Ten thousand years old four want to turn over, Netease cloud music wants more ＂song list＂

Text | Zhang Shule (columnist of People’s Daily Online and People’s Post and Telecommunications, observer of Internet and game industry)

The song list of Netease cloud music is gray, and it has been cured.

On September 14th, Netease Cloud Music announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with Bertelsmann Music Group (hereinafter referred to as BMG). The two parties will cooperate in music copyright, deep development of music IP, music performance and online karaoke.

BMG owns the recording rights of singers such as Avril Lavigne and Rolling Stones, as well as the lyrics and songs of a large number of outstanding music creators.

Since 2020, in order to reverse the unfavorable copyright situation, Netease Cloud Music has gradually entered the former copyright hinterland of Tencent Music, and has successively reached cooperation with copyright parties such as Universal Music, Ghibli, Shaocheng Times, Rolling Stone Records, Indie Works, BPMT(BPM Tokyo) and CUBE Entertainment.

On the afternoon of May 15th, Netease Cloud Music recently announced that it had reached a copyright cooperation with Shaocheng Times, and its artists included Liang Bo, Diamond and other famous Chinese singers.

Four days ago, Netease Cloud Music just reached a strategic cooperation with the world-renowned Warner Copyright. The two sides will carry out all-round cooperation in the upstream and downstream fields of the music industry such as music library content, online karaoke and music IP development.

It is reported that after the cooperation is reached, Netease Cloud Music will get the copyright of 1.3 million music songs by Warner. These include internationally renowned superstars such as Katy Perry and Madonna, and the copyright of lyrics and songs of many Chinese musicians such as Jonathan Lee and Jolin Tsai.

In domestic online music, can Netease Cloud Music, with its own efforts, "pry three" and MAU ranking fourth, save itself?

I have to say that although Netease Cloud Music has been at a disadvantage, on the whole, its community stickiness is extremely high.

Online music has changed from a multi-headed war to a double-headed hegemony between Tencent Music and Netease Cloud Music.

However, it must be said that this competition for hegemony has started from the field of copyright to more meta-competition.

After all, the music platform itself doesn’t produce much music, and the competition for copyright eventually became cheaper for the record companies that started from the ground.

For Netease Cloud Music, Chen Ting, a reporter from Time Weekly, had an exchange with Shule. Being original thought:

Netease Cloud Music’s song list is small and vertical, and its main purpose is to leave the core users who are really obsessed with music and have certain tasting ability, and prepare for the subsequent promotion of originality.

Song sheet is the killer of cloud music, and it is still the cornerstone of cloud music community and its own original content.

Without a song list, online music with more copyrights is just a player.

Netease Cloud Music has the power of World War I in the future track competition by focusing on the community and differentiated competition through the song list.

According to the report of Aurora Big Data, in June 2019, Netease Cloud Music added 758,000 users every day, with a 7-day user retention rate of 73.5% and a 30-day user retention rate of over 60%. Lachin and retention performed well, indicating that users are willing to stay in the music community.

But how to further cultivate is a problem.

Before, its song list did have a community tendency, but even in the period when copyright issues were not fermented, it was still a niche vertical and it was difficult to expand.

Netease is small and beautiful, the main purpose is to keep the core users who are really obsessed with music and have certain tasting ability, and prepare for the subsequent promotion of originality.

It has a good grasp of this rhythm, but it also needs money and time to be original, and it still has a long way to go. In addition, under the impact of the network divine comedy, this road to quality has become very subtle.

According to the data released by Netease Cloud Music in April, its original musicians have settled in more than 160,000. It looks like a lot, but it is still thin in the face of a huge music library.

In addition, the copyright war should not return to fever pitch.

Otherwise, it’s just a player with copyright to make money for copyright owners.

In this regard, Ding Lei has another expression, that is, he said in February: "We hope to return to a reasonable and rational price in the future."

Whether it is Tencent Music or Netease Cloud Music, in the future, the two sides will no longer continue to fight for copyright, but will each find a new way. The copyright advantage is only the initial point of contention.

In April, Tencent Music Entertainment officially released the long audio strategy, and launched a new product, Cool I Listen, which provides long audio including 19 content categories such as audio novels, cross talk storytelling and emotions.

The reason is that Shule’s consistent judgment is that at this stage, the realization of online music platform can not rely solely on content payment, but needs to be integrated into more fields of pan-entertainment, such as short video soundtrack, game music production and authorization.

Let content creators in more fields, including music creators, unlock more possibilities in content by authorizing music.

Nowadays, on the basis of retaining users, it will become a general trend to develop more scenes and find more profit points, such as music peripheral products and music licensing of short videos.