After the WeChat 8.0 iteration, what more ways to play music has been given?
In January, five people appeared at Tencent’s headquarters and were in the same frame as the “Father of WeChat” Zhang Xiaolong, attracting group photos from the company’s employees. According to PeopleSoft, “We are going to be stationed in the video account!”
On January 21, Wutiao posted the first video activity on the WeChat video account and officially settled in.
After BAT entered the music industry, Internet products, as one of the media for disseminating music, are playing an increasingly important role.
At the beginning of this year, Zhang Xiaolong, Senior Vice President of Tencent and President of WeChat Business Group, delivered a keynote speech on “WeChat Product Thinking in Ten Years” in the “WeChat Night” of the 2021 WeChat Open Class Pro version.
In his speech, Zhang Xiaolong said that every day 1.09 billion users open WeChat and 330 million users make video calls; 780 million users enter Moments and 120 million users post Moments, including 670 million photos and short videos. 100 million articles; 360 million users read public account articles and 400 million users use mini programs.
WeChat was born in 2011 and has gradually become an irreplaceable communication tool for contemporary people. More than that, in 10 years of continuous optimization and upgrading, WeChat has formed a complete industry chain in social, content, entertainment, and consumption.
It is worth noting that this year’s “WeChat Night” Zhang Xiaolong talked about WeChat’s content planning for “songs”. He talked: “A listener once talked to him about how to see a song. The music is not for listening, but for seeing.”
On January 20th, after the end of “WeChat Night”, WeChat released version 8.0, which also responded to the new changes mentioned by Zhang Xiaolong in his speech.
The updated feature points include the emoji that can throw bombs in the dialog box, the new status display of WeChat business card, the visualization of listening to songs, and the more complete floating window function.
Two months later, the WeChat iOS version 8.0.3 was officially launched on March 29, and further functional updates were made for the dissemination of social, music, and video content.
The following is a part of our review of the music presentation in WeChat based on the experience of this iteration of WeChat.
01 The update of the video number helps to spread music
In the latest iOS 8.0.3 version, WeChat has optimized and updated the following functions.
Moments of friends can post videos from 15s to 30s;
The video number dynamic long video supports more functions, a new duration button is added, and it can be played at double speed;
The video number live broadcast supports “cast screen”;
Optimized the “jump to unwatched position” function in the circle of friends, and the button adds 3 friendsAvatar, click to quickly jump to the missed content;
The maximum number of WeChat custom emojis exceeded 300 or increased to 999;
WeChat group announcements support banner reminders;
With the increase of functions, friend authority management has also added multiple items (including video number, take a look);
The “Recently Used Mini Program” interface of the drop-down applet has been changed from the vertical arrangement to four applets in one row, which is consistent with the UI of the drop-down applet interface;
WeChat official account articles can be opened in the default browser (WeChat iOS version currently supports Safari, Chrome or Edge browsers);
The “remarks and tags” on the friend information page are more prominent, and pictures can be uploaded;
Fine adjustment of payment interface;
Set the newly added “device” entry, move the Apple Watch function into;
Watch version of WeChat update;
The “No more follow” button is added to the official account operation interface;
Among them, the content in the video number supports long videos longer than 1 minute. When browsing videos in the video number, some videos will have a duration button in the lower right corner, click to play the full video. Click “…” in the upper right corner to select “double speed playback” video.
The currently available speeds are 0.5 times, normal, 1.5 times and 2.0 times. At the same time, the video number has a new “Send Barrage” entry in the lower left corner, and users can use this function in long videos.
WeChat began to form a team for video account in 2019. Zhang Xiaolong also revealed in his speech: “The era is developing towards video content.” Increasing the duration is actually a “following the trend” of the basic function of the video account, but the innovation is that the latest version of the video account has been set up for the live broadcast entrance and supports screen projection.
In his speech, Zhang Xiaolong said: “The next version of WeChat may have a live broadcast portal, and there will be e-commerce capabilities in the live broadcast. The more intuitive portal for live broadcast in WeChat may be changed from the original “people nearby” ‘People nearby and live broadcast’.”
Support both live broadcast and screen projection, which means that users can cast the live broadcast on the TV and watch the live broadcast at the same time without affecting the use of other functions of the mobile phone, or use the live broadcast as the background sound.
In WeChat 8.0.3 version, in the interface where the video number initiates the live broadcast, the bottom function bar has also been modified, which includes the three functions of screen, music, and merchandise.Among them, the “picture” includes: beauty, filters, mirroring, flipping, etc. Music has a new “Add Music” button. After the live broadcast starts, the function bar in the lower right corner has also been modified to adjust the screen and music.
In addition, we have also noticed that in the current updated version, there is a “use original sound” button in the sharing function of the video content in the video number. Click “Use Original Sound” to use the original sound of this video to add original videos and publish them.
