Picture source @Visual China
Text | Music Xian Sheng, author | Peng Peng, editor | Fan Zhihui
Recently, the "2023 Tencent Entertainment White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") was released. Among them, the music chapter briefly reviews the development of the Chinese music scene over the past year.
This year, the number of online music users has reached 726 million, and nearly 70% of Internet users cannot live without online music as a pastime. Tencent Music Entertainment Group's online music service revenue exceeded social entertainment services for the first time, and online music paid membership users officially exceeded 100 million, reaching 103 million. Both the user penetration rate of online music and the scale of paying users are steadily increasing.
At the same time, the performance market has recovered strongly. Not only the concerts of new and old singers have been launched, but also 169 new music festival IPs have been born, and the total box office performance has achieved leapfrog growth. In comparison, music variety shows are showing considerable fatigue. Looking at music variety shows, they are still dominated by the competition system and the variety N generation.
The music industry has caught on to the AIGC express train. AI Stefanie Sun has conquered all Bilibili, but platform parties have entered the game one after another and are competing for territory; after the brutal growth of short video hot songs, they have entered the stage of refined production, such as "Wumeizijiang", " The "regular army" of the record industry such as "Let the Heavy Rain Fall" has swept across the entire Internet. Hot songs that are shoddy, crazy about new releases, and occupy market share based on quantity are gradually losing ground.
We have also seen that Daolang made a strong comeback with "Rakshasa Sea City", and the association of revengeful and refreshing articles created this year's phenomenon-level single in one fell swoop; Wu Bai and Tao Zhe used memes to get out of the circle. This year's netizens are constantly archaeological and creating memes. The carnival continues.
When you open this article, 2023 is about to come to an end. We have taken stock of the top ten keywords of the year and look back at this year in the Chinese music scene.
Keyword 1: Paid subscription
On August 15 this year, Tencent Music Entertainment Group released its second quarter financial report. The financial report shows that online music service revenue increased by 47.6% year-on-year to 4.25 billion yuan, and the revenue contribution of online music services reached 58.3%, surpassing social entertainment services for the first time.
Five years ago, social entertainment business accounted for more than 70% of Tencent Music Entertainment Group's total revenue, helping it become the world's first profitable music streaming platform. In contrast, Spotify, which had 350 million users at that time and a payment rate of 45%, was far from achieving this (now it occasionally makes quarterly profits).
In June this year, the number of online music paying users of Tencent Music Entertainment Group exceeded the 100 million mark. At the same time, the online music payment rate rose to a record high, and the average monthly income of a single paying user achieved five consecutive quarters of growth, reaching RMB 100,000 in this quarter. 9.7 yuan.
According to the third quarter financial report of Tencent Music Entertainment Group in 2023, subscription revenue increased by as much as 42.0% year-on-year, driving online music service revenue to increase by 32.7% year-on-year to 4.55 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 70% of total revenue.
This data is of milestone significance not only for Tencent Music, but also for the entire online music market.
On the one hand, this means that more and more users are willing to pay for high-quality music content, pushing paid education in the online music market to a new stage. Music users not only pursue pure entertainment, but also value comprehensive music on the platform. services; on the other hand, it also means that the competition among major music platforms has further intensified, and it is necessary to find more benign channels for monetizing music copyrights, making it more difficult to improve user experience, high-quality music content and services, and even commercialize the platform. of fighting.
However, behind the steady increase in paid user data, there is actually a hidden danger. When the live broadcast business is subject to increasingly strict controls, short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou are gradually focusing on karaoke and live broadcasts to compete for user time. How can Tencent Music Entertainment Group and NetEase Cloud Music continue to find more diversified businesses? Driving force is extremely critical.
Keyword 2: Music festivals are sinking
After the epidemic was released, the performance market, which had been dormant for three years, showed a surge.
Looking back at this year's two major holidays, during the May Day period, there were a total of 41 music festivals across the country, involving 19 provinces. During the National Day holiday, there were more than 60 music festivals, breaking the previous record.Originating in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the music festival has continued to spread outwards for more than ten years. Today, the roots of the music festival have spread to many counties and cities, and then taken root, sprouted, and blossomed.
The "White Paper" shows that there will be 26 music festivals held in first-tier cities in 2023, and the number of music festivals held in other sub-tier cities has increased significantly. Among them, the number of music festivals held in new first-tier cities throughout the year is 86, which is three times that of first-tier cities. There are more than 61 in second-tier cities, which is more than twice that of first-tier cities.
