Standing on the stage of Beijing Workers Stadium, Wood, who performed on the stage for the first time, didn’t feel a little nervous.
There are so many people under the stage that he can’t see the faces of the fans who should help, but he can see them holding white light signs with their names written on them. Wood was excited and thought, "Be sure to sing well".
On the evening of August 27th, he and three other popular anchors on a live broadcast platform, Meng Xiaomei, Zi Hao and Mo Xiaomeng, performed four opening songs: A little tempted, Love Must Have It, Love ING and age of love, which kicked off the star ceremony of "Have a Heart".
"Pretty cool", two days later, Mu described his feelings at that time to the interface entrepreneur reporter. Although after watching the video of the concert, he found that he had too many shortcomings, such as "imperfect walking posture" and "ugly to death", so he was somewhat dissatisfied. But this experience made him set his next goal — — Have a concert of your own.
On the evening of August 27th, in addition to TFBOYS, Fish Leong, Jordan chan and other stars, six popular anchors such as Vivian, Mu, Meng Xiaomei and Zi Hao also performed on the stage. Not only can the audience see the performance, but the concert is also broadcast simultaneously on a live broadcast platform. According to the final data of science and technology, the highest number of online viewers reached 6.1 million, and the cumulative number of viewers reached more than 68 million.
All six anchors were selected through a live competition.
In July this year, a live broadcast launched the "I want to sing with you" competition. The anchor has to go through five stages, including registration, sea election, primary election, promotion and final, to compete for the opportunity to participate in the star ceremony.
The competition is divided into three time periods: daytime, prime time and midnight. In the half-month competition, every day is competition time. The anchor sings in his own studio, and fans increase the popularity of the anchor by rewarding him. As soon as you go online, the corner sign on the screen will show where you are now and how many gifts you need from the previous ranking.
"Just push forward hard," said Wood, describing his mentality during the competition.
Opponents in the same time slot are randomly assigned by the system, mainly based on the ranking of the field list. The people who match you are all close to your ranking. The higher you rank in the list, the higher the ranking of your matching opponents, and the ranking of the list depends on how many gifts fans gave on this day.
In the half-month competition, Wood PK passed dozens of people and won a total of seven or eight three-game winning streaks. At most, he sang more than 50 songs a day and broadcast them live for 8 hours a day. After 100 into 60, 60 into 40, 40 into 10, and the final, he won the second place in the daytime stalls and got tickets for the concert.
More and more live broadcast platforms are trying to enter the traditional entertainment industry.
In the first half of this year, online celebrity Concert became a new field that live broadcast platforms are scrambling to explore. In April, the first "online celebrity Concert" was held live on Zanthoxylum bungeanum. In May, Starry Night of the Goddess, which was broadcast live, made more efforts in the lineup, and invited stars such as Chris Lee, Carina Lau, Jane Zhang and Hua Chenyu to perform on the same stage with online celebrity.
Such a move is not difficult to understand.
The bonus period of the live broadcast platform has passed. According to the 2017 China Online Video Live Industry Trend Report released by Penguin Zhiku, the average monthly usage time of live users dropped from 203 minutes in the second half of last year to 182 minutes at the beginning of this year. The latest report released by China Internet Information Center also shows that as of June 2017, there were 343 million webcast users, accounting for 45.6% of the total netizens, and the scale of webcast users and the overall proportion of netizens declined.
Therefore, now the platform consciously wants to transfer the brand influence from online to offline. Periodic online and offline activities can undoubtedly arouse the enthusiasm of fans and online celebrity, and from the economic perspective, it is also a profitable business. As far as popularity is concerned, many online celebrity artists are not much different from real artists. In the live broadcast room, fans can brush their popularity and give gifts. Now, they go offline, just like a women’s group holding a theater performance, and they are also doing the fan economy in online celebrity.
