Data shows that the number of concert ticket purchases in 2023 has more than doubled compared with the same period in 2019. At the same time, it is difficult to obtain tickets, rampant scalpers, lip-syncing and other controversies continue. The picture shows the scene of the Beijing Bird's Nest Mayday Concert on June 1, 2023. (Visual China Picture)
On August 6, 2023, the tfboys Ten Year Date concert was held at the Xi'an Olympic Sports Center Stadium. "A concert brings a city on fire." According to information released by Xi'an, this concert directly drove 416 million yuan in tourism revenue. In addition to the
tfboys concert, concerts by well-known singers such as Jay Chou, Mayday, Eason Chan, and Joker Xue have started one after another. With the recovery of the industry, the concert economy has exploded at a faster than expected speed.
In the past three years since the performance event was paused, the audience's enthusiasm for offline performances has been evident. In 2023, the cumulative sales of various types of performances on the Damai platform reached 270,000, an increase of 180% compared with 2019 before the epidemic, setting a record high; the box office scale and the number of ticket buyers also doubled, reaching 2.7 times and 2 times respectively in the same period in 2019. times.
The epidemic has quietly changed the public's consumption habits. One way to say it is that people are more willing to spend money on life experience and self-care. Offline performances, represented by concerts and music festivals, along with tourism and catering, have become outlets for people to release their emotions, and have also become evidence of the return of fireworks.
Breaking the circle online, carnival offline
In 2023, grabbing tickets for certain concerts and music festivals has become an indispensable image in people's spiritual consumption. Data provided by Damai to Southern Weekend reporters show that the number of concert ticket purchases and the number of events increased by 208% and 22% respectively compared with the same period in 2019, and the number and number of music festival ticket purchases increased by 427% and 156% respectively compared with the same period in 2019.
The rapid development of multiple performance categories in recent years is related to the linkage between online and offline. When the performance field has gone through the epidemic, how to use online communication channels to drive offline performances has become extremely important.
New media represented by short videos have ignited people's enthusiasm for running to stadiums and outdoor lawns to listen to their favorite singers. Relevant industry insiders analyzed to Southern Weekend reporters that previous advertisements for this type of performance had a low frequency and narrow scope of reaching the audience. Now, new communication channels such as short videos can reach a wider range of people and arouse more consumer desires. "Concert information from Guangdong can also be seen by people in the Northeast." It has become common to attend performances across cities. According to the "2023 Summer Performance Market User Observation" report released by Beacon Professional Edition, cross-city users for concerts and music festivals account for more than 60%.
In recent years, the popularity of variety shows in different art categories has in turn boosted the consumption of emerging performance categories. After the epidemic, a group of cultivated audiences poured into offline performance spaces. For example, "Voice of the Heart" made musical actors popular, "Summer of the Band" brought more people to outdoor music festivals and livehouses, and "Annual Comedy Competition" introduced new imported comedies such as sketch comedy and manga. The format gradually emerged offline.
According to the performance ticket information collection data of Beacon Professional Edition, in 2023, musicals, which accounted for only 4.9% of the theater performances, contributed 21.7% of the box office. The 18th language version of "Phantom of the Opera", one of the world's four classic musicals - the Chinese version. After experiencing delays due to the epidemic, it launched a national tour in China, with a cumulative box office of more than 48.5 million yuan. After 40 consecutive performances, the average single The box office gross exceeded 1.2 million yuan.
The Chinese version of "The Phantom of the Opera" has launched a national tour, with a cumulative box office of more than 48.5 million yuan. (File photo)
Dance dramas such as "The Eternal Wave", "Crested Ibis" and "Only Green" became popular after their works were released on the Spring Festival Gala and online platforms, and popular performances sold out immediately. Starting from March 2023, "Wing Chun" will launch its first nationwide tour, starting from Shenzhen and successively performing in more than 30 cities across the country, completing 80 performances. At the end of 2023, "Dream of Red Mansions", which was created in 2021, completed its final performance of the year in Zhengzhou. Although it has toured more than a hundred shows across the country, "A Dream of Red Mansions" Zhengzhou Station added a performance, which still broke the Zhengzhou Grand Theater performance project million The fastest record of 100 yuan box office.
In the six years since the official launch of "Talk Show Conference", the entire industry has developed rapidly and one talk show star after another has been born.Talk shows have been recognized and loved by more and more people, and offline performances are booming. In May 2023, this industry entering a new stage encountered a storm. The Shanghai Municipal Entertainment Sector Regulation Group severely reprimanded the person in charge of Xiaoguo Culture, and all performances of the label were temporarily suspended. Affected by this incident, the number of talk show clubs in Beijing, which originally exceeded 30, dropped sharply, nearly halving.
