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Text / Xiaoman
Source / Jingzhe Research Institute (ID: jingzheyanjiusuo)
It can make 50 million people wait in front of the screen to watch the “replay”. I am afraid that the last time I received this kind of treatment was only the national drama “Journey to the West”, but for the singer Jay Chou, this matter is as easy as drinking milk tea. .
For two consecutive nights on May 20th and 21st, Tencent Music TME’s QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, Quanmin K Song, and WeChat video accounts broadcast live broadcasts of Jay Chou’s two concerts. According to incomplete statistics, the number of viewers of the live concert on the 20th alone exceeded 50 million, creating the highest viewing record for an online concert.
In fact, since December last year, Tencent Music TME has successively launched concerts by many well-known singers and orchestras such as Xicheng Boys, Mayday, Leslie Cheung, and Cui Jian, and Tencent’s concentrated efforts to live broadcast concerts has also attracted the industry. Follow and discuss. For a time, live concerts were regarded as an important form of content for Tencent’s linked video account to develop traffic ecology and commercialization, but Tencent is not the only player in the live concert market, and the battle for live concerts, a new traffic portal, has been ignited.
Live concerts are nothing new
The value and risks of live concerts have been widely discussed in 2014. At that time, the Internet live broadcast industry was in the ascendant, and the new Internet track, which relied on content, had long regarded live broadcast concerts as one of the key content areas. However, in the eyes of record companies and performance companies, moving concerts online is not a good idea.
The main reason is that online live broadcast channels will definitely divert the box office of offline performances. And due to the limitations of the network environment and live broadcast technology, many record companies are also worried that the online live broadcast method cannot guarantee the viewing experience of the concert, which will affect the sales of audio and video products released later. Moreover, online live content also has the risk of being recorded and broadcasted, thereby causing economic losses to the copyright owner.
However, the above concerns were quickly dispelled by the combined efforts of technology, capital and users. In August 2014, Wang Feng opened the online paid live broadcast channel for the “Falling Storm” concert held in the Bird’s Nest. According to reports, a total of 48,000 live online e-tickets were sold for the concert, each with a ticket price of 30 yuan, and within 48 hours after the concert ended, another 27,000 people paid to watch the concert. Live playback. Therefore, in the end, the concert achieved 75,000 paid viewings. Calculated at the nominal price, the live broadcast revenue alone has exceeded 2 million yuan.
Since then, paid live streaming has also become a popular way to commercialize the content of concerts, and the number of viewers of live concerts has continued to refresh records. In 2015, Li Yuchun’s WhyMe Ten Years Concert in Chengdu and LeTV launched an online live broadcast channel, and the number of online live broadcasts reached 4.98 million and millions of online viewers. In June of the following year, Li Yuchun raised the record to 5.66 million.
On December 30, 2016, Faye Wong’s “Fantasy Music One” concert, which returned after five years, was hard to find at the scene. According to Tencent Video, the concert received a total of 21.49 million online views. In addition, this concert also opened a paid VR live broadcast channel. Users can spend 30 yuan to purchase a redemption code to watch online. The screen at the end of the VR live broadcast shows that a total of 88,000 people watched online, so the income of paid live broadcast reached 2.64 million yuan.
Jingzhe Research Institute has learned that from 2017 to 2019, TFBOYS has maintained a record of online viewers for live concerts for three years, during which the online viewers of the three live broadcasts were 118 million, 125 million and 156 million respectively. The revenue record of paid live concerts comes from the “Chen Qingling Guofeng Music Concert” held by Tencent Video in 2019. Although Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo only had time to perform three songs in this concert, 3.267 million people paid 30 yuan (the price for non-members is 50 yuan) to watch the live broadcast. Roughly calculated, the online live broadcast revenue of the concert has exceeded 100 million.
Offline performance online survival
If the bold attempts of major platforms in live broadcast concerts in 2019 are active explorations of the commercial value of online live broadcast, then live broadcast concerts after 2020 will be an accidental survival path due to the environment.
After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, live broadcast content on short video platforms has gradually become popular, and a number of music festivals and concerts have begun to be broadcast live online. Among them are the “Strawberry is not a music festival” jointly organized by Modern Sky and Station B, and the “Lianmai Yinyue Club” jointly organized by Kuaishou and Taihe Music.
It is worth mentioning that since the public opinion evaluation of the live broadcast at that time had not reached the later heights, the early live broadcast music festivals and concerts were not very eye-catching in terms of scale and number of guests. However, as online concerts become a new content trend, well-known singers, record companies, music and short video platforms have begun to take live concerts as a key development direction for content differentiation and commercial value realization.
In June 2020, the disbandment concert of Rocket Girls 101 took the lead in opening up a precedent for domestic paid live concerts. Two months later, TFBOYS once again verified its box office appeal. The 7th anniversary concert of “Sunshine Travel”, which was exclusively launched on NetEase Cloud, launched three fares of 30 yuan, 158 yuan and 860 yuan. The highest number of simultaneous online users of the concert reached 786,000. If the lowest ticket price is used, the ticket revenue of a single TFBOYS live concert has reached 23.58 million. Not counting other commercial sponsorships and peripheral sales income obtained through the entrance of the concert live broadcast page.
