A few days ago, the official website of the State Copyright Administration announced that Tencent Music and Netease Cloud Music reached agreement on copyright cooperation in online music, each of which authorized more than 99% of the number of exclusive music works and agreed on long-term cooperation in music copyright, Other online music platform open music license.


Listen to music in this matter, users no longer have to download Netease cloud music or QQ music tangled. This also means that the copyright barriers erected by various domestic online music platforms quietly disappear, and the industry has started to enter the post-copyright era.


To "copyright war" drop fire


"This indicates that the music copyright trading behavior will be healthy, orderly and rational direction." 12, iResearch analyst Xiong Hui told reporters in the science and technology daily said that in recent years, China's music copyright environment gradually optimized. In 2015, SIPO released the Notice on Commanding Internet Music Service Providers to Stop Unauthorized Transmission of Music Works, requiring all music platforms to remove unauthorized works and speeding up the process of authenticating online music in China.


What followed was that copyright became the focus of competition. From 2015 till now, a number of online music platforms such as Ali Shimizu, Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music have invested heavily in music from Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and other music production companies.


In 2017, as Netease cloud music broadcasts the exclusive copyright music of Tencent music to the public without permission, Tencent has sued NetEase cloud music twice.


Hard to shake the stock market


From "Difficult Things in Water and Fire" to "Handshaking and Peaceful", although the policy-level dispute over copyright promotion has a great influence on the platform, Xiong Hui believes that "its impact is limited."


"This mutual authorization is difficult to achieve substantial increase or decrease in the number of users." Xiong Hui said that at present the total amount of mobile Internet users is increasingly stable, the number of mobile music users slowed down, the demographic dividend is gone. In addition, many users are users of multiple platforms at the same time, and user habits have taken shape.


According to the "White Paper 2017 on China's Digital Music User Behavior Insight" released by Analysys 2017, the number of mobile music users in China is around 500 million and the number of daily active users is 100 million. From January to September last year, the number of daily active users increased by 21 million with a moderate increase.


"This is determined by the current industrial environment and development background." Xiong Hui believes that the operation of stock subscribers and the development of incremental subscribers will be the major issues facing online music platforms. This requires, on the one hand, to continue to maintain the existing resources and users, on the other hand will be extended to the digital music offline industry, to expand new channels.


Explore multi-channel profit model


"How online music is profitable is still the challenge that domestic and foreign platforms will face." Xiong Hui said that at present most platforms are still not profitable. Taking Spotify, the largest streaming media platform abroad, for example, the user payment habits have been formed and the user base is large enough, but it is still difficult to achieve profitability.


"User payment is divided into or become a major profit model." According to Xiong Hui, in recent years China's digital music payment habits are gradually emerging. Digital music consumers are willing to pay for high-quality music and are keen on music socialization.


IResearch released in 2018, "China's digital music consumer research report" shows that in 2012 China's digital music users paid revenue of 120 million yuan last year, digital music users pay income increased to 3.19 billion yuan.


Xiong Hui introduced by the content pay Dongfeng, China's commercialization of digital music gradually improved. At present, paid products mainly include music streaming packages, digital albums or singles, online and offline concerts, live-play awards and virtual gifts, among which digital albums have become the major growth points.