This article is from the WeChat public account: Chocolate Entertainment (ID: ylwanjia) , original title “Yin Yue Tai suspected of collapse, the final decade idol dream broken” by: He Tianyang, thematic map : Zhang Dou, founder of Yin Yue Tai (Visual China)
Yin Yue Tai, the first stop of Hallyu in the memory of the post-80s and post-90s generations, is hard to resist the collapse of the “cold current” in this winter.
According to multiple Weibo V reports on December 4, the well-known music site Yin Yue Tai is suspected to be closed, the official website cannot be accessed normally, only the home page and some pages can be accessed, the video cannot be played, search cannot be performed, comments disappear, and the app also The data is abnormal and has been removed from the App Store. Uncle V @ DC revealed that the website and app could not be accessed normally in mid-November, and the official Weibo account was sold at the end of November. Some netizens found that the South Korean Yinyue Tai Weibo account has been suspected of being sold to Putian Shoes.
On the same day, some media went to the Beijing Sanlitun office of Yinyue Tai and found that the door was closed and there was no one in the room. All the office equipment had been emptied. The relevant property management personnel revealed that Yinyue Tai had cancelled the lease two or three months ago.
As early as May 27, Yinyue Tai was caught in a public opinion storm because of arrears of over $ 10 million in album sales due to Kuner Entertainment’s artist ONER. In the process of recovering the arrears, the founder of Yinyuetai, Zhang Dou, acknowledged that 10 million yuan of proceeds from album sales had been misappropriated.
One stone provoked thousands of waves. After Kunyin Entertainment sued Yinyue Tai in arrears, it caused widespread resonance in the industry. Other former employees and suppliers of Yinyue Tai also exposed their arrears of wages and arrears on Weibo, tearing off Yinyue Tai’s last piece of shame.
As an enlightenment teacher of domestic fan culture, Yin Yue Tai at the peak of the time held a star-studded awards ceremony, but who would have expected the bankruptcy and collapse to sell to Putian.
As the song sings, “Every idol is no different. Idols who have been addicted disappear one by one.” After winning idols, Yin Yue Tai frequently missed the air, gradually marginalized, and eventually disappeared in the winter of Xiao Xiao in Beijing.
In 2009, Yinyue Tai was founded, and its founder, Zhang Dou, was a veteran of Alibaba. His job number was 126.
Zhang Dou ’s daughter is a fan of Super Junior, but the MVs downloaded in China often have blurred picture quality and poor star-tracking experience. With this opportunity, Yin Yue Tai’s high-definition MV image quality has become the most important differentiated play in the early stage.
In the beginning, Yin Yue Tai’s main business was uploading and playing MV videos.
At that time, Hallyu was gradually sweeping across China, and three major South Korean entertainment companies SM, JYP and YG launched with full force.The second generation group represented by Dong Bang Shin Ki, Super Junior, Girls’ Generation, bigbang, etc., actively explored overseas markets. MV, as a new form of combining music and video, is sniping the demand of a large number of fans.
With the help of good wind, Yin Yue Tai quickly became the focus of Japanese and Korean music fans. Fans can watch idol concert videos or share meal music videos on it.
With the popularity of Korean idols, mainland Chinese fans have come into contact with Korean fan support culture. This includes brushing audio sources and buying albums to make their idols stand out in the fierce competition. But Unlike South Korea ’s mature ranking system, the domestic market lacks an authoritative support platform and ranking channels. The expansion of Yinyue Tai ’s business is filling this gap.
In 2011, Yinyue Tai launched the V list and became a partner of billboard in the United States. Later, the album version was released. The album sales were included in the billbord’s corresponding cooperation list, which completely activated the domestic fans’ enthusiasm for fighting. In the same year, Yin Yue Tai became the No. 1 MV music website in China with a traffic result of 40 million monthly live and 4 million daily live.
As the authority of Yinyue Tai V list is gradually recognized by the rice circle, Yinyue Tai has ushered in its peak moments since its development.
In 2013, Yin Yue Tai hosted the “First Annual Music V Annual Ceremony”, and Super Junior won the title of the most popular singer in Korea. The rising star EXO’s team EXO-M won the best newcomer team in the Mainland. On the red carpet, the stars shone, but the highlight of the Korean Wave did not last long. With the unrecited “Restriction of Korean Order” in 2016, Yin Yue Tai’s Korean Wave lifeline was affected to some extent.
Fortunately, the domestic idol market is also rapidly changing. With the emergence of Hunan TV’s “Super Girl” and “Happy Boys”, it has brought fresh blood to Yin Yue Tai. Li Yuchun, Zhang Liangying, Wei Chen, etc. have been Popular players in Yinyue V list. Following the emergence of TFBOYS, a large number of hot domestic fans found a base for the record of the little idols.
TFBOYS surpassed Super Junior in 2014 and won the most popular singer in the “2nd Annual Music V Annual Ceremony”. At this point, the professionalism of the Yinyue V list continues to weaken, and the idol attributes gradually strengthen, which also lays a dark line for the future.
The good times are not long. 2017 is the year when Yin Yue Tai ’s reputation has completely collapsed.
