This article is transferred from WeChat: Mirror Entertainment (ID: jingxiangyule) , author: Pang Li Jie, edit: in the east, the title figure: vision China, original title” dialogue of China’s largest power company boss syllable: the depths of the storm center, show how the line Teng “cloud” self-help? 》
Ma Le, the founder and CEO of Asia Star Entertainment, rushed back to Beijing from his hometown. At this time, he was not sure. How long the state of “home” will last, and when is the resumption of work.
Because of the collective pressure on the industry, the offline performance market he is engaged in can be said to be under heavy pressure this year.
The first to be hit by the epidemic were bars and nightclubs that opened 365 days. A few days before the Spring Festival (around January 21), bars around the country have been notified and forced to suspend business. Among them, more than 20,000 large-scale large-scale bars have been affected. If you include private small bars, this scale will reach 60,000-80,000.
One of the business of Ma Le’s Starlight Entertainment has been delivering DJ resources to many large bars in China. For example, the SPACE of Xigu Shangbo Group has cooperated closely with Starlight Entertainment. Not long ago, Ma Le was planning a national bar tour for UMMET OZCAN, one of the top 100 DJs, in the first half of the year, and now this project has been forced to run aground.
That’s where the butterfly effect begins.
Bars closed collectively, and offline performances such as music festivals, concerts, and theaters were subsequently stopped collectively. On February 7th, the China Performance Industry Association officially released the “Proposal Letter” to colleagues in the national performing arts industry. The data showed that from January to March 2020, nearly 20,000 performances have been cancelled or postponed nationwide, directly at the box office The losses have exceeded 2 billion yuan.
Ma Le, who had encountered SARS while studying in Beijing, knew that this would be a protracted battle, and he and his Starlight Entertainment were at the center of this storm.
Always, offlineOut is the core business of Starlight Entertainment. Ma Le, a music major, started with a concert and relied on the “Old Cannon” IP to open a new method of video-singing linkage. Through brand cooperation, he improved the original business model of offline performances, introduced the world’s largest Ultra Electronic Festival, and then tried to build Independent IP has hatched the most innovative and influential IMF music carnival in China.
“The epidemic situation has a great impact on the company as a whole. Some concerts and music festival projects that have been planned in the first half of the year have been discontinued. Starlight Entertainment mainly focuses on large-scale offline activities, so these are all Stopped, it also has a considerable impact on our cash flow. “Ma Le’s original plan has almost been disrupted, he had to slow down, he also began to re-examine the online opportunities and markets, try to live broadcast on the peppercorn” IMF home electronic sound. ”
After some twists and turns, Ma Le accepted an exclusive interview with Mirror Entertainment (ID: jingxiangyule). At the center of the storm, he told everything he saw and experienced.
Offline performance “emergency braking”, “self-help” is imminent
In the view of Ma Le, before the epidemic, the matter of “Yunbundi” was basically untenable. Because offline, the original mainstream consumer scenes of “Bundi” are bars and music festivals, both of which are in a period of rapid development, and people’s attention to “Bundi” is not online.
From 2016 to 2019, the bar has entered a development bonus period. “In 2019, Starlight Entertainment’s offline cooperation in major, small and medium-sized scenes and bars is not a small one. We only did more than 180 games for various types of activities with more than a thousand people and 100 DJ-level and colleges. , Basically every two days. “
The music festival has also been booming in recent years. The first ISY Sanya International Electronic Music Festival that Starlight Entertainment invested and implemented in 2018 has attracted nearly 100,000 people to Sanya, driving local consumption to nearly one billion Around, IMF Xiamen Super Music Carnival 2019 liveThe number of viewers also reached more than 80,000. Promote consumption of nearly 600 million yuan, and put forward new thinking for the cultural tourism consumer market, which is dominated by Chinese content drainage.
Ma Le, Founder & CEO of Asia Starlight Entertainment
The high-speed offline performance brings an unparalleled experience to the audience. The group carnival-like scene seems to naturally conflict with the “house”, but the epidemic has changed all this.
Before the Spring Festival, Starlight Entertainment was planning to introduce a Broadway long-term landing project touring in more than 50 countries around the world. “It was originally planned to be April Beijing, May Shanghai, June Xiamen, and then temporarily This project has been suspended. “If the epidemic continues until June, Starlight Entertainment will be forced to cancel at least 40 or 50 bar music shows, and music festivals and concerts will be postponed or cancelled.
Starlight Entertainment is not alone.
Before the Spring Festival, the CEA Electronic Music Festival in Chengdu has held a press conference. The start time is set in mid-April, and it has now been cancelled. Andy Lau ’s concert tour and Jolin Tsai ’s concert tour are also suspended.
Behind the cancellation of the show is a direct loss of cash flow. An obvious manifestation is that during the Spring Festival, Damai.com, one of the offline performance ticketing platforms, encountered an unprecedented “refund” bombing. In just three days before and after New Year’s Eve, the number of barley network manual wiring consultations was 28 times that of the same period last year.
