LeTV Music CEO: Create an ecosystem around meeting users 'music needs and providing services for scenes

If live broadcasts became popular in the second half of last year, live broadcasts of concerts were even earlier. In August 2014, LeTV Music broadcast the Wang Feng Bird's Nest concert live. At that time, more than 75000 people paid to watch it. Based on the live broadcast payment of 30 yuan per person, LeTV Music earned a revenue of 2.25 million yuan.

Original title: Le Music CEO Yin Liang: We are not consuming. After Li Yuchun

provided a live broadcast of Li Yuchun's concert last year, LeTV Music tasted the sweetness. They saw the huge traffic brought by Li Yuchun.

"When her concert was live in Chengdu, the number of people watching it online reached 4.98 million." Le Music CEO Yin Liang said. After realizing the effect of Li Yuchun as a powerful traffic portal, LeTV Music won the right to host Li Yuchun's concert in 2016, and together with Li Yuchun's studio Yellow Stone and Yongle Ticketing, it undertook the planning, sales, live broadcast and other services of this year's concert.

"We are not consuming Li Yuchun live broadcast of Li Yuchun's concert. We want to use our platform, resources and capabilities to add more value to her." During the interview, Le Music CEO Yin Liang told reporters.

In Yin Liang's view, with the gradual decline of the traditional music industry, if you want to provide listeners with new value experiences, you must rely on the power of the Internet. As a new form of Internet technology development, live broadcasting has great potential. It is for this reason that live concerts have become increasingly important in LeTV's music layout.

Since 2012, LeTV Music has begun to use small live broadcasts to hone its team and technology. When live broadcast technology further matured in 2014, LeTV began to broadcast live concerts by Yu Quan, Li Zhi, Legend of Phoenix, Wang Feng and others. This allowed LeTV to further confirm the feasibility of the live concert model.

In fact, with the continuous development of the music industry in recent years, concerts by singers like Wang Feng who have a large number of fans and audiences have become more and more popular. In addition to competing for offline concert hosting rights and ticketing, with the maturity of Internet live broadcast technology, the online copyright of concerts has also been increasingly valued by major companies.

In June, Faye Wong's agent announced that Faye Wong would hold a solo concert at the end of 2016, which attracted great attention from fans and the industry. Although there is news that the most expensive concert ticket is as high as 13888 yuan, the cheapest is 3000 yuan. However, fans still do not diminish their enthusiasm for support, and major companies in the industry have also offered high prices to buy the copyright to Faye Wong's concert.

On June 21, LeTV Music announced that it would cooperate with Li Yuchun and would have the rights to live online broadcasts of its 2016 "Growth Barbaric" concert tour. As a super idol, Li Yuchun's concerts have always been hard to get a ticket, and they have even sold out 69 seconds after billing. This live broadcast of Li Yuchun's concert not only means huge commercial returns for LeTV Music, but also a good opportunity to promote itself.

In addition to frequent actions in the concert field, LeTV Music's business has expanded to foreign artists and music festivals. LeTV Music achieved an average of one day of concerts every day in 2015, and in 2016, it has also broadcast more than 200 performances live. But LeTV Music is not satisfied. LeTV Music's ultimate goal, as Yin Liang said, is to "use the Internet to change the music industry chain."

Reporter: When did LeTV Music start working with Li Yuchun? How does the cooperation process work out?

Yin Liang: Last year's live broadcast of Li Yuchun's 10th anniversary concert in Chengdu was the first time we cooperated with Li Yuchun. However, in fact, when Li Yuchun's "Why Me" concert in Dalian in 2014, I went to the scene to observe it, and then communicated and discussed the possibilities of cooperation.

In the process of cooperation, everyone is working seriously and cooperating with each other. Last year's live broadcast of Li Yuchun's 10th anniversary concert of "Why Me", everyone gave a zero-difference review. For zero-negative reviews, LeTV Music has made great efforts. There are too many things that no longer cooperate in this industry after making money. Artists at Li Yuchun's level are not looking at the money, but at who is seriously doing things that are helpful to the industry.

