In a red ocean market with no resource advantages, how did NetEase Cloud Music achieve 300 million users?

In a situation where music player apps are in a crowded market and resources are limited, how did NetEase Cloud Music capture 300 million users from scratch? The author of this article will explain to you one by one from three aspects: product logic, how to build a community atmosphere, and operation and promotion .

The protagonist of today's story - NetEase Cloud Music, has only been around for four years, but it has been covered with many dazzling labels: more than 300 million users, valuation of 8 billion yuan, the most popular app, the music player with the fastest growing market share, etc.

If you ask its users why they like NetEase Cloud Music, I believe everyone has their own opinions, such as: accurate song recommendations, attractive comments, rich playlists, language style suitable for young people, etc.

But what kind of user and product logic are behind these labels? What are the unknown secrets and details of NetEase Cloud Music?

In a situation where music player apps are in a crowded market and resources are limited, how did NetEase Cloud Music capture 300 million users from scratch?

Here we will explain to you one by one from three aspects: product logic, how to build a community atmosphere, and operation and promotion .

Differentiated positioning: Building a content community around music

In 2013, there were already music software such as QQ and Kugou on the market, and they had already reached a certain scale. Compared with Alibaba and Tencent, NetEase does not have an advantage in financial resources and faces many difficulties in developing music software.

But at that time, the music library priority and recommendations of apps such as QQ Music and Kugou were completely arranged according to popularity, which meant that a large amount of music could not be consumed by users. And listening to music is like eating, different people have different tastes.

Another trend in 2013 was the rise of the social software era, with Weibo, Momo, WeChat and others becoming popular.

In this context, NetEase Cloud Music, which focuses on music social networking, came into being and created three core gameplays: personalized recommendations, UCG playlists, comments and dynamics.

Personalized recommendations

Without the advantage of music library resources, let more people hear the existing music.

Source: Sutu Research Institute: 2016 Q2 Mobile Music Market Report

NetEase Cloud Music recommends songs that users like based on their listening habits through algorithms, so as to provide personalized recommendations for each user. The more songs a user listens to, the more accurate the algorithm can make recommendations. In this way, as the number of platform users increases, a virtuous circle is formed.

But this also has disadvantages. The same type of songs will cause aesthetic fatigue in the long run and it will be difficult to maintain excitement. If users want to change their taste, they need to take the initiative to adjust. What's more, listening to music is very dependent on the context. The styles of music listened to while working, before going to bed, and while exercising may be different, and it is difficult for the algorithm to judge based on the context. If we could add a playlist recommendation function that automatically switches scenes, perhaps the experience would be better.

Algorithmic recommendation of content is inseparable from the general trend of technological development. Toutiao , which was launched at the same time, uses algorithms to recommend news and information, and the results achieved are very significant, which is subversive to the competition of traditional content distribution.

Thanks to personalized recommendations, NetEase Cloud Music has made full use of its music library. Many users have heard niche songs they have never heard of before from Cloud Music, fallen in love with these songs, and become members of the Cloud Village.

On one hand, it relies on algorithm recommendations to make full use of music, and on the other hand, it relies on mobilizing users' power to create playlists to establish connections between users.

UGC Playlist

Communities need users to create content. Music social networking is based on music, but music creation has a certain threshold and cannot allow all users to participate. But choosing music is something that every listener can do, that is, creating a playlist.

NetEase Cloud Music will be classified by language, style, scene, emotion, and theme to meet the listening needs of different hobbies and scenarios. When assembling a playlist, users can choose categories, pick titles , upload covers, etc., which meets the user's personalized needs. The playlist is recommended to more users, unpopular music is brought out for consumption, and more possibilities are created by utilizing limited music.

Other people's behavior of listening to, collecting, and commenting on playlists will serve as a reminder to the creator of the playlist. When you see strangers listening to the same song as you and expressing their love for the music you like through comments, I believe you will be touched and become more motivated to create playlists. This can also promote the increase in the number of playlists, and the number of high-quality playlists discovered will also increase accordingly.

Currently, NetEase Cloud Music has more than 400 million playlists. Its representative playlist "Epic Music That Shocks the Soul" has been played more than 31 million times and shared more than 30,000 times, achieving the effect of free promotion .