Due to the high upfront cost, cash flow is the lifeblood of the offline performance industry. The cost of organizing a large-scale electronic festival is between 40 million and 50 million, and the cost of organizing a star concert is 10 million. Even small and medium-sized performances are also in the million level. Metaphor.
However, the head companies may still be able to “resist”, but the small and medium-sized enterprises with insufficient family base are facing a life-and-death crisis. Even when the epidemic is over and the offline performances forced to be postponed become more concentrated for a limited time, it will also make it more difficult for SMEs and head forces to compete for industry resources. In any case, “self-help” is imminent.
Basically, the collective shutdown of offline performances is because physical space is restricted, and consumer groups are also restricted, but consumer demand is not restricted, and the “home economy” came into being. The “cloud +” form breaks the barrier of physical space, and the “home economy” expands the consumption space on the “cloud”.
Where the consumer group is, the opportunity is there.
On February 8th, the revenue of a “cloud bundi” in Shanghai TAXX bar exceeded 700,000 yuan. Subsequently, the ONETHIRD bar under “Thirteen Aunts” once again refreshed the ceiling with 2 million income.
Despite the arrival of the epidemic, offline entertainment has suddenly stopped, and there is no one-size-fits-all. “However, the core consumer groups and electronic music enthusiasts that the industry has accumulated before need a release outlet, a fresh” cloud jump The concept of “Di” also stimulated more outside groups to enter.
The sudden influx of people may not be able to quickly settle as the core consumer group in a short time, but the efficient drainage ability of “Yunbundi” still surprises Ma Le: “I also said at the regular meeting this morning, In fact, after waiting five years and ten years, we may see that the booming development of domestic electronic music started from this epidemic. “
“Bundi” hastily rescued
The sudden explosion of “Yunbundi” left practitioners in offline performances without time to prepare. In contrast, live broadcast platforms that are closer to the consumer market are more sensitive to changes in market demand. Ma Le and Prickly Pear live streamed immediately, and soon received an invitation from the platform.
The previous cooperation has enabled both parties to have a certain understanding of their business and brand tone. In Ma Le’s opinion, Zanthoxy Live is a live broadcast platform with strong verticality in various fields. They can quickly come up with a professional opinion to help the public who do content like Starlight Entertainment.The company landed online and helped DJs complete their three-dimensional self-expression through the live language system.
However, even Ma Le and the team who have performed many offline performances for the first time have conducted live broadcasts by themselves, there are still a lot of discomforts. The device they originally adopted was a mobile phone camera. Later, they began to use the camera to push streams to enhance the expressiveness of the picture, but the technical barriers were not so easy to break through.
“We went to the studio where the video was shot, because the epidemic situation could not be completely resumed, and the sound engineer and lighting engineer were not there. We had to ponder and study, and finally we could get a picture, the light was on, and we slowly explored. “However, it is not easy to cross the river by feeling the stones. In addition, during the epidemic, preparations in terms of personnel, site and other aspects are not very convenient.
If in the past, finding a suitable DJ for a project in a short period of time is not difficult, especially for the top 100 DJs with greater influence. “The first half of the year was a gap period for foreign DJs. They There will also be more trips in Asia. “Now, in the face of a live broadcast of 3-5 hours, Ma Le has always been unable to make people:” DJ and MC are also rampant, they have not done online Live. “
One of the top 100 DJs Martin Garrix (Martin Jr)
After participating in “Bundle Di”, the difference between the two also quickly became apparent. The most obvious is that the “Bundle Di” monetization model is completely different from offline performance, which uses bar drinks or tickets, Sponsorship income is the main, and “Yunbundi” relies on fans’ reward income in the live broadcast room. This means that in the two online and offline music scenes, the user needs that DJs need to meet are completely different.
“In the previous performances, people would not consider the audience. Anyway, he is an artist and he is a DJ. He hits himself and mobilizes the atmosphere of the whole game.” To put it plainly, the high point of offline is The atmosphere, there are friends who are familiar with them, and the strangers around them are similarly interesting. There is no scene where the “driving train” can not move. Even if there are occasional singers singing the tune, there is not much influence.ring.
But in the live broadcast scene, users need deep interaction, and their feedback is immediate. When the atmosphere around them is no longer, the audience ’s high point has also changed from enjoying the atmosphere to focusing on people and the music itself.
After a period of trials, Ma Le also consciously asked DJs to enhance their interaction with the audience, arrange dances for specific music, and strengthen the sense of interaction and rhythm of the live broadcast.
The cooperation with Live Pepper Live also makes Ma Le’s plan execution easier. In fact, judging from the current market performance, when a large number of players flocked to the track of “cloud bundi”, small and medium-sized companies and labels are crowded into the head platform and head companies to compete for promotion resources. Such as a more vertical live broadcast platform, it is easier to achieve monetization among the segmented high-viscosity user crowd, get more concentrated and high-quality promotion resources, and a higher proportion of sharing.
