Taking NetEase Cloud Music and Xiami as examples, let’s talk about the path of music APP e-commerce

The author of this article explored and analyzed music APP e-commerce by taking Cloud Music and Xiami as examples. Looking at the existing e-commerce explorations and feasible e-commerce penetration explorations, what are the opportunities and challenges? Let’s take a look~

background

By referring to the comments section and related product reports, we can roughly understand that music APP users are young (mostly born in the 1980s), mostly female, and mostly middle- and high-income earners. User characteristics are high brand loyalty and strong purchasing power.

Currently, there are two most distinctive music software on the market that are equally popular - NetEase Cloud Music and Xiami Music. Products are alive, each with its own personality and attitude, and they complement each other with users. The relationship between music apps and e-commerce has always been ambiguous. How to create a win-win-win e-commerce attempt without disturbing music fans while ensuring their experience is worth studying.

APP Status

Cloud Music

Its advantage lies in its high-quality midstream ecological layout, its focus on guiding UGC, creating a closed loop of high-quality content, and extremely high user stickiness. This has a lot to do with NetEase’s media genes - during the portal period, NetEase News repeatedly came into the public eye because of its “amazing replies”.

Xiami Music

The advantages lie in the strong upstream ecological layout, emphasis on strong operations , clear classification and clear target audience. Among them, by comparing Xiami and NetEase radio stations, it can be seen that Xiami Radio is supported by a small number of opinion leaders, and its "elite" attributes are more prominent. This is not unrelated to Alibaba 's e-commerce genes, which is to keep the most eye-catching ones to attract customers.

Community atmosphere comparison

Comparing the community atmosphere of the two, Cloud Music has created a music community with "music + empathy" as its core. Users have a strong sense of "cultivation" on the APP, where they can find resonance in values ​​and have a deeper understanding of their hobbies; Xiami focuses on creating a shocking first impression and is more likely to attract listeners with clear music genre demands, such as fan groups.

To put it in an analogy, QQ Music is like a cute idol who is trained to be friendly to the people and flexibly adjusts the content based on user feedback; Xiami is like a standard idol produced by an idol factory, who has a mature personality and audience positioning as soon as she debuts, and is a strong content distributor. In the cloud music operation circle, Xiami launched products with precise positioning. In fact, comparing the contract partners of Cloud Music and Xiami, the above statement can also be confirmed: the copyright obtained by the former is more niche than that of the latter.

Existing e-commerce exploration

• Xiami Features: Alibaba e-commerce platform red envelope benefits include Xiami VIP trials (aimed at cultivating users’ habit of paying to listen to more and higher-quality songs; overseas download services increase the proportion of users with high purchasing power)
• Cloud Music Features : Cloud Music Mall that only sells music equipment

Common points :

1. Sell ​​musicians' electronic CDs, performance tickets, etc. online
2. advertise

Feasible e-commerce penetration exploration

E-commerce is not limited to the sale of physical goods over the Internet.

E-commerce penetration plan:

1. Expand downstream distribution channels for high-quality IP

(1) Integration of internal resources of the group

Connect the endorsement and advertising needs between cooperating musicians and platform e-commerce brands, and facilitate cooperation between brands and musicians with consistent tones.

(2) Personalized music scene

① Add personalized playlist customization scenarios, combine big data algorithms and manual screening, and integrate and continuously update paid playlists that best match user scenarios based on actual customer needs.

Or the platform can go through the authorization link in the early stage, and the user will make the payment later. For example: restaurant background music, wedding music, etc. (Background: According to the Criminal Law, playing songs in public places without authorization is an infringement of others' copyright.)

② Launch content in the form of special topics and sell the theme playlists together with related products. For example: a travel playlist bundled with the "Why not take a trip" travel product for sale.

(3) Online LIVE broadcast

A direct way to monetize the fan economy . For example: commission on tickets, fan red envelopes, etc.

2. Enrich the midstream ecosystem of products (suitable for cloud music)

(1) User operation (the following malls all refer to the cloud malls within the site)

1. By analyzing the consumption behaviors of a single user and a community with similar characteristics to the user through big data , the homepage of the personal cloud mall can be customized for each person.
2. KOL operation (it is recommended to try Cloud Music). In the high-quality UGC closed loop, the shopping guide effect is achieved by encouraging opinion leaders to actively share items worth buying (electronic albums, physical items) to the "personal cloud order". The "Douban Dongxi" peer shopping guide model has been proven to be a win-win situation.
3. Users will be given e-commerce discount rewards based on their listening time, playlist contribution, etc., and will be simultaneously informed of what products similar communities to the users tend to purchase. On the one hand, it plays a role in promoting e-commerce within the site, and on the other hand, it stimulates consumers' desire to buy.

(2) Optimize search results within the site

Paid products related to the music they search for are pushed to users through fuzzy search.

Behind the search for background music and original sounds of animation, games , film and television works is the demand of this group for the above content and its peripheral and homogeneous products. The rate of return on meeting such needs will be higher than hard advertising that has little relevance to user demands.

NetEase has powerful gaming resources, and the overlap with Bilibili users continues to rise, which can help attract traffic . It is surprising that NetEase does not even provide download instructions when searching for related information about Onmyoji on Cloud Music.

(3) Radio station operation

1. This is an audiobook program that simultaneously provides the purchasing path for reference books (physical books + e-books).
2. Campus|Educational radio stations have introduced paid course trials, and full courses are charged.
3. Radio hosts are managed in a tiered manner to enable paid listening of some programs.

3. Strengthen the upstream ecological layout (suitable for shrimp)

(1) Operate the fan economy and incubate content based on fan feedback. Provide full-link fan e-commerce services including works, peripherals, performance tickets, etc.

(2) In the context of the sharing economy , strive for more first-to-market benefits.

(3) Different from the social music community operation model of Cloud Music, Xiami's massive music library is more suitable for being an " encyclopedia -style music museum", presenting information such as the music's creative background, instruments used, and musicians' styles in the song details.

Challenges and opportunities

Cloud Music’s upstream ecological layout (especially copyright) is relatively weak, but fortunately it has strong capabilities in incubating high-quality content and UGC operations.

Xiami’s midstream ecological layout is relatively weak, and it is at a loss as to what to do with too many levers. But its algorithm is powerful and its music library is rich, which makes it excellent in terms of functionality. In addition, Ali Planet diverts some of the traffic from young fans, allowing Xiami to focus on operating more mature users.

The downstream ecological layout of both apps is still under exploration. The two companies have each BD to different smart devices to become installed software; the "traffic packages" developed in cooperation with operators have opened up in-vehicle distribution channels (however, neither of them has been BD to China Mobile, and as a China Mobile user, I am also desperate).

If the two apps can complement each other in the upstream and midstream ecological layout, Cloud Music will focus on the niche market and discover grassroots singers and anchors, while Xiami will focus on producing high-quality music reviews.

But after all, it is essentially a music app, and all sales activities must not disrupt the user's music experience. People who love music are sentimental and have a strong desire to express their emotions. Xiami previously posted a notice in the comment section that “No messages allowed to exchange red envelope passwords”, and Cloud Music hid the mall in the personal list, both of which are expressions of non-disturbing behavior. The road to e-commerce exploration is long and arduous, so take it slow.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

This article was compiled and published by the author @张又青 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map