If you simply look at the influence and market reaction, it is not difficult to find that the live concerts that can really make money are almost all special content created by record companies or brokerage companies for fans. And this routine will also be played more proficiently in 2021, including the first online concert of THE9 women’s group, the disbandment of the R1SE men’s group, and JJ Lin’s “Sanctuary FINALE” online concert. The intention of “Chafan” was too obvious and caused the controversy of “excessive fare”.
Compared with these concerts that focus on the commercial value of the “fan economy”, the short video platform played the “feeling card” during this period while calculating its own business experience. For example, the Douyin platform invited Douyin musicians to hold the “Douyin Sees Music Project Midsummer Party” concert in August 2020, and held the “Douyin Summer Song Party” in September 2021, not only the production level is getting better and better The higher it is, also start to try paid live broadcast.
“Douyin Summer Song Party” not only invited “unpopular singer” Stefanie Sun to hold a special concert for her, but also attracted Ouyang Nana, Yu Dingyi (ie “Soda Green”), Zhang Huimei, Chen Li, as well as Hedgehog Band, Xia Well-known musicians and music groups such as Japan Invasion Planning, Tour Band, etc., jointly created 7 online performances with different styles. The 7 online performances are priced from 1 yuan to 30 yuan, except for Sun Yanzi’s special performance, which is free and open.
Compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, the WeChat video account can only be said to be “hurry up in small steps” in live concerts, but it has also achieved results. From the Xicheng Boys’ online concert of “Love Beyond the Mountains and Seas” in December last year, to “Leslie Cheung’s 2000 “Passion and Passion” concert on April 1 this year, the ultra-clear restoration version”, and then to Cui Jian on April 15. The online concert “Continue to Be Wild” and Jay Chou’s concert, which just won the hot search, were re-screened. WeChat video accounts are constantly setting new records for the number of online viewers, and they are also quietly accumulating user scale, laying the foundation for the upcoming payment war.
Short video opens a new era of content payment
The ambition of the short video “Big Three” to pay for content has long been hidden.
As early as 2020, Kuaishou has opened up “paid selections” that include paid live broadcasts, paid short videos, and paid recorded courses. These paid contents cover multiple vertical fields such as food, agriculture, music, and dance. There are not only professional contents such as lamb fattening technology, but also practical strategies such as teaching people how to make boiled fish. However, because the production standards of this type of content are difficult to unify, and there is a certain gap with the actual needs of platform users, the paid content on Kuaishou has not received obvious positive feedback in terms of update frequency or user recognition.
In addition to selling tickets for special online concerts at the “Douyin Summer Song Festival” last year, Douyin also opened the “paid-for-mic” test function to some waist experts. The anchor can set the amount of mic connection in the live broadcast room, and the audience can pay for the mic connection with the anchor. At the same time, the anchor also retains the initiative to choose whether to connect the mic. Based on the positive feedback of this function, Douyin also launched a paid-to-mai support activity in March this year. From the current point of view, Douyin is very likely to focus on the two major directions of paid live concerts and paid anchors in the future.
As for the video account, in addition to launching the first paid live broadcast room in January this year for live broadcast of NBA regular season events, it has also gradually increased its investment in live broadcast concerts. It is particularly worth noting that although the two Jay Chou concerts can be watched for free, there are obvious commercial behaviors in all aspects of the live broadcast.
For example, the “gift” logo in the lower right corner of the live broadcast room can actually jump to the official brand store link of TME. On the night of the live broadcast, a total of 12 items were launched on the online mall. The cheapest one was the “King of Music Summer Series-Cushion Pillow”, which can be purchased for only 59 yuan, and the most expensive one was priced at 4999 yuan and limited to 500 pieces. The “Dark Night Guard Weekly Limited Figure” (60cm) and the “Dark Night Guard Weekly Limited Figure” (16cm), priced at 529 yuan and limited to 8888 bodies.
According to the Daily Economic News, as of 12:00 on May 21, a total of 2,814 people had purchased the figurines of this Jay Chou online concert. If the 16cm figurine with a price tag of 529 yuan is calculated, only the sales of this product will be The amount has reached 1.4886 million yuan. And if all the 60cm figures are sold out, the total sales of the two figures will reach 7,201,300 yuan. Not only is there “income from bringing goods”, this two-day online concert is also sponsored by the exclusive title company PepsiCo. Although the specific cooperation amount is unknown, but with Jay Chou’s strength and influence, the sponsorship fee will not be too low. . It can also be seen from the cooperation of this live concert that the future paid content profitability of the video account should not be underestimated.
Comparing the early paid live concerts and the new round of attempts to pay for content initiated by short video platforms, we can see that although the media environment has undergone tremendous changes, the audience’s preference for content has not actually changed significantly. transfer. Therefore, when singers such as Xicheng Boys, Mayday, Leslie Cheung, Cui Jian, Jay Chou and other singers reappear on the screen representing a generation of youthful memories, there will still be thousands of “middle-aged fans” who repeatedly swipe in the barrage. The barrage of “Ye Qing Hui” and “Tear Eyes”.
Online live broadcast has brought the scarce content of concerts to the attention of the public again, and through the short video platform with social attributes, the value of its content and business has been magnified to the extent that users and brands can see it with the naked eye. So far, the concert is no longer a consumer product relying entirely on offline scenarios, but a content bridge between users and platforms, users and brands by means of live broadcasts.
For short video platforms, live concerts that can be sold to both users and brand sponsors are not only new ideas for developing paid content, but will also become an important battleground for the next short video industry competition.
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