The “maintenance” between Netease Cloud and Tencent Music gives soda music opportunities

author| City Elephant Wang Tiemei 

“Since the shrimp fell, I don’t think any online music platform in China is seriously developing its products. rdquo; A music platform industry insider told “City Xiang”.

On November 25, 2024, Netease Cloud Music used a long article to push its conflict with Tencent Music to a climax. Netease Cloud Music’s official account publicly accused QQ Music of plagiarizing the functions of its DIY music player on Weibo, and demanded that QQ Music be more truly innovative is obviously a hope to occupy the high ground of public opinion.

But the most liked comment in this Weibo comment area is that it is your job to unify copyright well, not add ads and fight every day.” rdquo; Later, Kugou immediately complained that the DIY function was launched earlier than Netease, questioning what Netease Cloud Music’s so-called innovation was.

However, it is not difficult to see from the direction of the comments that users are not interested in the war between music platforms. What they really care about is whether the product itself is easy to use. However, Netease Cloud Music, which is close to home, ignores the user’s repeated dissatisfaction with the product itself.

01 Neglected user voices

“I posted a post on Xiaohongshu complaining about Netease’s cloud experience, which received 18,000 likes and more than 3,000 comments.& rdquo; In-depth music enthusiast Liu Guang told “City Xiang” that I have been using NetEase Cloud Music for seven years, and the membership level is Level 9. However, in recent years, NetEase Cloud has made no progress in copyright. Instead, it has intensified its advertising and accidentally opened it. I jump to other apps and even insert advertisements in songs. Recharging membership cannot allow me to get a comfortable experience. rdquo;

Advertising problems are one of the problems that Netease Cloud Music has always been criticized. Many users have reacted that when listening to songs using Netease Cloud, once they switch to the background and switch back to Netease Cloud again, they will be forced to watch the open-screen advertisement again. Previously, Netease’s cloud VIP privileges were free from advertising and enjoying a pure music experience no longer existed. In addition, confusing interface layout, vague function positioning, inaccurate personalized recommendations, etc. are also the dissatisfaction that users have repeatedly mentioned with Netease Cloud.

Liu Guang said: Originally, he used Netease Cloud because he took a fancy to the accuracy of his main daily tweets. There were more niche independent musicians, but later everything went sour, the copyright of songs became less and less, and he even started some messy live broadcast sales. The daily recommendation algorithm is becoming less and less accurate, and the interactive interface is getting worse and worse as it is upgraded. Now the membership price is 18 yuan a month, but I don’t think it is worth my renewal.” rdquo;

Ding Lei, founder of Netease Cloud Music, once emphasized the uniqueness of the music community, but behind these feedback from users is the chaos in content operations of Netease Cloud Music as a music community.

According to the financial report disclosed by Netease Cloud Music, Netease Cloud Music is the largest revenue component, and the growth rate of online music subscription revenue has gradually slowed down. From 2020 to 2023, Netease Cloud Music’s online music payments were 16 million, 28.9 million, 38.3 million and 44.12 million respectively.

Netease Cloud Music obviously has some awareness of all this. After users frequently responded to dissatisfaction with the live broadcast function, Netease Cloud announced on November 29, 2024 that it would close the portal for live broadcast, social networking and sales in an attempt to regain user trust and save the lost user stickiness, but it seems to have had little effect. The financial report shows that Netease Cloud Music did not make a greater breakthrough in quarterly revenue in 2024 compared with the previous year. Net income in the first and second quarters of 2024 was both 2 billion yuan, which was the same as the net income level in the first, third and fourth quarters of 2023, and also dropped slightly in the second quarter to 1.9 billion yuan.

Another giant, TME (Tencent Music), is also facing doubts from users. Although Tencent Music seems to have a stronger copyright library and a clearer positioning than Netease Cloud, the financial report shows that its monthly users have been declining year by year for six consecutive years. The audience of Tencent Music is obviously more inclined to the fan base of traffic stars. Even if I no longer use Netease Cloud Music, I will not switch to Tencent Music. rdquo; Liu Guang said.

A music platform industry insider told “City Xiang”: It seems that Tencent Music’s financial report is better than Netease Cloud Music, but in terms of online music services, neither party has solved the core pain points, from the vinyl playback interface to the function of listening together is a pseudo-innovation, and both parties are just imitating each other. rdquo;

It is not difficult to see from the focus of the dispute between Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music in the past two years that after the end of the exclusive copyright era, it has been difficult for the platform to open the gap through the number of music libraries, and instead use window strategies such as exclusive launches of 30 days to create a fan economy. However, this model only serves top artists.

While Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music are still addicted to innovation battles that users consider irrelevant, Byte’s soda music has quietly divided the market through the ecological linkage of Short Video + music.

02 Catfish disrupts the situation

“After using soda music for a while, my biggest feeling is that the personalized recommendation algorithm is accurate enough. The biggest advantage of being a product owned by Byte is undoubtedly that it can be linked with Douyin. I hear my favorite music on Douyin. Or BGM can directly jump to soda music.& rdquo; Liu Guang told the “market image”.

