Opportunities for new species: Surrounded by powerful competitors, how did NetEase Cloud Music break through in the second half?

It is difficult for small teams or small companies to have big breakthrough opportunities. But if you have the genes to make good products. Even when the situation is set and there are powerful enemies surrounding us, there is still a possibility of breaking through.

1. Where is the second half?

Meituan ’s Wang Xing talked about the second half again. He proposed three directions for the second half of the Internet: going up to the sky, going down to the ground, and globalization. The essence is to go deeper and wider. To go up to the sky and into the earth, one must go deep. Globalization is about expansion.

The essence of Shangtian is to improve the efficiency of existing systems through big data , cloud computing and AI , such as improving the efficiency of food delivery through AI. It emphasizes high technology and the improvement of the underlying level. For large companies that have accumulated capital and data, this is undoubtedly part of the deepening.

The essence of going underground is to further integrate deeply with existing industries, such as movies , hotels, catering, clothing, etc., and achieve more efficient flow through the deep integration of IT systems. Wang Xing emphasized the need to be down-to-earth and take root in the industry, which will bring about tremendous room for improvement.

The essence of globalization is that China has exhausted its domestic market dividends and needs to expand its territory overseas. The Chinese market is clearly not large enough to support a larger market capitalization at present, and providing mature services to underdeveloped Internet regions outside of China has become an important breakthrough for improving space.

He mentioned these three directions mainly because after more than ten years of rapid development of China's Internet , traditional connections have been completed, and the era of simply connecting information, connecting information, connecting people, and connecting goods has completely passed. This means that whether it is starting a business or a company wants to move forward, it is inseparable from deep cultivation. The era of a few people starting a business with low costs is over. The companies that have developed over the past decade have many advantages in data, capital, and experience. Unless new computing platforms emerge, it will be difficult for new companies to have a chance to grow bigger.

2. Opportunities for New Species

It is difficult for small teams or small companies to have big breakthrough opportunities. But if you have the genes to make good products. Even when the situation is set and there are powerful enemies surrounding us, there is still a possibility of breaking through.

NetEase Cloud Music is a good example of a breakthrough. Although NetEase Cloud Music itself is also a second-generation rich, it only entered the market in 2013. This timing is not the best entry point and it does not have any first-mover advantage. It has no absolute advantage in terms of user usage habits, copyright resources (such as copyright, music library, etc.), and funding.

Tencent's QQ Music, Alibaba Music, and Baidu Music are all giants. In July 2016, Tencent's QQ Music merged with Kugou and Kuwo Music, controlling 42% of China's music lyrics and 53.1% of music recording copyright licensing, and owning the largest music library in China. Alibaba acquired Xiami Music and Tiantian Dongting, and also cooperated with Rolling Stone Music, Believe Music, Germany's BMG, Hong Kong's Media Asia Records and others.

With the market structure already determined, it took NetEase Cloud Music 2 years and 3 months to break through 100 million users, which is an extremely impressive achievement. It took Kugou Music 6 years to reach 75 million users, while it took Tiantian Dongting 4 years to reach 70 million users.

Why was NetEase Cloud Music able to break through when the market structure was basically determined? NetEase Cloud Music not only has playlists, music libraries, and high-quality songs, but more importantly, it restores the original characteristics of music and connects people emotionally through online means.

If it is a simple music library, you can play it from the Internet or download it to your local computer for playback. But this is not the most fundamental problem of online music. When users listen to music, they don't just listen to it. More importantly, it satisfies their psychological desire for communication and emotional demands. This is the essence of "cloud" music.

The essence of music is not only the beauty of sound, but also the chemical reaction with people’s stories, emotions, heart and even the so-called soul. Humans are social animals with a strong drive to communicate feelings. The lonelier you are, the more you need communication.

NetEase Cloud Music has found the essence of online music, which satisfies the essence of human emotions and communication. Although both are online music, NetEase Cloud Music is a different kind of firework and a different species.

Why?

1. Hear the good times

What NetEase Cloud Music emphasizes is "listening to good times", which is its tonality. It will not say that it has the most complete music library. It is not a tool or a player. Those are the advantages of other giants. Ding Lei even said: "Making music is for dialogue and communication of souls." Only people who truly love music can make such a literary description, and this is also the innate advantage and gene of NetEase Cloud Music. It is hard to imagine that other Internet giants, such as those in e-commerce and security, can say such things. This is the fertile soil for its birth, otherwise it might have died from the beginning of the project, especially when the overall situation is almost determined.

