Editor’s Note: This article is from WeChat WeChat official account "Tech Planet" (ID:tech618), by Li Xiaolei, published by 36Kr with authorization.
Just like 16 years ago, Jason once again became a "crab eater" by taking part in "My Show" and becoming a champion.
On September 21st, Netease Cloud Music officially announced that it had reached a brand-new strategic cooperation with famous musician Jason. This means that the two parties will carry out innovative operations in music copyright, personal music IP development, music works creation and online music performance. This is also the first in-depth cooperation mode between the head singer and the streaming music platform involving music copyright, personal IP, operation announcement and so on.
Since 2004, Jason, who has been groping in the music industry, has witnessed the changes of the music industry from the record era to the streaming media era. For the head singers, the new music industry, which is slowly unfolding in front of them, has undergone tremendous changes compared with the past.
The hard power of music streaming media platform has been extended to the comprehensive operation of musicians and music works, including the redevelopment of music copyright, concerts, IP peripheral and other diversified commercial operations.
The cooperation with Jason is also the first shot for Netease Cloud Music to open the ∞ Unlimited Music Plan. While supporting original musicians, Netease Cloud Music has another "abacus"-through the "Infinite Music Plan", more mainstream musicians will be held in hand to provide them with a new service model based on the music platform, which will inject more vitality into new and old music.
The combination of head singers and head music platforms will also become another competitive trend in the music industry.
From the earliest signing of Shangteng Entertainment, to Tianyu Media, and then to the independent studio, Jason, who debuted in the draft, has turned into the top male singer in the Chinese music scene and won the Grand Slam of the mainland music award. In 16 years, he released 14 music albums and left more than 200 singles.
When Jason debuted as an amateur in 2004, it was a period of drastic changes in the music industry.
Dao Lang became a key figure in Chinese music this year. At that time, there was no concept of "sinking the market", but the first album "The First Snow in 2002" released by Dao Lang, with its unique music type, "entered" the urban and rural markets in one fell swoop, bringing about a change in music types.
In the record era, musicians mostly earned their income by selling physical albums and records. The sales volume of Dao Lang’s first album claimed to be as high as 2.6 million. Pay-as-you-go CRBT became popular from this year, and the profit of record companies was replaced by the service fee of paying for downloading CRBT. Song Ke, who was the CEO of Taihe Wheat Field at that time, even spent tens of millions to buy out the color ring back tones copyright of Dao Lang’s three songs.
Over the past 10 years, the mode of music announcement and profit has undergone tremendous changes. The mode of music profit has changed from records and ringtones to establishing exposure on streaming media platforms and social platforms and selling digital singles and albums. At the same time, on the basis of gaining influence, we will tour and develop and sell the surrounding IP products.
Most mainstream head musicians came out of the era of traditional record industry, and the traditional announcement and distribution modes that prevailed in the past, such as playing charts, releasing records, signing sales tours and performing in various places, have long since fallen behind in this era.
In the fast-paced moment, the streaming media platform has obviously become an important part of musicians’ communication channels, and the rise of Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker has also opened a new door for musicians.
In other words, the Internet is reconstructing the traditional music industry, and the cooperation between digital music platform and record companies, brands and musicians has gradually become closer. To some extent, digital music platform plays an important role in promoting the value of the whole industry chain in the music industry.
Jason’s hand in hand with Netease Cloud Music is clearly an insight into this trend. In fact, this is also a new mode of all-round music cooperation with head singers initiated by Netease Cloud Music.
Under this brand-new mode, Netease Cloud Music will provide multi-dimensional module services such as accurate and intelligent recommendation of works, personal music IP development, exclusive music brand activities, music linkage at home and abroad, cross-border integration of original music, offline and offline music performances, new interaction in Yuncun community, and commercial development of music content.
For example, relying on personalized recommendation, song list, music review, Mlog and other product features, Netease Cloud Music has built a "music community" with unique vitality, which will help musicians reach users from multiple channels. In terms of music creation, in June this year, Netease Cloud Music also strategically invested in the AI Music Company "AIVA", and will develop innovative products to assist musicians in their creation in the future.
In the era of traditional records, the profit logic is to sell physical album records, relying more on obtaining exclusive copyright. Since her debut, Jason has released 14 albums, more than 200 high-quality music works and more than 40 OST golden songs. For Jason, who has left a large number of works, he can earn a lot of money only by his current copyright and concerts.
In the era of digital streaming media, besides copyright, how to expand the rich and multidimensional vitality of music and make a music work have a longer tail value and influence has become a new proposition.
Under this change, it is very important for musicians and platforms to change with the trend.
In April this year, the internal letter of Netease Cloud Music’s 7th anniversary mentioned that "we are witnessing the’ most civilian’ moment in China’s music history". Netease Cloud Music should complete the mission of "delivering the beautiful power of music", and "providing surprises for users", "serving musicians" and "the team should love music" are listed as the most important things.
The internal letter also emphasized that "the service for musicians should be more active, more detailed and more in place". In fact, as early as 2016, Netease Cloud Music pioneered the "Musician Index" and successively launched independent musician support programs such as "Stone Project" and "Ladder Project". Today, with 160,000 original musicians in Yuncun, it seems a natural thing to expand cooperation with mainstream artists in the head.
