Serving 24 film and television organizations in 7 years, Ruide Media uses "copyright +" to seize the 100 billion IP market

At present, major media outlets are starting to compete for copyright, especially for exclusive licenses of large IPs. The copyright field has undoubtedly become a new round of favorite sought after by capital.

more than 2 million pieces of audio and video data were catalogued;

copyright information of more than 400,000 programs was collected, recorded and reviewed;

millions of music bill data were sorted out;

... In

seven years, this company The company that calls itself a "copyright steward" has served more than one-third of domestic TV stations.

The copyright business generated by "chatting"

The copyright business of Ruide Media came from a coincidence.

He has published poetry poems and participated in film and television production. Although Shi Zhu, the founder of Reid Media, was born in finance, he can also be regarded as half an "insider" in the cultural and creative world. While chatting with friends, Shi Zhu received a message that "the media is going to build a media database."

The speaker is unintentional, the listener is intentional. Shi Zhu pondered, this is a new matter and a promising one."Copyright management may be a direction." In 2009, Shizhu, who had not yet figured out how to do it, established a company and started recruiting people, insisting on "doing it if there is business".

The company is in place, and the people are here. However, Shi Zhu, who wanted to do something big, found that things were not as simple as he thought."This business is a bit ahead of schedule." Wang Qi, vice chairman and president of Ruide Media, told reporters,"In 2009, there was no company specializing in film and television copyright management in China, and Ruide Media was the first one."

In 2009, domestic copyright awareness had just emerged. At the beginning of the year, Excit.com teamed up with more than 80 copyright parties including Poly Bona, Orange Sky Entertainment, and Shanghai Film Emperor to jointly form an "Anti-Piracy Alliance." On March 2, 2009, the copyright registration system of China Copyright Protection Center was officially launched.

The market environment is still in the incubation stage, and Shizhu's business can only wait. However, what Shi Zhu didn't expect was that Reid Media's first order was one year.

In 2010, Ruide Media signed a contract with the Central People's Radio for in-depth cataloging of audio data and copyright information management service project to carry out a series of tasks such as collecting, sorting, digitization, copyright cleanup, and rights confirmation of audio data on the radio program "small speakers". Ruide Media officially started work.

"At the beginning, there was no salary, but I managed the food." Although Ruide Media now has 10 teams and more than 300 employees, there were less than 20 people at the time. Everyone lived in a collective dormitory together, studied and trained, and did not get a monthly salary of 500 yuan until they received the first order from CCTV.

Copyright +, adding more than 20 customers.

"When copyright was first created, no one knew what copyright was about. When talking to people about copyright management, people often said,'We don't need it. We also promoted them. How can they sue us.'" "Weak copyright awareness in the industry" was the most troublesome issue for Shizhu in the first few years of its business.

It was in 2014 that Ruide Media really "ran".

This year, CCTV, CCTV Media, Hunan TV, Hubei TV, Shandong TV... Ruide Media has successively reached cooperation with six radio and television organizations. The following year, in 2015, Ruide Media took advantage of its victory and pursued several heavyweight customers such as West Film Group and SMG.

Wang Qi attributed the company's rapid growth in recent years to "the continuous strengthening of copyright awareness in the industry."

In 2014, the "Jianwang 2014" special operation closed 750 infringing websites and investigated 440 typical cases of online infringement and piracy such as "Shooter" and "Yidian Information Network". On the one hand, infringement cases are severely punished; on the other hand, people's awareness of copyright continues to increase, and copyright management has gradually begun to be put on the agenda of major media and Internet platforms.

Wang Qi, who has more than ten years of experience working in television stations, pointedly pointed out the nature of competition in the film and television industry. "From the competition between programs, to the competition between channels, and now to the competition between media in the new media stage, it is actually the competition between copyright libraries and copyright libraries." Wang Qi believes that the sooner the platform begins to pay attention to the management of copyright libraries, the stronger it will be competitive in the same industry.

The "two carriages" of "industry demand" and "Internet +" are driving Ruide Media's copyright business to become better and better. Not only is it getting better and better, but Reid Media's business scope is also getting wider and wider.

"At the beginning, we only did copyright management, digitizing and labeling media resources. As we do it, we find that many customers have other needs, such as 'Can you do tape cleanup' and 'Can you build a trading platform?'" Wang Qi felt that this was an opportunity. Ruide Media could also do "copyright +" to open up the upstream and downstream industry chains of copyright management.

Tape cleaning, digitalization of media assets, cataloging, copyright description, copyright information management, copyright monitoring, copyright trading, evidence collection and rights protection, Short Video production... Ruide Media's "+" has added big business opportunities.