2. The music that understands me best

Many users’ feedback is: NetEase Cloud Music understands me best. Previously, people discovered music mainly through various music rankings, Baidu MP3 rankings, various online music hot lists, various genre classification rankings, various radio stations, and later variety shows such as "Singer", "The Voice of China", and "Sing My Song". After all, only a few of these songs can be distributed and spread every year. Even among the few songs you hear, the ones you really like may just be "encountered by chance". Hidden in the library of new and old music, which claims to contain more than tens of millions of songs, are a lot of music that users like, but it does not have the opportunity to connect with the listeners who really like it. NetEase Cloud Music allows users to access more of their favorite songs through "Daily Recommendations". In addition to daily recommendations, there are also private FM, playlists, radio stations, charts and other ways for users to discover music. These greatly increase the possibility of songs being discovered and accessed by more people, and also provide more possibilities for subsequent communication. These continuously increase user stickiness and increase the development of positive cycles.

3. Comments in the form of stories

Comments on NetEase Cloud Music are its biggest feature. The fact that NetEase Cloud Music moved UGC comments into the Hangzhou subway and aroused resonance shows how outstanding these comments are.

You can pick out any passage, a person named "Yunlna without pants" left this message under Zhao Lei 's " Chengdu ":

"You are really famous, I am very happy that the front-stage tickets can be sold for 1000+. Although I could listen to your livehouse for 50 before, I can't listen to your concerts anymore, but it doesn't matter. I will work hard to be as good as you. Folk songs should not be poor. All the hardships you have suffered in the past are worth it. You have been with me through all the sad days. You said you are an ordinary person. You want to buy a house and get married. I know that I hope you have wine, meat and girls. #赵雷"

This touching comment received a total of 360,000 likes. Jay Chou's song "Sunny Day" has received more than 1.35 million comments, and the comment with 300,000 likes is

"I heard it in the first year of high school. At that time, I met the mother of my child, and then we became happy."

These comments resonated with many people's own life experiences and memories. There are many more like this, there is always one suitable for you.

4. Playlists redefine albums

The essence of a playlist is a structured organization of music. The original playlists were all albums, but the NetEase Cloud Music playlists are freely organized by users, and music that meets certain characteristics is sorted out through organization. For listeners, different listening orders and personalized song album playback all give different feelings. Playlists can be commented on, liked, collected and shared, bringing benefits to both the people who make the playlists and the listeners. A playlist of "Epic Music That Shocks the Soul" by a post-90s generation has been collected 1.25 million times. The playlists have different languages, styles, scenes, emotions and themes. You can find your favorite type in each category and discover classics from the playlists.

5. Communicate with strangers

Different from other social networks or communities such as Weibo, WeChat , and Zhihu, it is neither a social network among acquaintances nor a social network based on interests. It connects all the people who have feelings about a certain song through the medium of sound.

Weibo is enjoying a second spring, with more attention paid to big Vs and small Vs by users in second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, and it is also a relationship of attention and dissemination; WeChat is a platform for social interaction among acquaintances and all interpersonal relationships; and Zhihu is a connection between people who are interested in certain high-quality content.

NetEase Cloud Music connects people's feelings through storytelling of comments and sharing of playlists, creating a true bond for emotional exchange. First, it connects musicians and fans, especially independent musicians, such as the relationship between Zhao Lei, Li Zhi and their fans; second, it is an emotional connection between admirers. If a comment written by a listener touches other people, it will be liked and seen by more people. Not only will the listener's "creation" be recognized, but the song will also receive more interpretations. Every work, when it appears in reality, the song no longer belongs to the singer and songwriter. Different people hear different stories, and even the same person feels differently at different times.

This is the electronic music "Fade" which has long been on the hot list of NetEase Cloud Music, with more than 500,000 comments.

Look at the comments, this is the love of the fans, this comment from "Captain Scissorhands" gave me a whole new feeling about this song:

"One day, I will overcome all kinds of constraints such as leave, visas, and funding, cross the ocean, travel thousands of miles, until I reach the end of the Nordic continent, and under the shining of the Northern Lights, take out my frozen phone that is almost out of battery, open NetEase Cloud Music, and click on this song "Fade". I want to see what kind of land, what kind of sky, what kind of ocean, what kind of country, what kind of people, what kind of environment, and what kind of life can give birth to such a song."

This is a very vivid description, which is extremely moving.

Listening to the song Fade without reading the reviews is one feeling, and reading the reviews is another. In this case, it doesn’t matter whether you know the other person or not. What matters is his/her description and interpretation of the song, which allows everyone to find resonance and generate emotional dependence. Gradually, when you are listening to a song, when you are touched by a certain song, you will also look at how other people understand it, which may bring you new feelings.

By creating product experience in these aspects, users can develop real emotional stickiness, which encourages them to participate more. More participation leads to more emotional dependence, ultimately forming a perfect closed loop of music experience.

In short, if you are a different species, you have the opportunity to tear a hole in the already connected Internet competition ecosystem, through tonality, by finding the essence of the product, and by satisfying user needs through a better experience, thereby establishing your own victory across time and space. At this time, the trend is no longer so important. Such opportunities only belong to those who have an extraordinary passion for the matter itself but are able to avoid being completely immersed in it.

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