At the same time, the lineup of music festivals targeting lower-tier markets should not be underestimated. Not only does the music festival’s box office appeal continue to increase, it also drives online topic discussions and leads the popularity ranking.
Take the 2023 Wunuzhou Xingyun Qingzao Music Festival as an example. This music festival is held in Wuyuan County, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province. It is a music festival held in the county by a brand-new music festival brand, but relies on Mao Buyi, Joker Xue, Cui Jian, Zhang Liangying and other finales The appeal of artists has made it the most discussed music festival on the entire Internet this year. Behind the decline of
music festival is that various places are aiming at the consumption driving force of music festivals in a short period of time.
Participating in a music festival across cities will naturally incur a series of transportation, food and accommodation expenses. There are also many catering, peripheral and other sales scenes at the music festival. Coupled with local shopping, sightseeing and other consumption, hosting a music festival can often indirectly stimulate The total consumption is hundreds of millions of yuan.
However, the decline of the music festival has also brought about a series of new problems.
For example, the homogenization of music festival lineups has made the problem of one-size-fits-all problems more and more serious; the organizers of music festivals have no experience in hosting, and there is a lack of infrastructure on site and a poor experience; the city where the music festival is held lacks experience in large-scale events, and the on-site experience is poor. Problems such as diversion and public security management were also exposed, with scalpers reselling tickets, music festival tent items being lost, and many other problems. What
needs to see is that the decline of music festivals is just the beginning, not the end. Whether it is the organizer or the venue, the next thing to think about is how to convert the music festival's blowout traffic into stock, lay a solid foundation for IP, and optimize supporting services, so as to usher in more sustainable prosperity in the future.
Keyword 3: Special Forces Concert
Not only the audience, this year's stars are also holding concerts with "revenge".
According to statistics from the "White Paper", the total number of domestic offline concerts and music festivals in 2023 will be as high as 2,823, contributing 5.089 billion in box office revenue. After three years of silence, everyone from kings and queens to top superstars to popular singers of the new generation all gathered together to start tours. Playing N shows in a row has become an "industry standard".
Among them, Xue Zhiqian's "Extraterrestrial Things" tour concert held 60 concerts, and most cities held two consecutive concerts, setting a new record for the number of stadiums in a single year in the mainland market; Mayday's "I Really Want to See You" concert was also held in many places Continuous additions include six consecutive concerts at the Bird's Nest in Beijing, five consecutive concerts in Guangzhou, and eight consecutive concerts in Shanghai; Jay Chou's Carnival World Tour also held seven consecutive concerts in Hong Kong in 10 days, and four consecutive concerts in Shanghai in four days. The Fuzhou Station, which will open next year, will also continue the ultra-high intensity of opening 4 games in 4 days.
High-intensity performances are also difficult to satisfy the audience's enthusiasm for watching performances. The "White Paper" shows that it is still difficult to get tickets for many celebrity concerts in 2023, and "ticket grabbing" has become a hot topic of discussion among the public. Concerts of stars such as Xue Zhiqian, Li Yuchun, and JJ Lin have all suffered from difficulty in getting tickets. Take the Hong Kong leg of Jay Chou's concert as an example. For five consecutive days, it was still an unprecedented event. Not only were 20,000 people in each concert filled, but there were also 80,000 people "listening" outside the venue. There were even queues for the nearby Ferris wheel. Hours, just to get a bird's eye view after taking off.
As public enthusiasm for performances remains high and stars gather to hold concerts, performance venues, audio and video and other supporting facilities in various places are in very short supply. "Special Forces Concerts" will undoubtedly achieve economies of scale and reduce the average cost of each performance. cost.
However, the operation of holding N concerts in a row places extremely high demands on the strength and physical fitness of musicians, so in this year’s concert market, the health of stars has also been "red lighted" one after another.For example, as soon as Jay Chou's Tianjin concert started, he felt unwell and had a rapid heartbeat and interrupted the performance; Ashin, the lead singer of the Mayday Xi'an concert, performed while breathing oxygen.
In addition, such intensity of performances has created a prosperous performance market, but it has also brought to the surface problems such as "pillar tickets", "wall tickets", the proliferation of scalpers, and unreasonable refund mechanisms.
