Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina
NetEase Cloud Music launched the social software MUS, which wants to analyze the personality and hobbies through the user’s listening data to match people who resonate at the same frequency. However, according to user feedback, MUS is a bit like Tantan, and the most eye-catching is still the appearance. On the MUS download and promotion interface, it is also impressively written that “high appearance, high education”.
Author 丨 Li Nan Editor 丨 Lei Yanpeng
Source/city boundary (ID: ishijie2018)
In November 2013, Ding Lei, with a net worth of nearly 26 billion, complained: For the first time, he felt like working part-time.
At that time, the social track was hot, and NetEase and China Telecom jointly developed an instant messaging software, Yixin, which mainly focused on free text messages and phone messages. Unfortunately, the product development is not smooth. Ding Lei commented: “WeChat gets 5 points, Momo gets 4 points, and we get 0 points”. Ding Lei was chased by telecom people every day to ask about various data, and he was under great pressure.
Over the years, Yixin has not been able to become bigger and stronger, and it seems to have become a knot of NetEase. And now, NetEase Cloud Music, helmed by Ding Lei, is exploring social networking again. At the end of June, NetEase Cloud Music launched an independent social software “MUS” to make friends based on music taste.
In the past, Yixin’s opponent was WeChat, and now MUS seems to be trying to steal Tantan and Soul’s business.
Although the anti-monopoly policy has relieved the copyright dilemma to a certain extent, NetEase Cloud Music, which lacks Jay Chou’s copyright, still lacks copyright reserves compared to its old rival Tencent Music.
Making efforts to socialize has become another way for NetEase Cloud Music to break the game.
Want to rob Tantan and Soul?
The social software “MUS” launched by NetEase Cloud Music is inconspicuous at the moment, but it corresponds to one of its strategies to expand its prospects: exploring social innovation. Leverage behavioral and musical preferences to connect users with each other, providing additional social networking options.
Despite the existence of WeChat, Momo and other mountains, social networking still attracts much attention.
Soul, which focuses on making friends with souls, submitted a prospectus for listing in Hong Kong. Like Soul, MUS also put the word “soul” in the slogan. Soul uses personality tests to portray Soul, MUS relies on music.
“Meeting good friends with souls through music” is the main feature of MUS.
Music taste is related to a person’s personality. Some people like Luo Dayou, some like Stefanie Sun, some people like Wutiaoren, and some people only love Jay Chou. If you can’t find a topic with a stranger you meet for the first time, chatting about your favorite music is a good option. Having similar music hobbies, it is easy to narrow the distance from each other.
Sociologist Bourdieu once pointed out that the best way to determine a person’s class is his musical taste.
MUS, implies two words: music and us. In product design, the personality and hobbies are analyzed through the user’s listening song data to match people who resonate at the same frequency.
The listening data comes from NetEase Cloud Music. MUS uses the same account system of NetEase Cloud Music. After logging in through the NetEase Cloud Music account, it will access the user’s listening to songs or interactive behavior records to generate “music character frequency”.
(MUS software tests musical character. Source: software screenshot)NetEase Cloud Music’s shortcoming is copyright, and its advantage is social networking.
Since its inception, NetEase Cloud Music has not been a simple tool for listening to songs, but has been positioned in the community. Through the comment area and playlists and other sections, users can connect and resonate, thus gaining strong user stickiness. , resulting in a lively “cloud village”.
Before the birth of MUS, NetEase Cloud Music also launched the voice social app “Sound Wave”, the K song community software “Yinjie” for young people, and the stranger social app “Xinyu”. Comparatively speaking, MUS makes the best use of cloud music listening data.
It can be said that NetEase Cloud Music has a natural side as a social application.
However, although MUS emphasizes music and soul, according to user feedback, in the experience, the most eye-catching is still the appearance. “MUS is a bit like Detective.”
The city community found that MUS’s friend matching interface is similar to Tantan’s, “left and right heart” to select interested strangers. In addition, the avatar setting needs to upload a real photo, and there can be no facial occlusion. On the MUS download and promotion interface, it is also impressively written that “high appearance, high education”.
The biggest difference is that by accessing the listening data of NetEase Cloud Music, MUS can match the probability of the same frequency between users, showing which songs the two have collected together and what genre they like.
(MUS on the left, Tantan on the right. Source: Screenshot of the app)
Su Yun, who has experienced MUS, said that on the one hand, MUS emphasizes the fit of music tastes, and on the other hand, it requires users to provide real avatars, which makes it easy to return to the old way of socializing with beauty. It’s like wearing a shell that attaches importance to music and soul, but when using it, the focus is still on the face.
Some netizens said that MUS may be more attractive to people who like music, but the first impression is to “talk about objects”.
