Image source@can图图
文｜Shenzhen Business, author|Lei Sanbei, editor|Chu Qingzhou
Three years ago, Zhang Xiaolong "hoped that WeChat could remain the original small and beautiful" words still ring in his ears. That was what he said in 2021 1 A few words from the "WeChat Night" speech, the finale of the WeChat open class in March.
In the speech titled "Zhang Xiaolong: Ten Years of Product Thoughts on WeChat", he hoped that WeChat could always maintain its own style and always be like a small and beautiful product with its own soul. Three full years have passed since
, and after several updates, at least in terms of functionality, WeChat version 8.0.38 still shows no signs of being "small but beautiful", but continues to develop into "big and fat".
In January 2024, WeChat quietly opened another portal "Listen" on the "Discover" page, which is juxtaposed with "Search", "Scan", "Take a look" and other functions, and its importance is not the same. It goes without saying. This feature seems to be still being gradually tested in large quantities.
After clicking "Listen", what appears is the music and audio services in the drop-down page of the WeChat homepage. The appearance of "Listen" is generally interpreted by the media as a signal that WeChat continues to increase the weight of the audio business. It seems that after video, WeChat is also gearing up to compete for every inch of territory in the fields of music and audio.
WeChat Music has an obvious tendency to divert traffic to video accounts
In fact, WeChat music and audio functions have been launched in 2023. We have paid attention to it before, but judging from the development during this period, we may need to revise or refine some views:
music and audio are two subdivided functions, and the development space between them may be There is a relatively big difference.
"Music" is more like a streamlined version of QQ Music, consisting of "Today", "Recently Listened", "Recommended Song List", "Video Account Musician" and other sections.
But compared with professional music apps after being online for more than half a year, the WeChat music listening experience is still not good, even bad. Although you can listen to VIP music without spending money, as long as you watch 15 seconds of ads, you can listen to VIP music for 30 minutes for free. For music, keep watching ads to get extra free time.
But for moderate to severe music lovers, this long 15 seconds is simply a kind of torture, and when you finish watching this 15-second advertisement, the 30-minute countdown starts immediately, and the 30-minute time length has to be set well. Quite clever, under normal circumstances the length of a pop music album can easily exceed 30 minutes.
In other words, enduring a 15-second advertisement is not enough for you to listen to an album from beginning to end. This is probably only suitable for light music lovers who occasionally have a whim.
So WeChat Music allows you to use WeChat as another QQ Music to listen to songs? Judging from WeChat's product logic in the past, it shouldn't be that simple to just calculate things.
Ma Huateng’s recent statement at Tencent’s annual meeting continued to regard video accounts as “the hope of the whole village.” Looking back at the 2023 WeChat open class, it was also mentioned:
"Video account, as an atomized content component within the WeChat ecosystem, has become more and more closely related to communication, social networking, official accounts, mini programs, payment, including enterprise WeChat." The integration can realize free circulation in various WeChat scenarios, providing content creators and brand operators with more creative possibilities for creation and marketing plans."
In addition to "Video Account Popular bgm" and "Video Account Musician" in WeChat Music " and other sections, we can see that WeChat music has a clear tendency to divert traffic to video accounts.
Search for the name of any musician in the WeChat music search box. The musician, album, music, and playlist will appear under the search box respectively. Click "Musician" to enter the homepage of the musician's video account.
The copyrights of songs in albums, music, and playlists are interoperable with qq music, and you can bind qq music membership. Of course, the songs are comprehensive, but if you do not have a qq music VIP membership, you can only listen to it for 10 seconds, or watch 15 Seconds of advertising in exchange for 30 minutes of VIP time.
When you swipe left on the album cover of QQ Music, the lyrics will appear different. When you click on any song in WeChat Music, swipe left on the cover and you will immediately see the mv video or music live video of the song, and the video will be displayed at the same time. The publisher's video account name. Clicking on the video account name will lead to the author's video account homepage.
Of course, the details of WeChat Music’s video account diversion are far more than this.
Click on "Live Music" above WeChat Music, and you will find that they are all horizontal concert and other live music videos, and they are all from video accounts. Another section of
, "Music Fan Circle", is a "music social" community that comments on music works and musicians. Whether it is "live music" or "Music Fan Circle", the content contributors are all video account users. Of course Click on any user's avatar to enter the user's video account homepage.
still remembers online concerts from Westlife Boys, Mayday, Cui Jian, and Luo Dayou. Since the video account was launched in 2020, it has used music as a weapon to break the circle many times. Every concert can set off a wave of collectives in the circle of friends. The nostalgia craze and the concerts watched online by tens of millions of people played an important role in expanding the influence of the video account.