As a byte product deeply bound to Douyin, soda music is also quite vibrate-like in the interactive interface. Users switch songs by swiping up and down the screen, and add songs by double-clicking to enter the favorite list. The interactive mode is completely different from other music platforms. It gives users a more unique and convenient experience.“”“”

Because it relies on Douyin, Douyin’s user data can be completely shifted to soda music, which not only improves the personalized recommendation accuracy of soda music to a level that Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music are difficult to achieve, but also collaborates with the Douyin ecosystem. Let the user growth rate of soda music is not a problem, and the link for users to jump from Short videos to listen to the whole song is shortened, which can form a closed loop that can be heard immediately after swiping.

“In addition to the experience of using it, what attracts me is that soda music can watch advertisements and listen to music for free. In this era when all software requires VIP, it is simply a blessing.& rdquo; Liu Guang said.

As a product owned by Byte, soda music, like all Byte products, uses a free + advertising model to retain users. As long as new users log in to soda music every day, they will be given half a month’s membership. For comparison, Netease Cloud is 7 days.

Liu Guang told “City Xiang”: Not to mention that you can listen to music for free by watching advertisements, or even get a month’s membership, even if you pay for it, soda music is much cheaper than Netease Cloud and QQ Music. Without any discounts, soda music membership is 8 yuan a month, compared with the other two for 18 months, which is a big difference. rdquo;

Superior algorithm recommendations, concise interactive mode and low price have made up for the problem of insufficient number of song libraries for soda music compared with other platforms to a certain extent. According to QuestMobile data, the soda music officially launched in June 2022, In just two years, monthly users have surpassed Migu Music, which has been on display for ten years, to reach 50 million.

However, the sudden rise of soda music is also inseparable from the rough style behind it.“”“”

03 The Lower Limit of Soda Music

“Copyright costs have always been the top priority in determining the profit and loss of online music platforms. Existing platforms also have their own means to circumvent copyright issues, but soda music has the lowest limit. Take “Walking on the Forest Road in Southwest Hebei” as an example. This is the second album by Wanqing Band (Universal Youth Hotel). It is exclusively available on Netease Cloud Music in the form of a paid digital album. Netease Cloud Music is the only platform on the entire network that can hear this album, but in soda music, you can easily hear the original song. rdquo; Independent musician Feng Yu told “City Xiang”.

Directly search for soda music for the band“ Universal Youth Hotel” or the album name “Forest Road in Southwest Hebei”. In the song column, there are only cover songs, and there is no authentic sound source to listen to. However, the uniqueness of soda music is that videos uploaded by individuals on Douyin can be synchronized to soda music, and the interactive interface of these videos is made into basically the same pattern as the songs by soda music: Click to like or add a song list to add a video to the song list. The video comment area interface is also the same as the song comment area interface. When soda music slides its recommended songs, the videos are mixed among them, making it almost difficult to distinguish.

The sound source of the album “Traveling on the Forest Road in Southwest Hebei” appears in the form of a video on soda music. A user with the online name Xibei Langge uploaded the single “Tits” from the album, which has received more than 100,000 likes in the form of a video.

“If someone wants to transfer songs from other music platforms to soda music, they only need to make the background music of the video and upload them to avoid copyright issues. Soda music seems to acquiesce in this obvious infringement. In addition, as musicians, there is no respect for soda music at all, no customer service can be found if there is a problem, and our music revenue is not transparent.” rdquo; Feng Yu said.

The See Music program jointly launched by Soda Music and Douyin will help 16,000 songs become popular through Short Video in 2024, of which more than 50 songs have an annual stream broadcast volume exceeding 100 million. 86% of the top 1000 hot songs grow on Douyin, and 54% explode from Douyin cold start. This model of Short Video drainage + streaming media precipitation has almost reshaped the value chain of the music industry, and even forced traditional record companies to accept guaranteed cooperation. Byte has also announced that it will increase the daily recommended traffic of soda music to more than 500 million in 2025.

The deep binding of soda music and Douyin and the unique up-and-down sliding song cutting mode have also brought another concern to musicians. This design strengthens the 5-second brainwashing divine song spread, and algorithm preferences lead to music aesthetics. Convergence, such a communication model is not only not conducive to musicians producing better music works, but also risks lowering the aesthetics and lower limit of the music industry and turning music into a Short videos appendage.

Liu Guang said: As long as you are a heavy Douyin user, it may be difficult to refuse after trying soda music, but I do find that now I have less patience and can paddle faster when listening to music.” rdquo;

At present, Byte’s positioning for soda music is very clear. Its audience is not snatched from the mouths of Netease and Tencent, but rather accepts the overflow music demand of Douyin users. At present, its value lies more in supplementing Byte ecology. However, the scale of development of soda music should alert Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music. Competition on online music platforms should not stop in a marketing war of mutual exposure and plagiarism. This is not the way out for the industry.

Industry insiders told “City Xiang”: If Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music want to go through the cycle and achieve sustainable development, I am afraid they have to jump out of each other’s quagmire and use user value as the anchor point, otherwise they will be abandoned by users sooner or later. rdquo;

(The characters in the article are pseudonyms)