by 35%.
Under the special environment of the epidemic, the entertainment industry that relies on offline revenue generation continues to face challenges.
For actors, singers, agency companies, and performing arts contractors, it is not impossible to find new possibilities in the industry in special times, and it is even possible to "change careers" temporarily. For example, stars such as Liu Tao , Lin Yilun , Jijie have already jumped out of the entertainment industry and become professional e-commerce anchors. Compared with e-commerce live broadcasts that have been repeatedly verified at the commercial level, online concerts may have more problems to solve.
For example, in the free mode, how to provide more diversified income structures and achieve commercial self-consistentness, rather than purely losing money to gain publicity; how to improve the experience of online concerts, such as the interaction between singers and fans; or how to use VR, XR (Extended Reality, Extended Reality) and other technologies to provide an atmosphere and sense of reality closer to offline concerts. Whether or not these problems of
will largely determine the end of the online concert when the offline performing industry gradually recovers: whether it is gradually withdrawal or as a supplement to offline concerts, the new model of the industry will continue to be established.