In the paid voting session of the “Fifth Music Festival Yue V List Annual Ceremony” that year, fans invested 2 million yuan for EXO, but at the last moment they lost to the mainland girl group battle girl ATF to surpass hundreds of thousands, and The “Most Popular Combination Award” passed by. EXO fans questioned the shadow of the list, and the public opinion of resistance and abuse was gradually fermented. Although the official explanation was that the fans had mistaken the voting system, they failed to calm the anger. At the same time, Yin Yue Tai was revealed to be in a critical situation of the capital chain, with a large number of employees leaving, arrears of wages and social security. For a time, Yin Yue Tai fell into the limelight.
At the same time, with the increasing ambition of fans, they turned their attention to the internationally renowned billboard list and abandoned the affiliate of the Yinyue V list. Yinyue Tai has gone in the hearts of fans.
In addition to the collapse of the fan base, Yin Yue Tai’s own operating model also has problems. The popularity of fan culture has brought a lot of users and traffic to Yin Yue Tai, but Yin Yue Tai has not explored a proper profit model.
In the early stage of development, Yinyue Tai mainly relied on playing the charts to drive the platform member recharge business. It is reported that the members played 1.1 times as many times as ordinary users. But as the gold content of the Yinyue V list gradually declined, fans were no longer enthusiastic about the ranking.
In addition, Yinyue Tai has also set up online peripheral malls, and its business accounted for about 40% of its total revenue. However, in order to reduce the intermediate cost, the inventory and logistics of Yinyue Tai Mall are placed on a third party. This affects the shopping experience to some extent, coupled with other professional e-commerce platforms, and the rapid development of Haitao. Yinyue Tai ’s Mall business was severely impacted.
In the following time, Yin Yue Tai floated up and down on the fan of the fan economy, but never found the right direction.
In 2015, Yin Yue Tai launched the “music stage” program to train trainees, starting from scratch, but in the recent wave of trainees, he has never seen him.
In 2018, Yinyue Tai and Youku launched the song show “MUSIC ON”, which was announced by Zhang Dou at an internal conference. As long as this project is done well, it may be acquired by Ali. However, due to changes in Youku’s personnel, the project has so far been stalled, and together, there is also the idol dream of Yin Yue Tai for ten years.
Although Yin Yue Tai’s dream-hunting journey came to an abrupt halt, as the fan’s economic cake grows larger, there are no shortage of new players entering the market.
According to the “QuestMobile Z Generation Insights Report”, in 2018, Gen Z ’s consumption driven by idols exceeded 40 billion, of which nearly half were the purchase of idol endorsements, recommendations or the same products.
In order to make the idols more prestigious at events or programs, the ordinary use of power generation has been unable to meet the needs of fans in the rice circle, and fan funding apps such as Owhat, MoDian, and Weibo have also been launched.
According to Fengmang think tank, there are nearly 20 star-chasing apps that are relatively mainstream in the domestic market. Fans can get celebrity itinerary information, help list and peripheral purchases on these apps. It is understood that only the two variety shows of “Idol Trainee” and “Creation 101”, Owhat and Modian have raised nearly 70 million yuan in funding. In June this year, iQiyi also launched Fanfan Planet App, an e-commerce platform for fans.
It is understood that there will be a 3% handling fee for cash withdrawal on the Motorpoint App before, and it was later changed to not charge a service fee. Owhat has always emphasized no commission for fan fundraising. Collecting armpits into Qiu, accumulating less and more, based on Wu Xuanyi’s fund collection of nearly 2.07 million, the platform fee is more than 60,000 at a rate of 3%.
For some fans who have purchasing power, these star-chasing apps are tailor-made to launch electronic magazines and peripheral products. At the end of 2018, Owhat App and the brand cooperated to start making their own e-zine. Fanfan Planet chose to cooperate with the stars to release customized dolls.
In addition to the above methods, many rice circle apps have launched membership systems to allow users to obtain a series of value-added services.
It is intriguing that these operations have all met in the development of Yin Yue Tai. Therefore, to a certain extent, they also face similar common problems: Fans follow idols, and it is difficult to keep the platform up and running.
Take “Idol Trainee” as an example. During the show, there are often trainees who drop in to the iQiyi bubble community, and fans will rush to comment; in order to compete, the star data station will call on fans to download an app to vote … These methods will bring a lot of traffic in an instant, but after the event, this wave of fans will leave, and it will be difficult to turn into a highly sticky user of the platform.
Secondly, the quality of the fundraising is related to money, and some fundraising funds are not transparent, and the platform itself lacks a strict supervision mechanism. MODIAN APP indicates that it does not make any commitments on the authenticity of the project. Therefore, the fund-raising sponsors often run out of money. At the last moment, everyone has to sprint to raise funds. No one knows how much money has been raised. I just hope that the idols created with love and money can make their debut smoothly.
In the cold winter, a Yinyue tai is cold, but the fan economy is still hot.
If Yin Yuetai’s ending is caused by the butterfly effect under the premise of collapse of trust, as long as the idols on the stage are still glowing and heating, fans in the rice circle still have infinite motivation to use love or money to generate electricity and pursue One after another idol dreams, and the successors of Yin Yue Tai will continue to create these fan dreams.
This article is from the WeChat public account: Chocolate Entertainment (ID: ylwanjia) , author: He Tianyang