Keyword 4: ROCK HOME TOWN
Seizing the opportunity of the recovery of the offline performance market, cultural and tourism departments in various places have stepped aside to seize the opportunity of music festivals and actively support the development of music. Among them, Shijiazhuang is undoubtedly the city at the forefront.
On July 13, the Shijiazhuang Municipal Government website officially announced that it will hold the "ROCK HOME TOWN" music performance season to comprehensively build China's "Rock City". In the end, the construction of Rock City was divided into three parts. The first was to hold "Passionate Summer Nights" rock music performances on weekends, the second was to vigorously build the Rock City performing arts position, and the third was to launch pop-up rock performances on subways and buses. .
In fact, as early as 2022, the Hebei Internet Radio and Television Station website published an article stating that "rock" and "stone" are the same word in English. Shijiazhuang - ROCK HOME TOWN, the English meaning can be translated as "Hometown of Rock/Rock". Regardless of reality or God's will, Shijiazhuang is a veritable "rock city".
A year later, the interpretation of "ROCK HOME TOWN" was also officially recognized. But among many musicians and media, "rock" is a "past" in Shijiazhuang.
Before Shijiazhuang was positioned as a "rock city", "I Love Rock Music" had been suspended for ten years, and "Popular Songs" had been suspended for five years. The Universal Youth Hotel was the only remaining local rock business card. A rock city that started almost from scratch is doomed to be always accompanied by all kinds of uncertainties. Shortly after the official announcement of
, the adapted song "The Unkillable Shijiazhuang People" became a hit on the Internet. Netizens did not buy it and said, "Awesome, my village." Instead, embarrassing comments filled the entire screen.
On July 24, during the Violent Champagne Band’s performance at Brown Sugar Livehouse, musician Ding Xiaolong’s behavior of taking off his pants in public was ultimately classified as “endangering social morality.” The venue involved, Brown Sugar Livehouse, was ordered to immediately cease operations for rectification, and was given a warning and a fine of 200,000 yuan in administrative penalties in accordance with the law. Ding Xiaolong was also detained administratively.
It was not until early September that Shijiazhuang held its first large-scale performance, the ROCK HOME TOWN Original Music Festival. The performance is free, but reservations are required to grab tickets. The official 14,000 tickets were originally released, but due to too many people grabbing tickets, the ticketing system crashed several times.
However, after the controversy, Shijiazhuang is slowly getting on the right track. According to statistics from the "White Paper", as of October, this "Rock City" music performance season has attracted 1 million music fans.
Keyword 5: The decline of music genres
Perhaps because offline concerts and music festivals have taken over the public’s enthusiasm for performances, the online music genre market has shown overall weakness.
In 2023, the total number of brands absorbed by variety shows will be the lowest in the past three years, and the overall investment ability of variety shows will decline.
This year, the total number of brands absorbed by the TOP50 variety shows with the popularity index is only 369, compared with 425 in 2022, a decrease of 13.18%. Due to the significant reduction in advertising funds for program production and conservative investment strategies, resources continue to flow into variety shows. The number of new variety shows at the top of the four major video websites has dropped significantly.
According to the statistics of the "White Paper", among the top 10 most popular competitive variety shows in 2023, music variety shows occupy nine seats. However, among the nine seats are "Chengfeng 2023", "This!" Six of them, including "Hip-hop Season 6", "Chinese Rap Peak Showdown 2023", and "Summer of the Band Season 3", all belong to the variety N generation. Only the stage survival experimental variety show "Stage 2023" has achieved a small-scale breakthrough with its novel competition model, while "College Students Who Love Singing", which has just been launched, still needs time to accumulate its voice.
After the 2021 talent show variety show was terminated by "Operation Qinglang", many music and variety production platforms have not yet found a new track and can only continue to explore the remaining value of the existing IP in their hands.iQiyi still firmly grasps the two major categories of rap and bands, but its appeal has inevitably declined; in the variety show market, Youku only has "This is Street Dance" that has completed its sixth season; Mango TV relies on "Sister Lang", "Brother Pi" and "The Sound of Life" have gathered a wave of attention, but without exception they are all from the N generation. While
's commercial value and discussion popularity continue to decline, the innovation of music variety shows is far from enough. The variety shows that can stir up buzz this year are all competition formats, and the highlight is nothing more than the excitement and tension brought by elimination. The slow variety show "Time Concert", which previously focused on warmth and healing, entered its third season this year, "Time Concert·Friends", but its reputation also plummeted, and netizens called it "embarrassing".