Today, the monthly active video account has exceeded 800 million. Based on such a huge user base, how can we continue to maintain the strong activity of the video account?
WeChat music is also a very stable output for diverting traffic to video accounts, making music an important part of the entire video account ecosystem, rather than just a separate tool for listening to music. Although you are listening to music, the video account may still be your final destination.
WeChat version of podcast, how can it compete with old players?
Although there has been no shortage of voices looking down on WeChat public accounts since the advent of the short video era, facts have proven that WeChat public accounts have not collapsed due to the rise of video accounts. It is still one of the important sources of Chinese information and knowledge content. .
The audio version of WeChat public account articles actually liberates users’ eyes and hands, just like the listening function in WeChat reading. Listening to text content in scenes that are inconvenient to read has gradually become a user habit. The huge resources of public account creators that
has accumulated over more than ten years may also be the capital for WeChat Audio to gradually catch up with audio giants like Himalaya in the future.
According to incomplete statistics from the million-level WeChat public account sample database monitored daily by the new list, in 2023, WeChat public accounts produced a total of 448 million articles. Among them, at least 254,500 articles with more than 100,000 views were produced, as well as 31.203 million original articles.
is currently on the homepage of the user video account. There are three options: video, music, and audio. Click audio to publish audio. In order to strictly distinguish it from music content, a prompt will appear when publishing: The current page does not support publishing music. For music works, please go to Music Publishing .
What is particularly friendly to video account users is that when you select the audio to be published, "Published Video" will pop up, which means that you can automatically convert any published video into audio for publication.
Therefore, through "audio", WeChat will not only allow a large number of WeChat public account users to find a "second spring" in the future (although the popularity of this spring may be limited), the current growing number of video account users will also be a huge content pool for WeChat audio in the future. After all,
is so easy to operate that it can convert video content into audio. For most video account users, this is nothing more than a casual matter. It really kills two birds with one stone, especially those video accounts that focus more on copywriting attributes. It is a very good The opportunity is equivalent to adding another content distribution channel on a platform. Some well-known Chinese podcasts have also begun to publish their podcast content on WeChat Audio, such as Ritan Park.
's "2023 Himalaya Chinese Podcast Ecology Report" shows that in 2023, with the support and promotion of platforms such as Himalaya, Chinese podcasts are no longer limited to niche circles and are gradually expanding to the public; the number of Chinese podcast listeners exceeds 220 million people , podcasts have become a new blue ocean for content creation; 50.2% of podcast listeners have paid for podcast content, and the commercialization forms of podcasts are becoming increasingly diverse.
As the development of Chinese podcasts becomes increasingly mature, in what ways does WeChat Audio intervene and expand its platform influence to get a share of the pie? This is a problem. WeChat Reading has also been embedded into WeChat’s “Sou Yi So”. In the future, will the “Listen to Books” function also be connected to audio?
WeChat music diverts traffic to video accounts, while video accounts, public accounts, and Chinese podcasts provide content for WeChat audio. In simple terms, it seems to be such a content production path -
In other words, the content production of WeChat music and WeChat audio The difference in logic and commercial space potential seems not small. If WeChat Music cannot better solve the problem of music copyright content and copyright experience, the user experience will not be very good.
According to the "2023 National Listening Trends White Paper", more than 70% of the respondents believe that audio content can help improve happiness and has even been integrated into life.
With the continuous breakthroughs in technologies such as immersive audio and AI, the possibilities of the audio track are further explored. The social distribution capabilities of the entire WeChat ecosystem are obvious to all, and user portraits are more accurate. These are conducive to more accurate recommendations based on user tags. Advertising, the road to commercialization of WeChat audio is relatively smooth in theory.
Of course, everything is based on the development of user habits. How to avoid the user impression of "WeChat is becoming more and more bloated" to "WeChat is becoming more and more convenient"? Competing for users’ limited time from numerous audio apps? Make WeChat’s “listen” function as indispensable as WeChat’s “scan” function?
More is less, less is more, simplicity is the most important. From now on, "Ting Yi Ting" still has a lot of room for optimization in the future.