Since Momo and Tantan, only Soul has developed in the social field of strangers, which is related to the fact that it does not need to set a real avatar and weakens the influence of appearance in social interaction.
Zhang Yi, chief analyst of iiMedia Research, pointed out to the market that real avatars have shortcomings in social networking, and it is usually difficult to increase the number of users. According to iiMedia Research, in social networking, both men and women have the objective intention of deliberately concealing their own shortcomings.
However, if you want to compete with high-value users, there are more strangers’ social platforms such as Tantan and Momo. At present, MUS has no advantage.
At present, MUS is still in the testing stage and has not yet begun to be released. Some users temporarily abandoned it because there were too few people on it.
The Inevitability of “Imperial Work”
Social networking is a track that has attracted much attention from Internet entrepreneurs, and it is also an increasingly difficult track. Even ByteDance has failed.
For NetEase Cloud Music, social exploration will not be easy. But this kind of “doesn’t work properly” is inevitable.
At the end of August 2021, under the anti-monopoly supervision, Tencent issued a statement to give up the exclusive licensing rights of music copyrights. NetEase just held a conference call that night, and Ding Lei made a targeted statement:
NetEase Cloud Music has prepared sufficient funds and is willing to carry out fair and open cooperation with copyright owners with the greatest sincerity.
(Ding Lei)Fans who love “Cloud Village” are excited. This means that songs in the playlist that are grayed out due to copyright loss can be played normally again. In particular, what everyone is looking forward to is that Jay Chou has the opportunity to return to NetEase Cloud Music.
The later story is that the copyright of NetEase Cloud Music is indeed increasing. Modern Sky, Emperor Entertainment, SM Company and Times Fengjun have all reached copyright cooperation with NetEase Cloud Music. Artists under these companies include Eason Chan, Twins, Wutiaoren, New Pants, TVXQ, Girls’ Generation, etc.
Unfortunately, there is no Jay Chou.
Moreover, although NetEase Cloud Music has obtained the cooperation of many record companies, Tencent Music still has the exclusive copyright of many artists’ new songs for 30 days. In the copyright competition, NetEase Cloud Music has always been at a disadvantage.
Even after the listing, this predicament has not been fundamentally reversed. Shares of Cloud Music continued to fall.
In December 2021, NetEase Cloud Music was listed in Hong Kong and closed at HK$199.9 per share that day, down 2.5% from the issue price. The company’s market value is HK$41.5 billion. By July 29, 2022, Cloud Music’s share price fell to HK$66.8, and the company’s market value was only HK$14 billion.
According to the financial report data, NetEase Cloud Music achieved revenue of 2.1 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2021, a year-on-year increase of 38.6%; a loss of 180 million yuan during the period, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 90%. But in the same period, Tencent Music achieved revenue of 6.64 billion yuan and net profit of 610 million yuan. The difference between the two is huge.
What is more noteworthy is that both NetEase Cloud Music and Tencent Music rely more on social entertainment services such as live broadcast and K-song in commercialization. The former accounted for about 57% of the total revenue in the first quarter, and the latter accounted for about 57% of the total revenue in the first quarter. accounted for about 61%.
But such businesses are under increasing pressure.
On the one hand, short video platforms headed by Douyin have robbed users of their time; on the other hand, successive policies have been introduced to further standardize online live broadcasts, such as requiring the cancellation of the tipping list and prohibiting online anchors from tempting users to “tip” with large sums of money. “.
The pillar business of online music platforms is undoubtedly limited.
The mobile MAU (monthly active users) of Tencent Music’s social entertainment services in the first quarter was 162 million, down 27.7% from 224 million in the same period last year. The number of paying users of social entertainment services was 8.3 million, down 26.5% from 11.3 million a year earlier.
NetEase Cloud Music’s social entertainment paying users continued to grow rapidly in the first quarter, from 438,000 in the same period last year to 1.182 million. However, the revenue generated by a single paying user declined, from 553.3 yuan to 329.8 yuan.
Zhang Yi pointed out that in addition to the corresponding genes, NetEase Cloud Music is a social product, and the more important reason is that, as the main source of profit, the regulatory situation, market capacity and consumer demand of the online entertainment market such as live broadcast have been fully tightened.
If NetEase Cloud Music wants to seek development, it must explore new paths. In his opinion, it is a matter of time before MUS charges membership fees like Soul and Momo.
If social products such as MUS can grow, they will have the opportunity to become the second growth curve of NetEase Cloud Music. At the same time, it can also enhance the user stickiness of NetEase Cloud Music itself.
MUS relies on the listening data of NetEase Cloud Music. Therefore, users of NetEase Cloud Music have a certain connection with users of MUS. If products like MUS are successful, it can also become a network for NetEase Cloud Music to win over users.