However, 2024 is coming, and various video platforms are also sending signals in variety show production. There are overseas talent shows, group talent shows returning, and scandalous star desert island reality shows who are well versed in traffic codes.
But no matter what, how to innovate will become a proposition that Yizong needs to think about for a long time.
Keyword 6: Rakshasa Sea
With its interpretation of ancient legends and pleasant folk tunes, Daolang's "Rakshasa Sea" ignited public opinion this summer upon its release, and was named the "No. 1 Divine Comedy of 2023".
"Rakshasa Sea City" interprets the famous story from "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" and tells the story of a wonderful journey of a beautiful man named Ma Ji. On his way to the sea for business, he was driven by wind and waves and accidentally entered the Rakshasa Kingdom, where beauty and ugliness are reversed, where the ugly are noble and the beautiful are humble. The original author Pu Songling used this to insinuate the social phenomenon of not distinguishing between beauty and ugliness and blindly flattering.
For a time, the "seemingly pointed" part of the song aroused the curiosity of netizens to pry into the gossip of the music industry. Just a few days after its release, the gun turned to several musicians including Na Ying. Netizens poured into Naying's Douyin comment area, and 8 million comments were added, becoming a rather absurd footnote to a song.
Subsequently, "Rakshasa Sea City" was regarded as a "song of justice" by many netizens. The metaphor behind the lyrics stirred everyone's emotions and allowed the song to continuously extend new meanings. From Peking Opera, Sentences, Duets, Flower Drum Opera covers in the literary and art circles, to sociology, history, literary analysis, to comments in the fields of justice, education, international relations and other fields, the Internet is very busy, and "Rakshasa Sea" is regarded as a stimulus. A sharp knife that exposes society to the evildoing of others.
"Rakshasa Sea City" is like a hurricane, setting off a storm of speculation and interpretation across the Internet. However, Daolang, who is in the eye of the storm, has always remained silent. Daolang's manager has stated that there will be no public response to the song.
Somehow, it fits the gist of "Rakshasa Haishi". True and false, false and false, true and false, are only left to the world to speak.
Keyword 7: Black Plum Sauce
"Your shallow smile is just like Black Plum Sauce."
In early March this year, "Black Plum Sauce" took the short video platform by storm. This song was written, composed and sung by Li Ronghao, and was included in the album "Across the World" released on December 21, 2022. Three months after its release, the song made Li Ronghao soaring in popularity, and at the same time he fell into condemnation of the entire Internet. The cause of the
incident was that music critic Ding Taisheng posted a review video on his personal account, pointing out that the chorus of the song has "a strong Chinese rural style mixed with the popular elements of the current short video platform," mocking This is a "speculative" work. In order to cater to "small town youths", "artistic backbones graduating from junior high schools" and "migrant workers", it accuses Li Ronghao of "losing sincerity" and "compromising into the earth for the sake of fire".
finally sets the tone, this song "Wumeizi Sauce" is extremely vulgar.
Subsequently, Ding Taisheng's words were recognized by many music critics and netizens. The melody of "Wumeizijiang" is brainwashing and full of seven points. It is understandable if it is sung by a little-known online singer. However, if it is sung by Li Ronghao, it does not meet his status in the Chinese music scene and the fans' expectations of him.
However, looking at it from another perspective, perhaps it is this song "Wumezijiang" that continues the tone set by "The Lonely Warrior", gradually expelling the hot songs that are shoddy and produced by the assembly line from the music market, and handing over the hot songs to mature ones. , a systematic music production team has improved the quality baseline of hot songs.
Keyword 8: Meme-making carnival
In this year, hot memes belonging to the Chinese music scene are still emerging one after another, creating collective carnivals among netizens one after another.
's first hit was "Thai Pants Hot", which originated from what Wang Linkai said at the concert: "I am a very stubborn person, I never care what others say to me, let me do it. If you can be like me, then I think this thing is so cool!"
Because this "too cool" word is too magical, netizens nicknamed it "Thai pants hot" and swept the entire Internet. It has become a new oral addiction for many young people.
Not long after, not long ago, Xiaogui was reviewed by music critic Liang Yuan on the stage of the fourth season of "The Voice of God", and he questioned the latter, "I can stand on the stage and play, teacher, can you? "Once again contributed hot memes to netizens, and Xiao Gui was also named the "King of Memes of the Year".
