NetEase Cloud Music Product Analysis: The Product Logic Behind the Drastic Increase in Data
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NetEase Cloud Music was launched in April 2013, and within two years had over 100 million users. As of June 2016, the number of users had exceeded 200 million. Before It took six years for Kugou Music Client to reach 75 million users from its launch. It took four years for the Tiantian Dongting client to reach 70 million users from its launch; It took only 2 years from the launch of NetEase Cloud Music client to the number of users exceeding 100 million! Such achievements have been called the dark horse of mobile Internet by many people. This article attempts to analyze it from the following aspects: 1. Product Function Architecture 2. User Experience 3. Business Model 4. Tactical Execution 5. Profit 6. Statistical Data Analysis 7. Recommendations 8. Summary Product Architecture Music discovery: satisfying users’ needs for music discovery in multiple dimensions (1) Personalized recommendations: based on private FM, daily song recommendations, cloud music new song charts, recommended playlists, exclusive broadcasts, latest music, recommended MVs, and host radio stations. (2) Playlist: A playlist divided into different dimensions such as language, style, scene, emotion, and theme. (3) Anchor Radio: A platform based on celebrities, musicians, DJs, anchors, and users. (4) Rankings: including official rankings (Rising Songs Ranking, New Songs Ranking, Original Songs Ranking, Hot Songs Ranking, Singers Ranking), global rankings, user rankings, My Music: Convenient user personal music management (1) Download music management: manage music based on songs, singers, and albums. (2) Recent playback history: Manage music based on song/playlist/album/radio station. (3) Singers I follow: Singers I follow and singers that the system guesses you are interested in (4) Playlists I created (5) My favorite playlists Friends: Social sharing function based on friends (1) Provide likes, comments, and reposts for songs, playlists, albums, and radio stations. (2) You can follow friends in your address book, friends on Weibo, celebrities, music experts, and people nearby based on your location. Account: Management of system related settings (1) Personalization settings (2) Message Center (3) Points Mall (4) Purchase of data packages (5) Membership purchase User Experience Please allow me to brag a little bit, NetEase Cloud Music is the best music app I have ever used. Both the interface and the functionality. First of all, the default theme of the entire APP is black and red, which, combined with the frosted glass effect of the iOS system, makes the entire APP look very stylish and classy. Because I personally like this kind of dark theme very much. For example, you can search for Enjoy (a food e-commerce company ) in the Apple Store. This type of design not only conforms to the product's positioning but also satisfies the user's visual enjoyment. Here is a screenshot of the player interface: Almost everyone who talks about NetEase Cloud Music has to talk about the black film design of the playback interface. Combined with the frosted glass effect, it looks both classic and trendy. The speed of the black film is just right, neither fast nor slow, making people feel very smooth and sleek. Class +1. Although the player interface does not support many operations for the currently playing song, it feels just enough and basically satisfies all my music operations, including collection, download, comment, etc. As a product that uses social networking as a major feature, Cloud Music has placed the share button and comment button at the first-level entrance of the current interface. Obviously, this allows users to share and communicate quickly, which is in line with the product's established strategy and design. No matter which interface you are in, whether it is the playback interface or the playlist list, the operations for songs are unified. as follows: Except for the last two function options, the rest of the functions are basically provided in the song playback interface. The advantage of this is that it is easy to cultivate users' operating habits for songs. No matter where you are, the operation is the same, and users will not be provided with too many functions and feel overwhelmed. Let’s take a look at the core of the product, the playlist: Similarly, in order to allow users to get started quickly, the operations of all playlists are the same, whether it is their own playlist or someone else's playlist. It supports collection, comment, forwarding, downloading, etc., and the functions are simple and practical. We can also see the current popularity of the playlist through the numbers under each function option, because users tend to follow the crowd. So many people have already listened to them for me, so I don’t have to work hard to find good songs myself. Popular playlists are more likely to attract users to try them out. Perhaps because the users of Cloud Music are more literary, the cover of each playlist is very particular. Basically, just by looking at the cover, you can know what type of playlist the playlist belongs to and whether it meets your expectations. Friends circle: As a product that uses social interaction as one of its main features, Cloud Music of course cannot do without the "Circle" function. The content here mainly includes people around you, friends you follow, musicians, or songs and playlists recommended by the system. The content of the texts is also different, there are poems, jokes, and expressions of emotions. Compared to WeChat Moments where everyone is selling goods, I prefer this place because it is more pure. The most important thing is that you can really find a lot of people with the same musical