In the contest "Zanthoxylum Zanthoxylum Sound" held by the live broadcast of Zanthoxylum Zanthoxylum before, the two-month contest was watched by 6.225 million people, supported by 3.44 million netizens, and presented with 26 million Zanthoxylum Zanthoxylum coins (about RMB 1.82 million). Then the "online celebrity Concert" held in April attracted 2.3 million people to watch it online and received 600,000 yuan as a reward.
In the live broadcast of "I want to keep singing" on July 1st, Mo Xiaomeng’s fans brushed her a gift of 170,000 at most, and Vivian, a live broadcast of "One Sister", gained 4.88 million views and 2.26 million likes in the final live broadcast, and won 143 million gold coins in a single game (about RMB 1.43 million). In order to get offline concert tickets, fans also need to recharge on the platform.
In the live broadcast circle where the head anchor is highly competitive, providing opportunities to contact with stars can undoubtedly increase the attractiveness of the platform. Yang Xu, general manager of a live broadcast, told the interface entrepreneur that the concert had been prepared for two or three months. On the one hand, it was to hold an induction ceremony for TFBOYS, and on the other hand, it was hoped that the anchor on the platform would perform on the same stage with the first-line big coffee, so as to "enhance the anchor’s influence through the IP value of the stars". In addition, such activities can also show the resources and strength of the platform and attract more external talents.
The platform is strong, and the popularity and worth of the anchor on stage can also be improved. From August 28th to September 3rd, in the pan-entertainment anchor list of China live broadcast list, more than half of the TOP10 live broadcast anchors, Vivian and Wood are on the list. Yang Xu said that after the concert, advertisers on the platform have also revealed their interest in the anchor.
Online celebrity star concert may be a new attempt, but the various star-making plans of the live broadcast platform have existed for a long time.
Among many star-making plans, Momo is the biggest one this year. On June 20th, MOMO joined forces with BMG, Taihe Music, Huayi Music and Lehua Entertainment to launch the "Momo Music Plan", and planned to invest 10 million yuan to enter the music industry and tap high-quality potential new stars on Momo platform. If you win in Momo’s selection, the anchor can distribute films around the world and go to the United States for training.
In September last year, Betta announced that it would invest 100 million yuan to build a "star anchor cultivation plan" to train, package and publicize its anchors. Zanthoxylum bungeanum’s "Star-making Plan" should also cultivate potential anchors and expand into the entertainment circle after signing a contract with a brokerage company. In the past August, the anchor of Yingke selection platform walked on the red carpet of 2017 Venice International Film Festival.
When talking about why the anchor should be developed in the direction of artists, Yang Xu told the interface entrepreneurial reporter that this was due to the consideration of "flow". Artist anchors can break through the live broadcast circle and drive those who usually don’t watch live broadcasts to become platform users.
In the live broadcast industry, a live broadcast that entered the market in May 2016 is regarded as a latecomer. However, due to its deep cooperation with Weibo and rich entertainment resources, the initial positioning of a live broadcast is to "make online celebrity a real star". This idea even came into being when the company started to do xiaokaxiu in 2015. According to Yang Xu, at that time, the company also made a program "Model King xiaokaxiu" with Southeast Satellite TV. By selecting talents from xiaokaxiu to participate in variety shows, the platform also took the opportunity to observe whether these people were good prospects worthy of training.
However, more people enter this plan because of their crisis awareness of the live broadcast industry. Li Yao is the head of the brokerage business of 51 worry media, the anchor brokerage company where Mu works. In an interview with an interface entrepreneur, he expressed his understanding of the live broadcast market with several questions.
"The live broadcast industry is now in a blowout era, but this way of making money is only short-term. What if it doesn’t work within five years and ten years? Or saturated? Or upgraded? "
In his view, now is the live broadcast 3.0 era, which needs to have a face value and talent at the same time, and it will develop into the 4.0 era in the future. At that time, the anchor may be required by the standards of an artist. The offline and dual-line development of Worry-Free Media is also to make the offline increment become the core competitiveness of Worry-Free Media when the threshold of the industry becomes higher.