Wang Qi told reporters that Ruide Media has served more than 1/3 of domestic TV stations. So far, Ruide Media has served a total of 18 radio and television organizations, 5 new media groups, and 1 film and television production company.

Pay attention to "small B and big C" and build a copyright trading platform

2015 was a turning point for Ruide Media.

This year, Ruide Media no longer sought "stability" and began to seek "change".

The first change was that there was a personnel change in Ruide Media's leadership, and Shi Zhu found a "helper" for Ruide Media.

According to Shi Zhu, at a critical period of corporate development, Ruide Media needs a better manager to coordinate management and the market, while also allocating internal project relationships and R & D work. However, this person is not easy to find: first, he must understand the law; second, he must be familiar with the media, especially the media management process.

"Isn't this the royal flag?" Shi Zhu thought of his childhood friend who grew up with him. He had been a teacher and lawyer at China University of Political Science and Law, and had been working on Beijing TV for more than ten years. Shi Zhu believes that this position belongs to Wang Qi.

Mobilized by his friends, Wang Qi bid farewell to Beijing TV in 2015 and began to advise Shizhu's copyright business.

Another change is that Ruide Media has begun to plan to build an online platform for copyright transactions. Ruide Media will transform from a service-oriented company to a platform-oriented company.

At that time, the IP market dividends continued to rise, and Ruide Media's copyright business was getting better and better. In 2014 and 2015, Ruide Media achieved revenue of 46.6148 million yuan and 84.4584 million yuan respectively.

However, the continued growth in performance did not make Shizhu and Wang Qi happy for too long. Wang Qi told reporters: "Copyright management is a very segmented and vertical industry. Although performance is maintaining stable growth now, it is not optimistic to achieve explosive growth."

Ruide Media's customers are relatively single and fixed, mainly "big B" such as TV stations, radio stations, and large media groups. To ensure the company's long-term development, Ruide Media must tap new potential customers.

How to break through this "bottleneck"? Wang Qi set his goal on "small B and big C".

"Small B" refers to a large number of film and television companies that have emerged with the marketization of film and television; Big C refers to individuals such as famous writers and musicians who have accumulated a large number of copyright rights.

Wang Qi believes that "small B and big C" have no less demand for copyright management than TV stations and radio stations. Film and television companies authorize movies and TV series to video websites such as iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent to broadcast, which requires copyright monitoring and rights protection services; the works accumulated by some large copyright rights holders over the years are no less than the assets of a company, and also require specialized management.

Wang Qi told reporters that Ruide Media's customers are changing."It turns out that we are serving large institutions, and gradually we are moving towards market-oriented small and medium-sized institutions or rights individuals."

In addition, Ruide Media's identity is also changing. In addition to providing copyright management, monitoring and other services, it also provides copyright authorization, agency, and transaction services. The "copyright steward" is transforming into a "copyright broker".

In order to realize this change in identity, Ruide Media decided to build an online copyright trading platform, which is currently in the research and development stage and is expected to be officially launched by the end of the year.

"Copyright Butler" welcomes capital heat

Ruide Media, as the "first person to eat crabs" in copyright management in China, has a first-mover advantage in seizing traditional media customers. However, more and more people entering the game have given Ruide Media the first-mover advantage is no longer.

There are Monegraph, Colu, Blockkai, and SingularDTV abroad, and entrepreneurial teams such as Rights Rider, Edition Technology, Zhigui, Yuanyuan, and Yishu have also emerged in China.

On the one hand, video websites led by iQiyi and Youku continue to burn money to join the copyright battle, especially for exclusive licenses for big IPs; on the other hand, there is an undercurrent of "copyright stewards" driven by the copyright war.

2016 is called the first year of IP. This year, Capital has not only focused on copyright competition on large platforms, but has also begun to respond positively to the "copyright stewards" behind it.

On August 26, 2016, Fanying Technology received tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing from Cheng Congwu, founder of Gaode Map.

As of September 2016, the rights knight, which was established less than a year ago, has received two ten-million yuan financings.

The "latecomer" Zhigui Copyright, which was established in 2016, completed the Angel Round and Pre-A Round of Financing in just half a year.

The copyright field has undoubtedly become a new round of darling sought after by capital.

At the beginning of 2016, Ruide Media received the first round of investment from Lihe Qingyuan and Tianxiang Holding Investment, and completed the share reform in March. On August 10, Ruide Media listed the new third board, taking the lead in entering the capital market with the unicorn attitude of "the first share in film and television copyright management".

With one hand,"copyright +" opens up the upstream and downstream copyright industry chain; with the other hand,"small B and big C", builds a copyright trading platform. Can Ruide Media, which holds two magic weapons, regain the favor of capital in the new round of copyright wars? We will wait and see.

Editor: Mary