tastes here and then discover a lot of music that you have never heard of but think is good. For example, I like Chen Li's songs very much. I listen to all the songs she recommended on WeChat Moments, and I collect at least 80 to 90 percent of them after listening to them. I can't say whether it's because I love her and love her songs too or for other reasons. But none of this matters, as long as you think it sounds good. As I continue to collect like this, my playlists and songs have unknowingly grown larger and larger, and it seems that I will never be able to collect all the good music. Due to space limitations, other details are not listed one by one. Business Model There is no doubt that music is a basic need of human beings. Ten years ago, we would carry various devices with us to listen to music, such as Walkman, MP3, MP4, iPod , non-smartphones, and now the popular smartphones. It can be said that music is naturally suitable for listening on mobile devices. NetEase Cloud Music was launched in April 2013. Prior to that, all music apps existed in the form of a local music player + music library. If users wanted to listen to music, they basically relied on system recommendations (rankings) and searching the music library, which was to directly copy the model of PC music software to the client APP music product. In the era of mobile Internet , how to break through in a mature market with numerous competitors is the first problem that Cloud Music needs to solve. If we continue to make a local music player + music library product, it will inevitably fall into oblivion. Because there are countless products of this type on the market, the number of users alone is something that Cloud Music cannot achieve. Based on the above situation, all online music products have no social attributes, so Cloud Music chose to enter the market from this angle, namely music + social. This is also the first step of the strategy. Of course, entering the market and acquiring users is the first and most important step. Without users, everything that follows is just nonsense. On QQ Music, we can also see many independent musicians who can publish their works on the QQ Music platform. The platform provides a huge user base, allowing their music works to be recognized and spread more quickly. Charging for some songs/albums also brings additional income to independent musicians. Before talking about the following content, we need to first talk about the upstream and downstream music industry chain, which will make it easier for us to analyze the product from a strategic level. China's online music industry has formed a value chain consisting of five levels: (1) Content providers: including music companies that own the copyright, music production companies that have purchased the copyright from record companies, and music individuals (including professional songwriters, music performers, and music lovers) (2) Copyright service provider: a service company responsible for the management of music copyright content. (3) Service providers: major online music platforms, such as QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music (4) Operators : China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom (5) Users & Consumers With a huge user base and excellent content creators, Cloud Music can choose to extend to the upstream of the industry chain, and then connect the upstream and downstream music industry chain and simplify the intermediate links. The fewer the intermediate links, the higher the competitive barriers of the product and the greater the benefits. ▌Tactical Execution Tactics are based on strategy. In the above business model, we have said that Cloud Music must first choose a point to enter the music market, and this point is the first step of the strategy. Let’s take a look at how Cloud Music tactically completes the first step of its strategy. 1. Playlist The foundation of social interaction lies in connection, connecting points with lines and forming surfaces with lines. Stranger social networking is based on content, and content requires space for users to create. That’s the purpose of launching a playlist. Playlists are not only created by users, but also serve as a medium for users to communicate. The playlist is also the core structure of Cloud Music. Different music makes up different playlists, which means there are endless possibilities. When we hear cheerful and exciting music, we will unconsciously shake our legs along. When we hear sad love songs, our emotions may hit rock bottom. This is the powerful charm of music. He can accompany people's emotions and influence their moods. When we want to vent these emotions, words become the carriers of emotions, but where do we carry these words? It is the comment section for each song. If two people have the same taste in music, they may choose the same playlist and listen to the same songs, which will resonate with their emotions and then express their emotions. Listeners will resonate with the playlist creators, and listeners will also resonate with each other, and resonance will lead to interaction. With interaction, there is connection, and with connection, there is the foundation for social interaction. Over the years, the accumulated interactive comments finally exploded at a certain point in time and became the unique highlight of the product. 