In all kinds of star-making plans, the core three forces are platform, anchor brokerage company and anchor.
Yang Xu told reporters that the platform mainly provides directional guidance and various entertainment resources. A live broadcast divides the anchor into head, waist and bottom levels according to the monthly running water. For the head anchor like Vivian, the platform will specially give core resources and do key packaging planning.
In terms of entertainment resources, a live broadcast has regular docking with TV stations, variety shows and major film and television production companies. "There are large-scale production and high-cost teams, as well as small and medium-sized teams. Different teams invite different people according to their own conditions. Some low-cost production teams tend to invite online celebrity to star because online celebrity has a certain popularity, which can drive the film’s broadcast volume. "Yang Xu told reporters that at present, the head artists in the domestic film and television variety field are expensive, but there is actually a lack of low-cost and flowing artists.
More routine things still need to be done by the brokerage company, including helping the anchor to position his personal style, developing skills such as singing and acting, how to dress up, and even how many articles and photos Weibo sends every day. Of course, online celebrity brokerage companies with ideas are also expanding their performing arts resources.
Lei Binyi, the founder of Worry-Free Media, once worked in Phoenix Video and YY. He felt that the trade union management mode in the current live broadcast market was a bit too arrogant to adapt to the increasingly mature live broadcast market, so he founded Worry-Free Media in April 2016, hoping to create artists through the incubation of the company.
Li Yao, the head of the brokerage business of Worry-Free Media, once worked as an assistant to actor Kenny Lin, and engaged in brokerage work in organizations such as Ciwen Media and Aixiao Media. Now his daily job is to establish contact with various performing arts organizations and dock platform anchors in different categories.
The variety shows of major program groups and satellite TV regularly need some young people with high traffic and high face value, and Li Yao will go to the appropriate live broadcast of online celebrity. In terms of film and television, he will select anchors who are trained in transportation or suitable for offline development, and participate in the shooting of online universities, online dramas and cinema films. Li Yao also contacted music organizations such as Evergrande Music and Tianhao Shengshi, and recommended several anchors with musical expertise.
"Music producers also want to see if you are valuable to cooperate. Before Evergrande Music, there was a music producer who was very interested in the anchor. We contacted him, but later we didn’t cooperate for some personal reasons, "Li Yao told the interface entrepreneur reporter.
5Worry-Free Media also tried to combine the current hot topics to make short stories videos similar to Tear-resistant Men and Women for its anchors, and promote them on platforms such as Youku, Iqiyi and Weibo.
In Li Yao’s view, anchor is not a high-threshold occupation, and it is difficult to develop to a more demanding offline. "But we should take the initiative anyway.".
In addition to live broadcast platforms and brokerage companies, there are even anchors who set up their own brokerage companies, transforming themselves from online celebrity to bosses. Zi Hao, the anchor who also participated in the "Heart-warming" star ceremony, set up his own brokerage company "Little Monster" in October last year. In the past six months, "Little Monster" has expanded from dealing with Zihao’s one-person brokerage affairs to training signing artists, e-commerce and other directions. At present, its signing anchors have exceeded 300.
Yang Xu didn’t disclose the specific capital investment of a live broadcast in the star-making plan, but he said that since there is still much room for improvement in the professional quality of the anchor, the platform is also planning to hold some training courses with some art colleges, and plans to select talents to send to South Korea as trainees for short-term training.
"It still depends on the effect of different training methods, and then decide how much to invest," Yang Xu told the interface entrepreneurial reporter.
To some extent, all the live broadcast platforms and online celebrity brokerage companies are still "crossing the river by feeling the stones".
YY can be regarded as the first live broadcast platform to try to turn online celebrity into an artist. In September 2015, YY launched the "Starway Plan", and the anchor needs to pull fans to raise funds and popularity for it. Finally, the selected high-quality artists will get the opportunity to sign contracts with YY and gain guidance from professional production teams.
