Start “squeezing the bubble.”
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Music first” (ID: Nakedmusic), author 贰叁叁, editor Fan Zhihui.
“The music platform is no longer guaranteed, and many small copyright companies are dead.”
The old practitioner, Lao Long, who has been active since the ring tones era, said in an interview with Music. In the past five years since the review of the “most stringent copyright order”, in the recognition of practitioners in most music industry, the development of music copyright fees along with the music platform has been rising. But this year, the situation has begun to change. In the context of the “cold winter” of economic downturn, the situation of music copyright companies is also changing.
In the interview with the media in 2015, Zhang Zhaoxuan, the founder of the music artist, mentioned that a batch of six-digit copyright libraries had been fired to the level of 10 million yuan from the initial million-level price. At that time, some media pointed out that the price of online music copyright has exceeded the cost of rationality, and there is a big bubble.
So, four years later, is it time to “squeeze the bubble”?
The music copyright fee is high when the policy is favorable
The skyrocketing value of the music copyright market is closely related to the promotion of national policies.
In July 2015, the National Copyright Administration issued the “Notice on Ordering Online Music Service Providers to Stop Unauthorized Spreading of Musical Works”, and pirated songs were released on a large scale. As of July 31 of that year, 16 online music service providers that directly provided content actively took off more than 2.2 million unauthorized music works. Among them, Baidu music off the line of 642,000, one listened to more than 600,000 music offline, then more than 400,000 meters, singing 298,000. Each digital music platform has established its own copyright library by purchasing exclusive copyrights and sublicensing, which in turn led to the full legalization of digital music.
In the year before the release of the “most stringent copyright order”, major music platforms have already smelled the signal that copyright has to change, and they have begun to purchase copyright in large quantities from record companies. Especially QQ music, purchased the exclusive copyright of many record companies. For example, QQ Music has reached exclusive copyright cooperation with Warner Music and Sony Music. If other online music platforms need to use the copyrights of these two record companies, they need to be transferred through QQ music. At the end of 2015, QQ Music transferred 1.5 million music copyrights to Netease Cloud Music. In 2016, QQ Music merged with China Music Group and eventually established Tencent Music Entertainment Group (hereinafter referred to as “TME”).
Can be seen at the National Copyright AdministrationDriven by the policy, the music copyright market was quickly regulated. According to the “2017 China Network Copyright Industry Development Report”, in 2016, the scale of China’s online music industry industry exceeded 15 billion yuan, an increase of 10 times compared with 2006. Two years later, 2018,ChinaThe scale of the online music industry exceeded 17.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22%.
At the same time, under the exclusive copyright model, multiple music platforms have plunged into copyright competition for irrational competition. With the help of music platforms and record companies, copyright fees have risen. At the same time, since the copyright license agreement will be re-signed once in two to three years, in the seller’s market, the music platform will often choose to accept a higher premium copyright fee in order to avoid the loss of users to other platforms.
On November 5th, the case of Netease Cloud Music Packing and Selling Jay Chou Song last year was finally pronounced. According to the verdict, there are 808 songs in the entire Jewell Quku. TME and Netease Cloud Music in the two years from April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2017, the annual copyright transfer fee has almost no change, all at 870. About 10,000 yuan. However, the copyright transfer fee for the year from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018 was 18,184,140 yuan, an increase of nearly 10 million yuan, more than doubled.
According to Tencent News, industry statistics show that the copyright cost of the currently surviving music platform has soared more than 50 times since 2013. It is reported that when TME signed the exclusive global exclusive in 2017, the copyright fee rose from the initial 30 to 40 million US dollars to 350 million US dollars in cash and 100 million US dollars in equity, a 10% increase in the short term. In the same year, NetEase Cloud Music received the exclusive copyright of Park Shu’s album Orion Constellation for 20 million yuan. It is rumored that in the second year, Netease Cloud Music purchased the 2000 song library of Huayan Music for 170 million yuan.
This kind of competition also makes it easy for copyright companies to “lie”. After the music first interviewed the heads of several copyright companies, several practitioners said that between 2015 and 2018, copyright companies and major< Strong>The cooperation mode of online music platform is the way of “guarantee + share”. The pricing of music copyrights did not have a reference system at the time. The music platform prepaid millions or even tens of millions of advances to copyright each year.