The music business is growing
The online music business is getting harder and harder to do. One of the signs is that music platforms are making less money from individual users.
The average revenue per paying user of Tencent Music’s online music service was 8.3 yuan in the first quarter of this year, compared with 9.3 yuan in the same period last year. NetEase Cloud Music’s monthly revenue per paying user was 6.4 yuan, compared with 7.1 yuan in the same period last year.
Platforms are looking for ways to increase user payment rates and engage in promotions through discounts or joint membership sales.
Under the price reduction marketing, the number of paying users of Tencent Music’s online music service reached 80.2 million, a year-on-year increase of 31.7%. The number of monthly paying users corresponding to NetEase Cloud Music reached 36.74 million, a significant increase of 51% year-on-year.
But a more serious problem is hidden behind the harvest: the scale of people who listen to songs on the two major platforms may have peaked.
In the first quarter of this year, the number of mobile monthly active users of Tencent Music’s online music service was 604 million, a decrease of about 11 million from the previous quarter and a decrease of about 19 million from the same period last year; NetEase Cloud Music’s monthly active users of online music services in the first quarter were 182 million, a year-on-year increase of 182 million. On a month-on-month basis, both decreased by about 1 million.
Some investors lamented that the online music business is losing its appeal. Some people in the industry mentioned to the market that the number of songs received by the platform has decreased significantly this year, and the control of song quality has become more and more stringent.
From the user side, the pressure brought by the short video platform is the most obvious. The QuestMobile report shows that in March 2022, the overall monthly active users of the short video platform reached 945 million, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%. The demographic dividend of the mobile Internet has disappeared, and the division of the cake has changed.
From the perspective of the music industry chain, short video platforms are also taking part of the profits of the music industry.
An industry insider pointed out to the market that although Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music are still important channels, the short video platform has become another main position for him to promote his works, because “traffic is concentrated on Douyin”.
Zheng Bin, a music producer who has cooperated with NetEase Cloud Music, mentioned to the city community that the popular “Goodbye Monica” on NetEase Cloud Music is related to spending money on Douyin to promote it. And now to promote a song, the investment of 1 million yuan can not escape.
For new growth, both Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music have to find a new way out.
For Tencent Music, digital collections are one of the highlights of future performance. In August 2021, the 20th anniversary commemorative vinyl NFT of Hu Yanbin’s “The Monk” was officially released on the QQ Music platform, and 2001 limited digital vinyls were sold out.
What directly expands the volume of Tencent Music is to strengthen the linkage with the WeChat video account. In late May, Jay Chou “appeared” on the video account. Tencent Music re-screened Jay Chou’s 2013 “Mo Tianlun” concert and 2019 “The Strongest Demon Tianlun on the Surface”, which attracted nearly 100 million views in two days.
For NetEase Cloud Music, Tencent’s ecological traffic is an unenviable resource. Fortunately, NetEase also has a business that can resonate with music, that is, games.
NetEase Cloud Music is actively seeking internal cooperation with NetEase Games. Starting from December 2021, NetEase Cloud Music has cooperated with “Eternal Catastrophe” and “Harry Potter: Magic Awakening” in order to promote cloud music members.
Now, however, such explorations raise new questions. The aforementioned industry insiders pointed out to the market that NetEase’s recent publicity activities may bring trouble to the copyright expansion of Cloud Music.
On the evening of July 11, Jewell Music denounced the online game “The World 3”, because the latter launched an event and presented Jay Chou’s latest digital album “The Greatest Work” and Jay Chou concert tickets.
Jewell said that he never authorized the game to use Jay Chou’s music works, nor authorized it to give Jay Chou concert tickets. The “World 3” event “has nothing to do with Jewell music! It has nothing to do with Jay Chou!”
“The World 3” is a fantasy game developed by NetEase. NetEase, which lost Jay Chou’s copyright, obviously doesn’t want to lose Jay Chou’s traffic. But the twisted melon is not sweet. After this conflict, it will be even more difficult for NetEase Cloud Music to obtain Jay Chou’s copyright.
No matter what kind of exploration is made, copyright is always the foundation of music platforms, especially in the era of lack of new national idols. It is always a great regret that NetEase Cloud Music lacks Jay Chou.
There was Tencent Music in ambush before, and short video chasing after. NetEase Cloud Music had no way to play “soul friendship” when the industry ceiling was obvious.
(The above are pseudonyms except “Zhang Yi”)
(Except the source is separately marked, the above pictures are from Visual China)
(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view and does not represent the position of Sina.com.)
This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-07-30/doc-imizmscv4127982.shtml
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.