Comment

Listening to music is a way to express emotions. NetEase Cloud Music uses comments to capture users' emotional needs and uses mechanisms such as quick presentation and low-threshold entry conditions to guide user participation as much as possible.

The functions of liking comments and pinning selected comments also satisfy users' desire to be recognized to a certain extent, while also satisfying their vanity.

At present, the number of comments on Cloud Music exceeds 400 million, with an average of 1.5 million music reviews generated every day. The single with the highest number of comments is Jay Chou's "Sunny Day", which has more than 1.34 million comments. These comments have a great influence on users' listening to songs, and it has become a trend among netizens to read comments while listening to songs. At the end of March this year, the music review car on the Hangzhou subway went viral on social networks . The core of this was that these UGC comments resonated with everyone. This shows that NetEase Cloud Music has created a very good atmosphere and can produce excellent content.

dynamic

When you open the app, you can see the dynamic function in the first-level menu. It is like a music version of "Weibo". When users post, they must select a song and then share their opinions in the form of pictures and texts. Last year, the option of short videos was added.

Posting updates is a great way to build connections between musicians and their fans. It is the need of every fan to follow their favorite musicians and learn about their lives, creations and other updates, and the dynamic function meets this requirement. At the same time, musicians will be encouraged to keep creating when they see messages and interactions from fans every day.

The formation of a social circle may be due to relationships such as work, region, blood relationship, interest, etc. Only when people in a circle communicate with each other can they have topics to talk about, which is also conducive to the production of better quality content. The playlists and single recommendations of Cloud Music bring together different people based on their interests. People who comment and those who read the comments can naturally resonate more and pay attention to those who are interested.

However, this positive atmosphere is not so easy to establish. It requires reasonable rule-making and reasonable operational guidance.

How to create a community atmosphere?

There is a saying among NetEase Cloud Music users: "Listen to the song and read the comments." A large number of carefully selected comments are touching. In order to create such an atmosphere, NetEase Cloud Music did a lot of operations in the early days.

Invite high-quality users early

Before Cloud Music went online, all NetEase employees were required to download and install it, upload real-life profile pictures, and each person was required to download 500 songs. So far, we can see that all NetEase products have registered accounts on Cloud Music, especially NetEase CEO Ding Lei , who has more than 100,000 fans.

At the same time, we invite senior experts, independent musicians, music critics, etc. in the industry.

NetEase Cloud Music once spent a month traveling to famous live houses in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu , Lijiang and other places, collaborating with niche musicians, for example, launching Cloud Music exclusive singles or albums, and holding Cloud Music-sponsored concert tours.

When the Good Sister Band was not yet well-known, NetEase Cloud Music recommended its new album in Cloud Village, invited Good Sister to appear on Cloud Music's video program "Super Face to Face", carried out large-scale publicity in the university circle, and held the "Good Sister Talk Show" at Peking University.

These measures have attracted a group of real users and laid the foundation for the formation of a community atmosphere.

Value user feedback

The difficulty of contacting customer service to solve problems has always been criticized in China. From the initial three major operators to various Internet products, the problem of customer service being unable to be contacted and unable to solve practical problems has always existed, which has caused great damage to the user experience . NetEase Cloud Music responds positively to user feedback, which creates a good impression among users.

Although this operational capability seems simple, it actually tests a company's capabilities. Once the number of user inquiries increases, the response speed will slow down, but the number of customer service staff cannot increase without control. How to allocate rules and use limited resources to ensure execution is a test of the team's capabilities.

In the Cloud Music App, in addition to the Cloud Music customer service, there are also accounts for various development teams. When users have questions and need feedback, they can choose the corresponding development team for consultation. This effectively improves communication efficiency and reduces the pressure on the company's customer service department accordingly.

Official creation of high-quality content

NetEase Cloud Music also enhances user stickiness through PGC content, such as inviting singers and independent musicians to record "Post-Music Live", "Super Face to Face", "NetEase Celebrity Reception Room", and interviewing the stories behind musicians. In terms of comment operations, we create more connections for users by continuously updating the hot comments of the week.