In single sales, Netease Cloud Music had a cooperation example with Hua Chenyu’s "I really want to love this world" before. With the energy of the song itself and the operation of Netease Cloud Music, 45 days after its launch, the single has sold more than 16.67 million copies in Netease Cloud Music, with sales exceeding 50 million yuan, which is called "half a billion singles" by netizens.
In addition to these figures, at present, there are more than 1 million messages in Netease Cloud Music Review Zone. More than 400,000 points were praised by the hottest comments, which is the additional significance given to the songs by Netease Cloud Music Community atmosphere. Some users talk about the background of the song in the comment area, which is a music dedicated to the depressed group, and some users talk about their own depressed experiences and get comfort in the comment area.
For singers, tours, concerts and other large and small stage presentations are particularly important. Since Jason’s debut, she has held 61 large-scale concerts and toured more than 30 cities at home and abroad, with a total of 1.3 million people watching. In 2018 and 2019, she broke the box office record of a single concert in the Bird’s Nest for two consecutive years.
In the operation of online concerts, Netease Cloud Music has already had the experience of actually operating online performances, including LIVE on the cloud, "Fish Dining in Sodagreen" and the new solo concert of Mr.R&Beats in Wilber Pan.
Not only that, Netease Cloud Music also took the lead in launching supporting services for paying to watch online performances. Take the online concert of the 7th anniversary of TFBOYS debut as an example. The ticket prices of online concerts are 30 yuan, 158 yuan and 860 yuan, respectively. The higher the price, the more rights and interests you can enjoy, and more products you can enjoy during the week. In the end, the record of this concert reached 786,000 simultaneous online users, which also broke the world record of online paid concerts.
Today, online performances are gradually normalized, and offline performances complement the ecology. The importance of online performance planning and supporting services is also more prominent.
Netease Cloud Music launched the "Infinite Music Plan", the essential purpose of which is to strengthen and innovate the deep cooperation mode with the mainstream artists in the head, and give full play to the superior resources of the music platform to carry out all-round integration with the mainstream artists in the head. Taking music as the benchmark core, we will create high-quality, personalized and topical music content.
While releasing the potential of music IP, it is actually exploring the possibility of music cross-border.
Netease Cloud Music, while continuously supporting original musicians, has also begun to provide a new service model based on the music platform for head singers. To some extent, this is another evolution of the streaming music platform.
However, in today’s diversified music channels, if we want to be re-recognized and maintain the popularity, it will test our ability to adapt to the operation and publicity of streaming media era more comprehensively.
It is understood that after the cooperation between Jason and Netease Cloud Music, Netease Cloud Music will launch "Jason Music Week", which will promote many widely sung songs in Jason on the whole platform in terms of song list, cloud circle, Mlog and platform announcement.
From the user’s point of view, mastering the youth market is the key to the future for any industry. There is no doubt that Jason’s incremental audience market comes from young people. You should know that among the active users of Netease Cloud Music, the post-95 generation accounts for more than 60%. For most singers, reaching these new users, being re-recognized and liked is also an important measure to stimulate the original vitality of music.
At the same time, the community atmosphere of Netease Cloud Music, including music reviews, Mlog, and Japanese push, will undoubtedly drive all kinds of music to find exclusive user groups, and even bring about the proliferation of quantity and the breakthrough of the circle.
Undoubtedly, in the current music market, the music platform plays a key role in linking the upstream and downstream.
In the past six months, Netease Cloud Music has successively reached cooperation with Ghibli, Warner Copyright, Shaocheng Times, Rolling Stone Records, Universal Music Group, Indie Works, BPMT(BPM Tokyo), CUBE Entertainment, etc. Almost every month, one or two copyright cooperation agreements have been reached, and the richness of the music library has already reached the leading level in China.
On September 14th, Netease Cloud Music just announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with Bertelsmann Music Group (hereinafter referred to as BMG). The two parties will carry out deep-seated and diversified cooperation in the upstream and downstream fields of music copyright, deep development of music IP, music performance, online karaoke and so on.
Judging from the cooperation of various companies, the cooperation between Netease Cloud Music and various copyright parties is not simply the cooperation of music copyright authorization, but has expanded to more fields. Music copyright, deep development of music IP and deep operation of music performance have been repeatedly mentioned, and this cooperation mode will also become a new trend of copyright cooperation. It is no longer new to obtain music copyright alone. How to inject more three-dimensional vitality into a music work is the key to the competition of streaming media music platforms in the future.
All these measures mean that Netease Cloud Music is exploring the deep water area of the music platform. In addition to copyright competition, the more important problem left for the music platform has become how to inspire musicians, users and industries to have greater value.
While absorbing the head musicians headed by Jason, and providing them with high-quality music services, high-quality music content and the community ecology fed back by peripheral services, the differentiation advantage of Netease Cloud is gradually strengthened, followed by the continuous destruction of songs and music-related content. Once this closed loop of musician-content-community ecology is formed, it will undoubtedly become the competitive advantage of Netease Cloud Music in the future.
Grasping the head musician firmly is another dimension of the music platform besides music copyright competition and user competition. In the future, how to provide more complete music operation for head musicians and independent musicians, pay attention to creation and announcement, and provide new music services will all become the new "homework" of the platform. Only by doing this problem well can you become an "excellent student" in the industry.