After half a year of silence, actors under Xiaoguo Culture have restarted offline performances. On December 16, eight actors including He Guangzhi, Qiu Rui, and Zhao Xiaohui performed a charity talk show in Shanghai. According to Beijing media statistics, in terms of performances, the three most active performance types during the 2024 New Year's Day holiday are talk shows, dramas, and children's dramas, with 255, 104, and 98 performances respectively. It remains to be seen whether the talk show can transform and gain new life after the storm.
Under the blowout, chaos arose
On November 30, 2023, the up owner of the B station music area "Wheatfield Farmer" released a video, saying that after professional software identification, he found that 5 of the 12 songs from the Mayday Shanghai concert Lip-syncing for the whole thing. On December 1st, Weibo blogger "Shengli" posted an article reporting Mayday's blatant lip-synching behavior at her solo concert. The related topic quickly heated up and gradually became an annual event in the performance industry.
Many fans expressed indignation at this, dissatisfied with "paying a high price but being defrauded", and some also questioned the rationality of Mayday's management company's performance arrangements. Mayday's tour schedule is very intensive, and they have performed in 12 cities including Beijing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Shenyang. They have held three or four concerts in multiple cities in a row, with a huge amount of singing.
Looking back on 2023, offline performances have shown a trend of market recovery, soaring popularity, and consumption explosion. However, the lip-synching controversy involved the industry chaos behind it. This year, unreasonable price increases have been common for domestic concerts. In order to make up for the shortfall left by the three-year epidemic, major companies have stepped up their operations and increased prices in all aspects. Overly dense performance arrangements not only embarrass the performers, but also make it difficult for the audience to accept, and cause a lot of social controversy in anticipation.
The concert market is booming, and with it, ordinary audiences cannot get tickets, scalpers are rampant, and tickets for popular singers' concerts are sold at sky-high prices. Concerts in various places have adopted measures such as strong real-name systems to combat scalpers, but whether the actual ticket check-in can integrate people, certificates and tickets remains to be tested.
The controversy over high-price scalping tickets has not yet subsided, and "pillar tickets" and "wall tickets" are coming one after another, which is annoying consumers. During Liang Jingru’s concert in Shanghai, in the price range of 999-1599, there were spectators whose sight was blocked by pillars. They were in an audio-visual feast, but “only heard but no one” throughout the concert.
The number of small and medium-sized music festivals has increased sharply, and they have penetrated into small and medium-sized cities and even county towns. The picture shows the scene of a music festival in Shijiazhuang in October 2023. (Visual China Picture) The
Music Festival has also grown rapidly in the performance market. Established music festivals such as Strawberry and Midi continue to be popular. At the same time, various small and medium-sized music festivals are springing up, taking root in third- to fifth-tier cities and even in county towns. Data from the "2023 Tencent Entertainment White Paper·Music" shows that a total of 169 new music festival IPs were born in 2023. As of November 20, 2023, the number of music festivals in second- to fifth-tier cities has doubled, and the number of music festivals in new first-tier cities has doubled throughout the year. The number of music festivals held reached 86, three times that of first-tier cities.
During the National Day holiday, discordant voices were heard from music festivals in many places. Among them, the theft incident at Nanyang Midi Music Festival attracted the most attention. Before the music festival was completely over, some netizens posted pictures and texts of stolen items. As of October 5, 2023, the local police received a total of 73 reports and implemented 65 stolen cases. On the evening of the 5th, local officials issued a notice stating that the public security organs had launched a special investigation and that relevant personnel had arrived at the case and related items had been recovered.
National Music Carnival (Foshan Station) opened in Foshan, attracting more than 80,000 people to watch the performance. However, many fans complained that the experience was extremely poor, "I walked almost 4 kilometers from the connecting area to the venue." Some fans said that umbrellas were not allowed at the event. “There was no rest area or shade, and we were exposed to the sun all afternoon from noon to evening.”
Although these chaos have occurred in the past, during the National Day in 2023, due to the reopening of some backlogged music festivals, the error rate was higher than in previous years due to the intensive holding; there is also no lack of capital to see that offline performances are very popular, and temporarily Entry into the game has led to various loopholes in the music festival from content to services.
Small-scale performances are experiencing a downturn, while dramas are more commercial
In addition to large-scale performances that are in full swing, smaller performances such as live houses and dramas have completely different feelings about "recovery". In sharp contrast to the strong ability of large-scale projects to attract money, small performances have been experiencing a decline. According to Beacon Professional Edition data, music performances contributed more than 90% of the cumulative offline performance revenue in 2023, of which concert box office revenue accounted for more than 81%.