Later, Tao Zhe’s old variety show was praised by many netizens, and a strange improvisation of “Oh ah ah eh” shocked everyone, making the RB Godfather an abstract entertainer on the Internet. Later, netizens collaged this improvisation into his song "Small Town Girl", creating a popular BGM that swept Douyin.
Many netizens used this BGM to accompany their own embarrassing moments and thanked Tao Zhe, "Without you, I would never have released this video."
It’s the end of the year, and Wu Bai, who is busy holding concerts in various places, has contributed new memes to netizens.
Everyone gathered together and ridiculed Wu Bai's costumes as "the backlog of clothes sold in the past" and the concert as "a test of the singing skills of fans across the country." At the concert, he pointed his hand to the sky and started walking around the stage. After the three-hour performance, netizens joked that he "didn't sing a word but counted 20,000 steps on WeChat."
In an era when the relationship between celebrities and the public is becoming increasingly flat, it is these meme-making carnivals that have brought social vitality to many celebrities.
Keyword 9: AIGC
If both official and unofficial releases are included, then Stefanie Sun must be the musician who has released the most singles this year.
opened Bilibili, and “AI Stefanie Sun” became an extremely popular category. From pop songs to Internet hits, and even various folk operas, "AI Stefanie" can pick them all at her fingertips. Unpopular singer Stefanie Sun finally became a veritable popular singer through AIGC's journey of empowering the public.
In this year, AIGC is undoubtedly a popular concept across all walks of life. In the Chinese music scene, AIGC is not just a personal carnival for music fans. Various platforms are also constantly integrating AIGC technology into their existing product architecture.
For example, NetEase Cloud Music launched the AI music production platform Xstudio and cooperated with Xiaobing Company to provide music creators with AI sound sources that can be used; TME's Galaxy Sound Effects, MUSE, Tianqin Lab and Tencent AI Lab jointly created TME Studio, an intelligent music creation assistant, integrates a series of AI functions such as music separation, MIR calculation, assisted lyric writing, and intelligent music score.
Looking to the future, AIGC technology will penetrate more deeply into the music industry and even become a key force in rewriting the Chinese music scene.
Keyword 10: lip-synching
The lip-syncing controversy at the Mayday concert caused the destruction of youth memories across the country. The
incident began with an identification video released on November 30 by Wheatfield Farmer, the owner of Station B’s UP. He selected 12 live audio recordings and submissions from fans with good sound quality from the Shanghai concert for vocal extraction. Analysis by the software Melodyne showed that 5 of the 12 songs were purely lip-synced, and 1 was a mix of real and fake songs.
Subsequently, the video formed a wave of social discussion on lip-synching. Not only have topics related to lip-syncing at the Mayday concert dominated hot searches for many days in a row, but they have also attracted the attention of many mainstream media such as Xinhua News Agency, CCTV News, and People's Daily. Currently, the cultural market inspection departments at the venues where each concert is held have intervened in the investigation. .
More importantly, Mayday’s lip-synching controversy triggered discussions in the industry about the gray areas of “pad sound” and “half-open mic”. It is understood that the so-called "half-open mic" and "pad sound" techniques were originally spread from South Korea. They mean that the accompaniment played on the stage contains the original singer, and the singer opens the mic, but the sound is adjusted lower, and the original song is played. Sing the overlap and be heard by the audience.
But what is the volume ratio between real singing and pad sound to be defined as lip-synching? This incident has also triggered people's thinking.
More importantly, this turmoil is expected to force the country to strengthen industry supervision and make more detailed regulations and policy statements on various lip-syncing issues.
Conclusion
Looking back at the Chinese music scene in 2023, there are mixed feelings.
is happy that users’ awareness of paying has gradually increased, which has made a good start for the future development of the industry. The scale of the offline performance market is unprecedented, but shoddy hot songs are on the decline, and the entire industry has returned to quality orientation; what is worrying is that the phenomenon of scalpers continues to be banned, Frequent chaos in performances is due to the fact that basic business capabilities such as Quankaimai are being touted, and it is due to the fact that the music company that has high hopes has fallen into innovation difficulties and declined.
However, we believe that the music industry is always spiraling and moving forward.
2023 is coming to an end and I already miss it.