2. Comments The comment section of NetEase Cloud Music is the most kind-hearted. - Comments from a user How did such a well-intentioned comment section come about? (1) Governing by doing nothing, with a low threshold for commenting. Unless it is sensitive or has been reported frequently, the operation department will intervene. (2) Click “Like”. The posts with the most likes will be automatically pinned to the top. (3) Emotional resonance. In fact, (2) can also be regarded as a form of emotional resonance. (4) The excellent product experience has indeed almost made the complaints disappear. There are more people praising the product. (5) The quality of comment content output is high. I think the operation team has made great efforts behind the scenes to guide community comments towards a path full of kindness and warmth. I believe that many users started using Cloud Music because they heard the songs they wanted to listen to. But gradually I found that I would unconsciously read the comments before listening to the song. like: 【Never read the comments before listening to the song. . otherwise. . I can’t listen to the song properly.] [I always read the comments first every time I come in. . 】 In addition to comments, there are also very good contents in dynamics and Moments, and you will use these features more and more frequently without realizing it. 3. Private FM (system recommended songs) This is thanks to NetEase Cloud Music's recommendation algorithm. Many users have fallen in love with Cloud Music because of this feature. Because it can bring back all the songs that someone (like me) listened to a long time ago. I believe this is also one of the reasons why most users like cloud music. As mentioned before, music is a basic need of human beings. Songs have accompanied us throughout our growth from childhood to adulthood. Although we may have grown tired of a song a long time ago and stopped listening to it, when one day Cloud Music brings out this song for us to listen to again, we are particularly happy and moved. In this situation, music is not just music, it is also our memories and our understanding of our previous life. And at this moment, we have emotions again, and the emotions we express turn into words in the comment section. These words in turn resonate with other users, and this resonance spreads like a virus. Even I, who don't like writing comments or participating in interactions, couldn't help but like and type some words. The powerful private FM function not only improves the user experience, but also makes full use of the music library resources and improves the utilization rate of the music library resources. Why do I say so? The traditional model of music library + search + rankings reduces the ways for users to discover good music. In other words, the songs recommended by the system plus the songs known by the users themselves may not be many. The total number of these more popular songs may only account for a small part of the overall music library resources. The other large part has not yet been discovered and is equivalent to being buried. This fact does indeed bother a large number of people, as they are tired of listening to old songs and cannot find new songs. Cloud Music's system recommendations + playlist UGC + social networking provide users with more ways to discover good music. In other words, those niche and unpopular good music are recommended to users through algorithms. Users directly share songs or add the songs to playlists and then share the playlists, which are continuously dispersed through social networks. The totality of this discovered music probably accounts for a large portion of the music library resources, with only a small portion remaining undiscovered. You never know which song will be added to your playlist, and you may become a die-hard fan of QQ Music. 4. High degree of liberalization This high degree of freedom does not just allow users to make some system settings according to their own preferences. NetEase Cloud Music also handed over the creation of some lyrics content to users, so there was UGC of lyric translation. for example: 5. Respect users and focus on user experience (1) There is no NetEase gift package. NetEase has many products, but you will not see any "gift package" when you download any of its products. Compared with some other big manufacturers, it is already very good. (2) Taking into account the usage scenarios, the currently playing song can be found through the button in the upper right corner of any interface. (3) Customer service and technical support respond quickly, and most user issues can be handled promptly. (4) It was the first APP to provide 320K high-quality music for free, and other manufacturers followed suit. Now the free music you download supports higher sound quality. (5) Others not listed one by one. 6. Support plan for musicians This plan can be seen as an extension of Cloud Music to the upstream of the industry chain, rather than just creating an excellent online music "listening" product. 1. Independent musicians: The support they receive includes exclusive homepages, rapid release of original songs, ranking on playlist charts, precise push notifications to users, and the ability to become a radio host and gain a large number of fans. 2. "Ideal Musician" Support Program: Launched in September 2015, the program selects outstanding ideal musicians through the recruitment of original musicians, the broadcast of contestants' stories, and online voting. The top three winners will receive ideal funds, promotional resources worth 5 million, offline concerts with celebrity guests, and long-term support. How to go further How to go further is a question that every product must consider. When discussing how Cloud Music can go further, we should analyze it from the perspective of the entire music industry. Before that we need to know that the music industry in China is not very profitable, of course, except for those famous singers. This is an industry that appears to be prosperous but is actually quite dilapidated. Because the content produced is getting worse and worse, the content producers are getting poorer and poorer. As content producers become poorer, they will not devote themselves to music