In the video account, the function points of music and live broadcast are connected. It can be said that WeChat has further enhanced its e-commerce attributes and pan-entertainment attributes.
In terms of the presentation of music, whether it is a live broadcast that supports screencasting or “using the original sound”, it is a very beneficial function for song publicity.
The singer initiates a live broadcast in the video account for singing, or the concert is broadcast live in the video account, which can further enhance the audience’s experience of enjoying music.
The “use of original sound” is more suitable for the dissemination of complete tracks, breaking the concept of “short video is fragmented music” and allowing music works to be fully presented through video.
Although Zhang Xiaolong said in his speech that the video account is not the key point of Tencent’s short video strategy, but Weishi is, but we can also see through this iteration that WeChat’s function points and product ideas for video presentation are more Come more complete and mature.
In April 2012, WeChat’s “Circle of Friends” was officially launched, and users can post a 10-second short video in the circle of friends. By May 2019, WeChat Moments can publish videos within 15 seconds. In March of this year, the video duration limit of Moments was finally increased to 30 seconds.
After “WeChat” and WeChat are connected, in June 2019, if users want to publish a video longer than 15 seconds, they must first publish to the WeChat App, and then share it back to WeChat Moments, and the video comes with WeChat. Watermark. In July 2020, long videos can be posted to Moments from the video account, and the duration is up to 30 minutes, but you need to jump back to the video account to watch the full video.
From Moments to Weishi, and then to the video account, WeChat has become more intelligent in the presentation of videos.
02 Realize “music visualization” in the WeChat ecosystem
After the iteration of the new version of WeChat, I finally published an article on “Music Visualization”, which is also the most surprising optimization point of this update.
Zhang Xiaolong believes that everyone has imagination when listening to songs, so he hopes that users can see something when listening to songs, such as another person listening to the same song as you in different scenes, that person The scene in front of you can also move you. From this point of view, Zhang Xiaolong hopes to have a better visual presentation in WeChat.
In the speech, Zhang Xiaolong revealed that, due to technical problems, although it is not possible to achieve a smarter experience in WeChat, it complies with the needs of most users, namely: “Make a song into a beautiful MV-like To share with more people.”
In WeChat version 8.0, sharing music to WeChat can unlock more gameplay, but only QQ Music of TME, and this is the further binding of WeChat ecology and Tencent products.
First, share your favorite music from QQ Music to your WeChat friends. What is unlocked is to set the music to your “state” (a major feature after the WeChat 8.0 update).
Click the song in the play dialog box, click the song to enter the detailed page, and then you can select and set it as the state. In addition, you can also set the status when watching the live broadcast of the video account.
The focus of music video is to share music to Moments. After anyone clicks on a song to enter the full-screen details page, you can find the “Create Music Video” button in the lower right corner of the interface.
After clicking this button, we will find that the music being played is split into multiple segments, each segment is divided by lyrics, and the user can follow the lyrics and phrase distribution, select the video in the album, or the video number Add the video content in, add it to the music, “Second Create” your own music video.
When the creation is complete, the music video can only be uploaded to the “Music Video” category of the WeChat personal video account, and the user can share the “Music Video” in the video account to WeChat chat or Moments at the same time, and share the style and The title is consistent with the original song.
△ Take papaya “Between the Living” as an example
It is worth mentioning that when a user shares a song to Moments, click on the play music page. In addition to the regular lyrics and song information, there is also “the number of people listening at the same time”, which is also set to share to friends or Button for circle of friends.
WeChat has established a brand-new content production method in the past 10 years. Now, the “graphic era” is about to transition to the “video era”. Zhang Xiaolong holds the same content attitude, that is, “The video number is for the video content.” Carrier. The carrier is to carry content. It will not produce or buy content, but only carry and deliver content.”
In other words, WeChat is fully open to users for production and creation of content. In the private domain traffic pool of WeChat, everyone’s circle of friends is connected through an official account and a video account. For content producers, you can Find audiences and users more accurately. For the market, a good competition and elimination mechanism is more conducive to the enrichment and selection of high-quality content.
However, in contrast, because short videos have creative thresholds, live broadcasts are more likely to be accepted by the public in the evolution of content forms. After the revision, WeChat will use its video account and live broadcast to take care of more users and give users more opportunities for content creation.
Based on the social attributes of WeChat, the addition of live broadcast and the test of “WeChat small store”, we can notice that WeChat wants to establish a closed loop of “social × live broadcast × e-commerce”. On the other hand, in the face of the fierce competitiveness of the short video platform, WeChat tried to prevent the loss of users and made a series of necessary actions.
Although the “music visualization” in WeChat has just started, the role of music in video is far more important than everyone thinks. For musicians and music companies, how to make good use of this tool is better To give full play to the role of music works, and to explore its greater communication power, is the next step to focus on thinking.