Artists need to continue to maintain their brands and values. We are not consuming Li Yuchun. We want to use our platform, resources and capabilities to add more value to her. Including the free live broadcast of the 10th anniversary concert of last year's "Why Me", which was the result of discussions between Li Yuchun and us. We have always been able to cooperate, that is, achieve unity in all aspects.

Reporter: Why did you choose to cooperate with Li Yuchun?

Yin Liang: The most important point for LeTV Music in selecting artists is to see which artist is more suitable for this model. Secondly, it depends on the smoothness of communication between the two parties. The third point is to have a suitable operation plan and unified cooperation demands. Working with Li Yuchun, I feel very smooth and natural.

In 2015, we performed 367 concerts in more than 20 countries and regions around the world, with an average of one concert per day. The atmosphere covers classical, rock, jazz and major music festivals, with collaborators including Beyonce, Lincoln Park, and Fruit Sister. So far this year, we have broadcast more than 200 performances live, and on the weekend of June 19 alone, we broadcast 20 performances live.

Reporter: In the music industry, what do you think of live concerts? Why does LeTV do live concerts?

Yin Liang: Our live broadcast of the 2014 Wang Feng Bird's Nest concert brought a big shock to the music industry. Because the music industry is still relatively traditional, some people worry that live broadcasts will dilute the traditional box office and have a negative impact on artists. Because performing is a relatively high-risk and prone to flaws. For artists like Wang Feng, live concerts are more cautious, they will see what is the safest way to do, and they will consider who to cooperate with.

Overall, everyone's understanding of live broadcasting has not yet reached a relatively mature stage. The live broadcast or concert itself is not perfect. What people consume is not a perfect and seamless performance, but a real relationship with it, which is the core of the audience's needs.

At present, I feel that global Internet music services have entered a misunderstanding, and many things are centered around copyright. But in fact, users 'needs for music are all-round, so we must innovate. However, under the industrialized division of labor in the West, it is difficult to produce collaborative relationships and innovation. Without innovation, there will be no new services. China has not formed such a large giant or monopoly, so we have room for this kind of vertical integration.

The Wang Feng Bird's Nest concert in August 2014 was our first paid live broadcast. The purpose of the charge at that time was to tell everyone that it was valuable when the waiter came out. It was not a repetition of audio streaming content, but was inherently free. As for how to build the value later, a more systematic consideration is needed.

We started doing concerts in 2012, and after Wang Feng and Deng Ziqi, we started doing member services. Because each concert requires users to pay separately, not only is the experience extremely poor, but it is also not a good thing for users to expand. Because this is a brand new service in itself and is still in the popularization stage. There is a need, but you need to let more people know that there is such a service.

Reporter: What is the effect of members paying to watch the concert? How is the price of a live concert set?

Yin Liang: At present, the effect of membership fees is very good. More than 75000 people paid to watch the live broadcast like Wang Feng. The price set at that time was 30 yuan for a single performance. It is cheap compared to hundreds of tickets for offline performances, and very expensive compared to Internet content consumption. Because the membership fee for a video website only costs tens of yuan a month, now a concert costs 30 yuan.

At that time, LeTV's movie that had just been rolled off the production line on demand cost 5 yuan each. I felt that a concert was definitely worth more than a movie. In fact, I wanted to book around 100 yuan at first, but later I thought 50 yuan would be suitable. But in the end, considering that the original intention of doing this is not to make much money, but to shape the sense of value of this service. I think 30 yuan is appropriate. Collecting millions more and opening a new door for this industry are two completely different meanings.

At present, the general direction of the video industry is moving in the direction of content charging, but the sense of value of content charging has not yet been formed. Many people pay just to avoid advertising and spend money to improve the experience. But the entire Internet environment in China has begun to move from the stage of simply robbing users to the stage of paying attention to users 'RP values, that is, to pay attention to how much value users can contribute to you.