The China Performing Arts Association cited industry research as saying that small live music performances have significantly increased tour costs due to transportation, food and accommodation. At the same time, large-scale projects have absorbed part of the livehouse box office, the consumption power of music fans has declined, and market operations have become more difficult.
In the first half of 2023, musicians such as Sound Toys, Wild Cooperative, and Shi Lei 4rock successively announced the cancellation of livehouse performances. Unsatisfactory ticket sales may be the main reason. The band Whale Circus announced that it would suspend live house tour plans indefinitely. The members publicly explained, "The rent of live houses has increased by an average of 5,000 to 10,000 yuan compared with previous years. Each of us is facing pressure in life, and everyone has paid a lot for the performance. Even the cost is discounted." Frequent cancellations of performances have made the livehouse, which has been unsustainable due to venue rental and customer flow problems in the past three years, even worse.
Looking back at the drama field, drama critic Xi Muliang’s impression is that there were not many new domestic original plays in the first half of the year and have not yet fully recovered; in the second half of the year, especially the last two or three months, the number began to return to pre-epidemic levels. Situation; in terms of quality or style, "the drama market has experienced the epidemic period, and the overall strategy will be more cautious."
When touring becomes impossible, performing in small theaters becomes a way out. After the theater market restarted, there were more similar environmental and immersive theaters in various places. Zhejiang Xiaobaihua Yue Opera Troupe collaborated with Taipei Opera, the producer of "Apolonia", to launch the environmental Yue opera "New Dragon Inn", which introduced the cast system of musicals. Among the four groups of actors, there are also popular actors The "corner". Tickets were sold out within two minutes of opening, and tickets priced from 100 yuan were sold to 1,000 yuan, which is a miracle in the field of opera.
Before the epidemic, Beijing Gulou West Theater was known for its experimental nature and closeness to public issues. The small theater work "Border Town" launched in 2023 is still online in quality, but it reveals a more commercial atmosphere. The original seats in the theater were transformed into streamlined riverbanks and terraces, and the audience became residents of the border city. The performance space was expanded to a small courtyard and coffee shop outside the theater. The small courtyard became a lively Xiangxi River Street Market and coffee shop. It has become an old boatman's home, where the audience can listen to stories, taste rice wine, and learn to sing.
In November 2023, the drama "Border Town" was performed at the Gulou West Theater. Shen Congwen's famous work was transformed into an immersive "storytelling theater", full of physical theater and musical elements, with actors and audiences interacting closely. (Visual China Picture)
Xi Muliang believes that three years have passed and the cold and elite temperament of experimental drama is undergoing a subtle change. The 2023 experimental drama masterpiece "Where is the Nearest Barrier-Free Toilet" is an audience-friendly play. Art works that are also ideological and want to convey attitudes to the public are completed in a way that is better combined with commercial drama.
He analyzed that social mentality plays an essential role in this. Most people tend to obtain happiness through short and quick ways. "People generally don't have the mentality to say, 'I won't make much money this year, but I just want to go to the theater to think about profound things.' It's a bit ridiculous to say it. This is the fundamental conflict in 2023. "Xi Muliang told Southern Weekend reporters.
drama critic Yang Xiaoluan has a deep understanding of the downturn in the dialogue drama market. He learned that a popular drama before the epidemic was struggling to sell tickets in 2023. Only 70 to 80% of more than a thousand seats were sold. However, compared with other dramas before and after the schedule, this drama is already the best performer.
The promotion of domestic original dramas faces multiple pressures. After the performance market gradually returned to normal, the explosive growth of concerts and other projects, and the resumption of the introduction of international plays, diverted domestic drama audiences to a certain extent. The space left for new plays in theaters is also shrinking. Taking the Guangzhou Grand Theater as an example, most of the drama performances in 2023 will be dance dramas and musicals that have already toured. As for dramas, the nine-person drama troupe's "Spring Dies" and "Four Machines", the 10th anniversary version of "Hello" ,madman! ", are all works that have been tested by the market, and only three or four new folk original plays have appeared.
There is no space in large theaters, so folk-produced plays are moving to small theaters, and some performances in non-theatre spaces are also beginning to emerge. Shenzhen’s Shekou Theater Festival and Fringe Festival have seen many small plays performed in public spaces such as bars and parks.
"At best, everyone is exploring different business models, some of which are quite successful, and some are trying to balance the independent expression of artists with commercial demands; of course, at worst, the entire industry is trying to figure out how to do it. How to get money to make the audience more interested." Xi Muliang said, "They may make money by selling tickets, or they may cooperate with official projects, such as cultural tourism real estate projects and government projects. Everyone has their own way of living."
Southern Weekend reporter Zhu Yuan
Editor-in-chief Li Muyan