In 2015, music critics took part in this star-making project in Liushui Ji, helping some online celebrity to make singles and videos. He is well aware of the difficulties. In his view, on the one hand, the problem is that these anchors operating on YY have millions of fans, and their income is already very high. But can sending them a single also ensure that their fans will pay the bill?
As it turns out, fans pay the bill, but it’s not what they think, because these anchors are very popular on the Internet, and they can become very popular singers after posting songs. Very popular online celebrity and singers can’t be equated. At that time, the combination of light blue, low water, Lingxi and K Na launched by the platform was almost unsuccessful.
On the other hand, from the perspective of economic value, sending songs to these online celebrity didn’t make them earn much by sitting in the live broadcast room and singing and chatting. "YY also asked Huang Zhongping, a famous MV director in Taiwan Province, to make a film at that time, but the money spent was not proportional to the money earned by online celebrity’s single. It is not difficult to understand whether to continue to invest or let online celebrity stop making songs and make a live broadcast." Liu Shuiji told the interface entrepreneur reporter.
After a year of unsuccessful attempts, YY took the initiative to stop the plan, and in the view of Liushuiji, these problems still exist today.
The head anchor broadcasts millions a month, and it takes her several days to record a single, which may cost hundreds of thousands. Liu Shui-ji believes that whether singing can be achieved depends on the long-term planning of online celebrity and the ideas of online celebrity’s team and platform. "If online celebrity really wants to be an artist and has his own masterpiece, he must stand the temptation of money."
In Worry-Free Media, people with artistry or clear demands will be the focus of the company’s training.
Li Yao revealed that among the more than 3,000 anchors signed by 51 Worry-Free Media, dozens have expressed their willingness to develop in the direction of artists. At the same time of internal selection, the company is also recruiting from abroad. If the students who graduated from the class have the value of artists, the company will also sign them before they graduate, helping them to suck powder live and do activities offline.
"Being an actor, live broadcast is to attract fans and increase exposure. People with such needs are the most suitable for us to promote." Li Yao gave me a successful case on the platform, Xie Jia. This boyish girl is the anchor of the core group of Worry-Free Media. She has participated in Super Girl before and cooperated with Huang Xiaoming, He Jiong and Nana, but she is not famous. After entering the company, on the one hand, Xie Jia used the live broadcast to suck powder, and on the other hand, the company also helped her to dock a female No.2 in a cinema movie.
Anchors with a certain artistic foundation are also the focus of a live broadcast of the platform. Wang Chuxuan, the anchor, graduated from Beijing Modern Conservatory of Music and participated in My Show. Last August, he came to a live broadcast and became a full-time artist of Tiantai Entertainment. Wang Chuxuan broadcasts for 4 or 5 hours a day, and he has talent advantages, which has gradually attracted many people’s attention. Now he has 600,000 fans on the platform.
"He has been chasing dreams for many years and no one has paid attention to it. After the live broadcast, many people really like him. The company also provided resources to help him go to the stage, send songs, go to QQ music, sing bars to promote the list, and even get some online reviews. "Yang Xu told the interface reporter that although there is still a distance from the first-line stars, Wang Chuxuan has achieved a breakthrough from zero to one after all.
Despite many difficulties, Liu Shuiji still thinks that online celebrity singers may be the opportunities for future music. At present, he is also working with a live broadcast, Aauto Quicker and other platforms to create music works for some online celebrity.
Liu Shuiji regards online celebrity as "a popular newcomer who hasn’t made a film". In his view, "traditional music institutions are willing to cooperate with live broadcast platforms like Momo, and to some extent, they also value the economic benefits of online celebrity. It is definitely more cost-effective to package online celebrity as a newcomer than to be a pure amateur".