Differentiated user promotion strategy

People who have used music software since the traditional Internet era have already formed a certain brand loyalty to competing products. When NetEase Cloud Music was launched, it chose young people as the main promotion target. Some of the young people are students, and some are ordinary office workers.

Interesting and fun are the labels of young people, they don’t like to be too serious. Whether it is the copywriting in the product or the gameplay of the activities, NetEase Cloud Music's "attitude" also caters to this point very well.

1. Campus promotion

NetEase Cloud Music has been organizing campus singing competitions in universities since 2014, and it has quickly become popular among college students through interesting and innovative interactive forms. According to NetEase Technology, 30,000 people participated in the ticket-grabbing event for the finals of the first Campus Singer Competition, and mobilized nearly 100,000 friends to help grab tickets and compete for 4,000 scarce audience seats.

In the third competition in 2016, the auditions were conducted entirely through online voting, with the gimmick of a million-dollar grand prize attracting user participation. Every vote cast by netizens will get one free chance to draw a lottery, with prizes including Huawei P9, Edifier speakers, etc. This is very attractive to college students.

In terms of promotion, we also make full use of student resources, using internship opportunities, employment certificates, funding and other benefits to attract students to serve as campus ambassadors and promote the competition on campus.

In order to attract contestants to sign up, in addition to the regular bonuses, the winning contestants will also have the opportunity to be exposed to the official resources of the NetEase Cloud Music platform, promote official albums, study and work with well-known artist mentors, and even have the opportunity to sign with a record company.

Of course, there are certain restrictions on players. As can be seen from the restrictions, another important purpose of holding a singing competition is to obtain more original music and singer resources.

Restrictions for contestants in the 3rd NetEase Cloud Music National Campus Singer Competition.

In order to further expand its influence, it also launched a Chinese campus music activities support plan to select excellent music festival planning proposals , provide them with sponsorship funds to help them implement them, and select the best proposal through online voting. The first place will be sponsored with 50,000 yuan, the second place will be sponsored with 40,000 yuan, the 3rd to 5th place will be sponsored with 20,000 yuan, and the 8th to 10th place will be sponsored with 10,000 yuan. The program attracted students from 31 universities to submit proposals.

NetEase Cloud Music is also holding Cloud Music Campus Open Day events in colleges and universities, allowing musicians to interact with fans, and attracting user participation by allowing users to grab free tickets within the App.

2. Creative marketing for ordinary office workers

(1) At the end of March this year, NetEase Cloud Music booked the carriages of Hangzhou Metro Line 1 and Jiangling Road Metro Station, and relied on 85 UGC music reviews to spread the power of music, which quickly became popular in the circle of friends . The reading volume of related articles pushed by NetEase Cloud Music ’s official account has reached over 80,000, and other headline articles usually have about 10,000 to 20,000 reading volumes.

(2) In July 2014, NetEase Cloud Music set up a “Music Gas Station” booth at a Hangzhou subway station with the slogan “Cheer up office workers with music”. It provided 100 iPods equipped with the NetEase Cloud Music App for free to passers -by . No registration was required, but the users had to promise to return them to a designated location after work. All 100 units were taken away in less than 20 minutes. Such creative activities attracted a lot of media attention and coverage.

(3) Cooperate with Uber. Enter the NetEase Cloud Music activity page through the mobile client and invite friends to download NetEase Cloud Music to receive cash coupons for Uber taxi app. Invite 1 new user to get a 30 yuan coupon, invite 3 new users to get a 50 yuan coupon, invite 5 new users to get a 80 yuan coupon.

4. Collaborate with Metersbonwe to create a creative product - personalized underwear with song themes. Ten pairs of personalized underwear printed with the NetEase Cloud Music logo and QR code and themed after songs such as "Little Apple", "Very Cool", and "Tentative" were displayed by male and female models in offline physical stores. Users only need to scan the QR code on the underwear with their mobile phone to connect to NetEase Cloud Music and play the corresponding music tracks.

Summarize

NetEase Cloud Music is NetEase's main project, with the strong support of its big boss Ding Lei behind it. It can allocate resources and execute efficiently more quickly, which is also a factor in its success that cannot be ignored.

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The author of this article @瓦尔力 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map