creation, and the quality of the content will deteriorate. It seems to have become a vicious cycle. In such a vicious cycle, how do singers make money? Let’s make an analogy: sell a song to consumers like a mobile phone. A mobile phone has production costs. For example, the CPU comes from one manufacturer, the screen comes from another manufacturer, and other hardware comes from different manufacturers. After the mobile phone is assembled into a complete and usable product, it needs to be put on the market, which will also incur promotion costs, etc. When a mobile phone is sold to consumers, the manufacturer has to deduct costs such as promotion and costs of mobile phone parts, and the resulting amount is the profit of the phone. A song also has production costs, such as the lyrics from the lyricist, the music from the composer, the instruments needed to create the song, and a lot of post-production costs and promotion costs, and finally the singer sings the song. If consumers pay to download and listen to this song, the singer's final profit will be the remainder after deducting various fees and costs (which is already very little). Why say if? Because if consumers have no copyright awareness, they will listen to and download pirated music. Then all the participants in the production of this song will not get a penny. This is just a microcosm of the current situation of the music industry, it is not profitable. This is the problem that needs to be solved. Only by allowing these music creators to make money can a virtuous circle be formed, thereby promoting the healthy development of the entire industry. So, instead of asking how to go further, the question is, how can we solve the problem of the music industry not making money? How can music creators make money? No matter which product it is, the one that goes far must be the one that solves the industry’s pain points the fastest and best. Before the Internet became popular, if a singer did not sign a contract with a company, he would have no way to promote his work. However, the emergence of the Internet and the diversification of payment methods have made it possible for singers to promote themselves and their works independently of companies. In order to solve the problem of creators not making money, the following conditions must be met: 1. Sufficient number of users 2. Sufficient brand influence 3. Sufficient payment capacity If there are not many users, it will not be enough to form a strong brand influence, nor will it be enough to accumulate enough paying users. Then everything is nonsense. To sum up, these are also the advantages of Cloud Music. Because the user base of Cloud Music is already quite large and there are many paying users, it has also formed sufficient brand influence in a short period of time. And QQ Music is already on the road to solving this problem, as independent musicians have already earned income through this platform. For example, Chen Li, for example, Li Zhi. Current Profitability 2B: (1) Advertisers pay 2C: (1) Digital album (2) Paid download & listening (3) Data package (4) Members (5) Music derivative products, such as headphones, etc. (6) Direct traffic to its own e-commerce products, such as NetEase Kaola, to generate more purchasing behavior. All the above profits come from online music business. In addition to the profitable online business, Cloud Music is less involved in other businesses such as music performances and concerts. These businesses can also generate more revenue for Cloud Music in the future. ▌Other statistics (2016) Copyright Music Library We can see that QQ Music is still the absolute leader in music copyright, and its music library resources are very rich. Therefore, many users usually install many music apps on their mobile phones to meet different needs. A user may like Cloud Music, but Cloud Music does not have rich copyrights. In order to listen to a favorite song, the user may choose other APPs. At this time, extremely high user stickiness is needed to ensure that the user returns to continue using Cloud Music. Moreover, users all have their own playlists. When they start playing music from the playlist, they certainly don’t want to interrupt the listening process during the music playback, and then switch to other APPs to listen to the songs they want to listen to, and then come back after listening. Users may get annoyed if this series of actions is repeated for a long time. In the end, users may migrate their Cloud Music playlists to other apps and abandon Cloud Music. After all, music software is music software, and it must first satisfy the user's need to listen to music. Listening to music while reading comments is not suitable for all usage scenarios of the Cloud Music APP. Even if many people are interested in the same playlist, it is impossible to satisfy everyone's taste. After all, it is difficult to satisfy everyone. I hope Cloud Music can put more effort into copyright. User coverage Music Download Market Share Music downloading is a relatively traditional service. Most of the services provided in the PC era were music downloads, a typical example being Apple's iTunes. Online listening market share Online listening is what we often hear about recently: streaming media playback. Domestic manufacturers not only provide music downloads but also online listening, and cooperate with operators to launch traffic packages for online music listening. Typical products of streaming media service include Spotify abroad. Digital album market share It has become a trend for digital albums to replace CD records. In the future, CD records will be more like classics and can also be used as collectibles, etc. As mentioned earlier, music is naturally suitable for listening on mobile devices. Today and in the future, as awareness of copyright