During the launch of “IMF Zhaidiandian”, the promotion resources and cold start support of the live broadcast of Zanthoxylum continued to tilt to “Cloud Bundy”, helping offline practitioners who have no previous fan accumulation and live broadcast experience to quickly adapt to the new live broadcast scene . The platform not only enhances the exposure with the banner position of the vertical section of the music, but also sets the topic drainage in the interactive section. # 花椒 直播 云 攀 迪 #, during the live broadcast, the relevant live broadcast booths of “Cloud Bundy” often appeared in prominent positions on popular pages.
As of now, in the live broadcast of Prickly Pear, the audience of the first two shows of “IMF House Electronic Sound” has reached more than 50,000. DJ Sohan, DJ Miracle, Guangzhou Super Diamond, Hefei Superfast who cooperated with Pepper Live Etc. also received tens of thousands of levels of transmission.
The industry’s “self-help” in groping has gradually begun to pick up.
Make “cloud bundi” into “cloud live”
“Bundle Di” is just the beginning.
At present, “Yunbundi” has indeed had a good case of monetization, but in the short term, “Yunbundi” ‘s continuous profitability has not yet appeared. Ma Le also said frankly: “Our current income is not very good, and we probably paid attention to it. Everyone may earn a lot of money, but in fact, it has not yet produced a really large income.”
In other words, the real value of “Cloud Bundi” to the industry lies in the accumulation of a large amount of traffic bonus in the short term. Allowing more people to “cloud experience” a sense of bundi; on the other hand, with live broadcast as an opportunity, the online scenes of offline performances were opened, and “cloud +” will bring greater offline performances in the future Imagination.
Therefore, although the actual gain is not enough to make up for the loss, Ma Le did not deny the significance and possibility of the long-term development of “Cloud +”. In his vision, the concept of “Yunbundi” is too vertical, “we want to plan it into” cloud electric sound “,” cloud music “, or a form of” cloud live “.
The live broadcast of Zanthoxylum as a promoter of this cooperation also allowed Ma Le to truly appreciate the online channel coverage and content dissemination ability. The crowd reached by an online performance may be several offline bar shows and Music festivals are not comparable. “Cloud live” is expected to copy the production capacity released by “Cloud Bundy” to the larger offline performance market in the form of “model room”.
In the future, with the help of online live broadcast platform genes to accelerate the proliferation of content, and then complete the precipitation and monetization with offline performances, it may become a more mainstream and less risky development model for offline performances. At that time, “Yunbundi” will no longer be the “shelter” of the industry for a while, and “cloud live” that accommodates a variety of offline performances will open up a new space of complementary and coexisting multiple scenes.
Such a trend has begun to show. Prior to this, Prickly Pear Live had collaborated with Ma Le’s Starlight Entertainment on the “To Youth” concert, Alashan COART Carnival and other projects. Online + offline simultaneous concerts have become a common form of the moment. In addition, pure online concerts are also exploring more optimized presentation modes and monetization modes. Luo Dayou, Park Shu, Zhou Huajian, Zhou Bichang and other singers have taken the lead in testing the water.
Actually, compared with large-scale live entertainment projects such as music festivals and concerts, small-scale, multi-language offline performances such as cross talks, talk shows, and dramas have been more affected.
Since February 1, Happy Twist has issued several announcements to cancel its performances. As of mid-March, Happy Twist’s canceled performances nationwide reached 240, and 1.5 million of them were produced in Shanghai alone. The refund amount; on February 26th, Li Xuan’s laughing fruit culture tried to bring the offline talk show to the open Mai performance, and moved it online by way of actual recording. In contrast, the Deyun Society, which had begun to change lines as early as four years ago, was not greatly affected.
The epidemic has exposed the hidden worries of the collective performance of offline performances. Although offline performances can hardly be replaced by the audience, the online “multiple spaces” will cover more consumer scenes. The “cloud live” market is already trending. Especially for the small and medium-sized companies and even the head companies in the transition period, the exploration of new content forms and business models is also a good time to overtake the curve.
In the planning of Ma Le, platforms such as Zanthoxy Live are also important partners of Xingguang Entertainment’s future layout line. At present, Starlight Entertainment has established an independent department for online business. The department will try the development of online content products, complete the grafting of offline business and online display, turn the DJ anchor and online, and make the display form of electronic sound more suitable for the fast-paced online transmission.
The sudden epidemic has allowed Ma Le, who is accustomed to being busy, to relax and slow down the entire offline performance industry.
“In the past, everyone was like a wheel. It kept turning, sometimes the throttle was not on its own foot, sometimes it was on the market, sometimes it was on other partners. So I think it is quite rare now. An opportunity for everyone to stop and think about our own future path. In which direction are we going, how should we prepare and how to go. “
The difficult situation is something everyone has to face, but the industry’s temporary stagnation is also for a better start next time.