Reporter: In your opinion, what is the significance of live concerts for the audience?

Yin Liang: LeTV started out as video. For example, the Wang Feng Bird's Nest concert, we used a 4K machine to shoot the entire time. The 4K code rate is something that TV stations have never done before. On live broadcasts of foreign performances, most of them also transmit ready-made signals.

During the live concert, we will also find other teams to shoot, but we must collect pictures and sounds according to our standards. The live broadcast results using our standards are better than some foreign live broadcasts. In a concert, it doesn't matter even if the picture is a little worse. The sound is the most important thing.

Since Li Yuchun's "Why Me" concert last year, we have also started to do live VR broadcasts. LeTV will shoot live broadcasts for every concert. VR live broadcasts are completely different from before in terms of coding and transmission.

When we do live concerts, we don't tell users that they don't need to go to the music scene, but to provide users with a new lifestyle. When users are still able to experience the charm of music even when time or conditions are not allowed. And when more and more people come into contact with the music scene, the offline music market will definitely get better.

Reporter: How do you view the concept of "ecology"?

Yin Liang: The "eco-ticket" we got for Li Yuchun's concert this time means that you can also enjoy other LeTV services while buying tickets through LeTV. My ultimate goal in the future is free tickets. If you become a member of LeTV Music, you can choose from ten or twenty offline performances every year for free. But the core is to have new business models and new revenue capabilities, rather than simply realizing commercial profits from the perspective of ticket prices.

As music workers, at this stage, we want to let the audience be more exposed to the scene of music consumption and services, and content services are out. Music content has entered the era of Internet ecology. It undertakes more of the function of user portal. The core monetization model is how you build your own service system around users 'consumption scenarios and users' consumption patterns of music.

With user portals and service systems, monetization around users is diverse, including users 'travel, consumption, etc. But now no one in the industry is willing to do these things. They only focus on selling tickets. Artists continue to raise prices, and tickets continue to increase prices. In the end, the burden falls on fans. If movie consumption has been increasing prices, I don't think the movie market can reach its size today.

Limiting music consumption to content is a low-level business thinking because it only meets the needs of the most loyal fans. But the investment and consumption of music must be popular and must be implanted into more people's lives. Everyone needs movies as a lifestyle now, and music should also become a lifestyle. To move from the fan economy to the mass economy, just being a fan economy is not a healthy business model.

Reporter: What does LeTV Music think of several other music companies? What are the benefits of vertical integration model for the development of the music industry?

Yin Liang: In my opinion, everyone is moving in a more positive and better direction. The division of labor in the Western industrial era is no longer applicable in the Internet ecological era because it cannot generate new values and new services. So Modern Sky began to transform, from signing artists to produce records to creating its own music festival IP to diversify itself.

Diversification is actually a process of vertical integration. What several companies did in the past are now done by themselves, and then a positive cycle is created. For example, Modern Sky can combine artist management with music festivals to create higher value while reducing costs. He can put his energy and cost into other areas to do better. This is a positive cycle.

Take LeTV for example, LeTV is a standard case of vertical integration of the industrial chain, that is, artists, artist agencies, performance IP, Internet ecosystem, performance operations and ticketing, all of which are integrated into a community of interests. Therefore, why we and the three Yongle families hosted Li Yuchun's concert is to break down the barriers of traditional mutual calculations, integrate resources, and design a brand new performance model.

All in all, LeEco Music has chosen a completely different path from the current mainstream competition field of Internet music. It is to build a LeEco Music ecosystem around the satisfaction of users 'music needs and the services of users' music consumption scenarios. The means are vertical integration of the industrial chain and Internet applications are collaborative responses with LeEco's ecosystem, bringing new experiences and new values to users, thereby changing the industrial chain.

Editor: yvette