protection grows, digital albums will become an important source of income for musicians, especially for those lesser-known musicians. In the above picture, QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music ranked first and second respectively. Their results are closely related to the platform resources behind the two products. Taking Jay Chou's "Jay Chou's Bedtime Story" as an example, within 36 hours of its release on QQ Music, it sold more than 1.5 million copies and the sales amount exceeded 30 million yuan. NetEase Cloud Music has also sold over 360,000 copies, with cumulative sales reaching 7.21 million. QQ Music has an overwhelming advantage in digital album sales share. This overwhelming advantage also means that more musicians will choose to cooperate with the QQ Music platform to achieve win-win results, promote each other and form a virtuous circle. After all, the QQ Music platform has a huge user base, and using the 80/20 rule to calculate, it will also generate strong consumption power. Recommendations Faced with powerful competitors such as QQ Music, relying on small differences in product experience is no longer enough to catch up. copyright Although QQ Music has sublicensed some of the music copyrights to Cloud Music, Cloud Music’s copyrights are still insufficient. These shortcomings are mainly reflected in the fact that many songs only have Live versions but no CD versions. In addition, the copyrights of popular music variety shows are also seriously insufficient, especially phenomenal programs such as "Crossover Singer", "The Voice of China" and "Sing My Song". Therefore, in order to listen to more music, users often have to prepare 1 to 2 or even 3 APPs on their mobile phones. Although QQ Music’s loyal fans will eventually return to QQ Music, the possibility of user loss cannot be ruled out in this process. In addition, monopolizing the copyrights of popular music variety shows and exclusively cooperating with popular music programs can not only bring a large number of users to the platform, but also effectively enhance user stickiness. To some extent, it is also beneficial for the platform itself to establish its brand and thus enhance its recognition (for example: when I want to listen to music from a variety show, the first thing I think of is QQ Music). Phenomenal music variety shows are not only a key factor in driving the development of the domestic music industry, but also an important force in promoting the development of music apps. If the copyrights are equivalent, phenomenal music variety shows may become a new hot spot, and the differentiated experience brought by exclusive resources will become increasingly greater. studio As the record industry is declining, more and more singers are beginning to move away from traditional record companies and choose to set up their own personal studios. Because such personal studios have limited power, they can choose copyright companies to distribute physical records, or they can cooperate directly with platforms in the name of the studio to distribute digital music online. The one that has done relatively well in this regard is "MUSIC+" launched by QQ Music, which provides personalized customization services specifically for such celebrity studios. After acting as the agent for the sales of digital music albums of more than 40 Chinese and foreign singers including Jay Chou, Chris Lee, Lu Han, BIGBANG, Adele, Rihanna, etc., the QQ Music platform has sold a total of 20 million albums in the 18 months from December 2014 to the present, with total sales exceeding 100 million yuan. The digital music version of Jay Chou's new album "Jay Chou's Bedtime Stories" has sold over 1.5 million copies in 36 hours, with sales exceeding 30 million yuan. NetEase Cloud Music has also sold more than 300,000 copies of Jay Chou's Bedtime Stories digital music album (20 yuan per copy). Cloud Music can also increase its investment in this area. Sell digital music albums or peripherals through the fan effect and give full play to the fan economy . Finally, a suggestion on user experience: Restoring a playlist after it is accidentally deleted It is indeed possible that the playlist may be accidentally deleted during use. In this case, you usually need to contact customer service to restore the playlist. The customer service usually responds very quickly. Thumbs up. However, it would be better to provide a manual recovery function to avoid all kinds of troubles after accidental deletion. While browsing Zhihu, I also found that many users had similar experiences of accidental deletion. Conclusion NetEase Cloud Music entered the market with the differentiation point of "music social networking" and quickly gained a large number of active users. Based on this, it extends to the upstream of the industrial chain. Use products to leverage the market, trying to subvert traditions and change the industry. At least judging from the current data, the pace is correct. It is not easy to achieve such results for a product that has been online for only 2 years. It is very impressive. From the perspective of the external environment, although the effect of the merger of QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo is 1+1<2, they still occupy the absolute first place in the market, and Tencent has strong resource investment behind them to protect them. Starting from the construction of the entire ecosystem, Alibaba is also actively deploying the upstream of the music industry. Faced with two very powerful opponents, where will Cloud Music, backed by NetEase, go? Let's continue to wait and see. Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising The author of this article @h uber compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! |
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