In fact, the popularity of head anchors like Yifa Chen is very close to the real "stars". On Netease Cloud Music, Yifa Chen’s two singles "Storybrooke" and "Grandma’s Story" both received 999+ comments, and many fans spontaneously produced and edited videos on bilibili.
"From the traffic point of view, Yifa Chen’s traffic is very high, and many first-line singers have been knocked down statistically, but whether they can become mainstream singers is another matter," Liu Shuiji said.
Not only YY, but also no live broadcast company has pushed the anchor to the height of artists, which is the consensus in the industry.
In Liushuiji’s view, from online celebrity to singer, not only the quality and packaging of their works need to be further improved, but also online celebrity needs to get out of the live broadcast circle and gain the attention and recognition of mainstream media audience.
Whether holding a concert or walking the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, it is an attempt by the platform to push online celebrity into the mainstream.
Back to the topic of concert, for the anchor who faces the mobile phone camera every day, this high-profile occasion undoubtedly puts forward higher requirements for the performer in terms of posture, expression management and live performance.
A week before the concert, Mu came to Beijing from Shandong for training. Wood told me that in order to prepare for the concert, the platform invited a music teacher to rearrange the music and coach the anchor. "But I mainly practice on my own," said Mu. The teacher will focus on correcting the wrong actions in one day. He recorded them with video and went home to study repeatedly. He was reluctant to receive professional training for fear of losing his own style, but he also had to admit that the singing method taught by the teacher was "more skillful".
Before this concert, Mu was a talent anchor on a live broadcast, with 500,000 to 600,000 fans. Under normal circumstances, he gets up at 12 noon, has lunch, starts live broadcast until 6 or 7 o’clock, and then continues to broadcast until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning after dinner. Except for eating and sleeping, it is broadcast live because he feels that "his own conditions are not good" and he needs to multicast a little more than others.
He attributed his efforts and the help of the company to getting so many fans in just one year. "Everyone in the company knows who works the hardest, Wood", and he is somewhat proud of this.
Time goes forward, 27-year-old Mu started working at the age of 14, and worked as a waiter in KTV and bars all the way to management. After working for more than ten years, he felt a little tired. Because he liked singing, a friend recommended him to do live broadcast. He quit his job last June and started his anchor career.
The first live broadcast didn’t even have an avatar, and no one took care of it. In August and September, the number of people who came to watch his live broadcast gradually increased. At the end of September, more than 10,000 people came to watch him sing. "There are too many people who type and interact with you to watch."
Before the live broadcast, Wood never thought that he would meet such a group of people who like to listen to his singing. He has a "brother-like" fan. Every time he needs to vote in the activities on the platform, he will send messages to people one by one to canvass votes, and fans will call him the boss. They also set up a group without wood to discuss how to organize aid activities. "I want to sing all the time" requires users to vote in the sea election stage. Wood’s fan "Rabbit Army" can pull several people to vote. On the first day, Wood won more than 10,000 votes, ranking second. Later, he felt that it was troublesome and would not let fans vote again.
As for how long this love can last, the idea of wood is simple. He feels that the live broadcast circle is like a shrinking entertainment circle. "If you are an anchor full of positive energy, people will always like you. If you have a lot of negative energy, it will definitely not work soon."
What many people don’t know is that this "big boy who can sing" in the eyes of fans was tone-deaf when he was a child. Once in a choir, the teacher told Wood, "Your voice is not good at all." After that, he began to practice constantly. Sometimes, he can’t speak until the next day, even so, he still turns his voice to the maximum practice in the KTV room.
The live broadcast platform gave him the opportunity to sing to more people, and now it also gave him the opportunity to go to a bigger stage. Before that, Mu also participated in another contest "Hey Sing Not NG" broadcast live, and the reward was to help the winner complete a single. Wood didn’t make the top three that time, but he said the company promised to help him produce a single.
"There will be a special producer to write songs for me, and this place will soon become a place where people can realize their dreams." Wood’s eyes sparkled.
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