A business battle of over 500 million users.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Tech Planet” (ID: tech618), author Li Xiaolei.
More and more platforms are targeting the “sound control” time and wallet.
In recent years, the “ear economy” has gradually matured, and large-volume online audio products have suddenly appeared on the market. The capital market is also very concerned about this phenomenon.
Behind the “live voice” hot, the traditional radio mode has been difficult to meet the user’s “ear needs”, “voice sleep”, “voice play”, “voice friend” and other new sound-based gameplay, is gradually Users become a new mode of passing time and boring.
This is a business that has more than 400 million users.
Ai Media Consulting data shows that the number of online audio users reached 425 million in 2018, a growth rate of 22.1%, which is faster than the slow-moving mobile video and mobile reading industry. It is estimated that by 2020, the number of online audio users in China will reach 542 million.
As a result, in addition to audio platforms such as Himalayan, Litchi, and FM, live broadcast platforms such as Music Betta, Yingke, and other music platforms such as Netease Cloud Music and QQ Music have become an important part of the content ecosystem. section.
In 2016, video live broadcasts became popular, and the audio platform also exploded this year. After three years of development, video live broadcasts have been hit by the short video industry, and growth has been exhausted, but the voice broadcast market seems to be welcoming new opportunities.
Voice Live Fire
Incoming people are increasing.
The first thing that feels this change is the anchors. Since 2016, Ye Ye has been broadcasting live on various platforms, and even “to be closed down several live platforms”.
The most intuitive feeling of Ye Ye is that from the early small platform to burn money to the anchor, to the guild to post the money layout platform, and then to some large platforms to actively subsidize the absorption of the anchor, the voice broadcast is gradually recognized by the mature entertainment platform.
For the fighting fish, a higher score is given for the voice zone anchor to stimulate the development of voice live broadcast. Ye Ye told Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618), in the live video “Yan value area”, the anchor ratio is 24%, but the voice zone anchor can get 35% to 40% commission.
The voice interaction area of Betta has three modes: “friends”, “radio” and “games to play”. All three types support guests to enter the live room and interact with the anchor voice game. Compared to the live video, “just talk, no face” makes Ye Ye feel “more mysterious”, “video is basically looking at the face to brush money, languageThe sound can’t see the face, and the soul is the consensus.
To some extent, the role of this mystery will also be reflected in the benefits. “When you like your voice and want to see the appearance of the anchor, the more the user wants to see, the more gifts the user will reward.” In three years, Ye Ye has become an administrator from the voice anchor. She is going to college and she can get 30,000 yuan a month.
More than fighting fish, around 2018, live broadcast platforms such as Yingke, YY, etc., all added radio or voice live broadcast portals on the basis of live video, which became part of expanding their business ecosystem.
And the music platform like Netease Cloud Music, which is a natural gathering of “sound control” and ear consumer users, is also looking for new revenue points from the live broadcast. Netease’s live broadcast platform “LOOK Live” will split the live broadcast into two categories: “Look” and “Listen”. The live broadcast section covers “Singing See”, “Talking Over”, “Secondary”, and “Last” Show, “musician” and other content.
Netease CEO Ding Lei has previously said that Netease Cloud Music has confidence and confidence in the profitability of membership, advertising, live broadcast, social and other aspects.
One practitioner said that with the rise of the sound economy, the number of people using audio and audio has grown rapidly. Compared with live video, live voice is more suitable for users’ fragmented scenes, and the accompanying live content audience is more extensive.
Traditional Radio Platform Changes
For the old audio platforms such as Litchi and Himalaya, the cross-border competition brought by fighting fish and Netease cloud music has also confirmed from the side that the market has seen the rise of the online audio market and the layout of the Nuggets.
On the audio platform, the traditional radio mode has once again been proven to have a market, but commercial realization is a tricky problem. Himalayan and 蜻蜓FM rely mainly on knowledge to pay for cash. In contrast, Litchi has been concentrated on the “everyone is anchor” model from the beginning. Similar to the video live broadcast platform, the monetization mode mainly relies on voice live broadcast, and the platform and anchor are divided into modes.
As early asIn 2016, Lichee FM launched its live voice service. At that time, the data showed that it had received over 10 million live broadcast revenues in just three months. By January 2018, after Litchi FM was officially renamed as “Litchi”, Lichee “to FM” was actually completed, and the official transformation of the live broadcast.
And Himalayan and 蜻蜓 gradually opened up their UGC sector to build knowledge based on their respective platforms. Lichee also explored paid audio this year and transformed into a comprehensive audio platform. At the same time, these three major voice platforms are also rushing to become the “domestic online audio first stock.”
But the live broadcast also faces a problem: if voice live broadcast is used as a single service, it is difficult to support the business ecology and platform development. In particular, text, images, and videos have been difficult to meet the social needs of Generation Z (post-95s and post-00s), and various types of pan-entertainment or pan-social platforms are making changes.
Germanized audio products such as Soul, Oops, and Acoustics on the market show their appeal to Z-generation users. Therefore, the audio platform is also learning from these innovative voice social products.
A lychee insider told Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618) that the internal pressure of the lychee was good. In the voice social lychee has also been innovating, the station has developed “laboratory function”, there are various sound games, such as the sound card to identify the loli sound and sound properties, listen to the voice to find friends, k song party and so on.
Similarly, the video live broadcast platform like Yingke is also changing. Yingke CEO Bian Yousheng had previously said that “With the emergence of Hunan Satellite TV’s explosion of “The Sound of the Scene”, the public once again realized that the expression of emotion and information based on sound is still occupied in daily life. The program is also indispensable. This program also gave a lot of inspiration to the visitors, so Yingke took the lead in the industry to launch the live broadcast of the “first voice” program.”
Yingke also has a private FM function on the homepage, but after the Tech Planet experience, the guest’s private FM function is only open for some anchors. The person in charge of the related business of Yingke told Tech Planet that from the current stage, it will not open the right to ordinary users for the time being, and Yingke is relying on the content and quality requirements of the broadcast anchor to ensure the quality of the content.
Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618) learned that Yingke Private FM started planning in March of this year, but in fact, from the beginning of last year, Yingke launched the Yingke Radio, and private FM is the Yingke Radio.Upgraded version.
Today, voice live is gradually becoming a new entertainment routine, but because of the large amount of UGC content, auditing has become one of the challenges. This has always been one of the problems that the platform is difficult to circumvent. Previously, a number of related software were removed due to pornographic communication, content violations and other reasons.
However, overall, the online audio industry is showing a good trend. The “China Online Audio Market Research Report for the First Half of 2019” released by Ai Media Consulting shows that the online audio industry is currently showing three major positive trends: First, the online audio market is expected to maintain a stable and rapid growth trend; second, voice content payment remains. Have greater potential. Third, the online entertainment platform has become a trend of pan-entertainment.
Whether it is an audio platform, a live broadcast platform, a music platform, how to build a good content ecosystem, improve the pan-entertainment layout, and establish a complete and effective audit mechanism is the difficulty that these platforms need to overcome in the live broadcast.