"Hatsune Miku" attended the Taobao Creation Festival.

With the current popularity of the two-dimensional culture, many people now regard Luo Tianyi’s enthusiasm as a gold-mining move for the potential huge market of the two-dimensional world - in Japan, he is respected by fans as "the world's number one" "Her Royal Highness" Hatsune Miku's ability to attract money is amazing. In 2012, Hatsune Miku's advertising appearance fees reached more than 7.5 million yen, and the price of each concert exceeded 3 million yen. In that year, it hit more than 10 billion yen in one year. (approximately 500 million yuan) in income, she is known as the princess worth tens of billions.

At the same time, Hatsune Miku has become the "darling" of major manufacturers. The types of endorsed and authorized products range from the Internet, fashion, automobiles to daily necessities, and its traces are found all over the world - including Hatsune Miku who has just become a Xiaomi brand. Spokesperson for this mobile phone. In December last year, the lowest ticket price for Hatsune Miku's concert in Beijing was 680 yuan, and tickets at this price were sold out within half an hour.

Luo Tianyi is similar to Hatsune Miku in terms of appearance, packaging and business model, trying to create a Chinese Hatsune Miku. However, this road to commercial monetization of fans has encountered major setbacks in China.

With tens of millions of fans, commercial realization is extremely difficult

“In fact, Luo Tianyi has not yet achieved profitability so far. We have been investing. Although there is some income, so far, The cost cannot be recovered." Cao Pu revealed that Shanghai Henian is currently operating six virtual idol singers at the same time, and the company's investment includes operating costs and the production and upgrade of the voice library software.

The first problem Luo Tianyi encountered was that the Yamaha software sound library editor could not be sold in China. Sales of Yamaha's sound library editor in Japan are booming, but this phenomenon has not occurred in China. The sound library priced at 980 yuan and the editor priced at 880 yuan are not widely paid in China, but free software is everywhere. Later, Yamaha withdrew from He Nian, which participated in the investment. In 2013, Luo Tianyi, who had accumulated a certain number of fans, tried to imitate the Japanese model with peripheral products, and sold peripheral products and CDs after gaining popularity. But in China's piracy environment at that time, peripheral products could not be sold at all, and there was almost no hope of making money from it.

When ToC's commercial realization failed, He Nian began to take the commercial realization path of ToB's advertising endorsement and image licensing. He licensed Luo Tianyi's image to the mobile game "Dragon Valley" and endorsed Changan Automobile. . However, this realization caused dissatisfaction among Luo Tianyi fans, who believed that Luo Tianyi was inconsistent with the tone of the product itself.

There are also differences within the company. Ren Li, the founder of He Nian Yuan, wants to break away from the UGC model, weaken the music, operate virtual idols like real idols, and follow the path of idolization. There are also people who hope to continue to rely on UGC content and adopt the music-based Hatsune Miku model. In February 2015, Li announced his departure from He Nian due to internal differences in philosophy and established another virtual idol company, Shanghai Wangcheng.

He Nian continued to let Luo Tianyi act like a singer. Cao Pu came to Henian as the general manager in 2015. In her opinion, the domestic two-dimensional culture has become much more popular than before in the past two years, especially after the rise of Bilibili. Luo Tianyi has gathered a lot of popularity online, and there have been many A company that hopes to cooperate with Luo Tianyi. However, although the general environment has changed, it is relatively easier for Luo Tianyi, who relies on UGC (user-generated content), to increase popularity and monetize business than before. However, this is still an early market and compared to the mature environment in Japan There is still a gap.

In an early market, the most important thing is to consider the feelings of fans. On the one hand, when it comes to advertising endorsements, ads that match the image of the virtual singer will be chosen. On the other hand, when operating their own singer, they do not dare to find partners easily. Almost every aspect of virtual idol production and operation is done by He Nian himself. He Nian has its own VR and AR technology team.

This results in high costs. According to Cao Pu, the initial investment in creating a virtual idol exceeded 100 million yuan. Although Luo Tianyi held a concert in Shanghai, each concert directly copied Hatsune Miku's full set of equipment, model accuracy, real-time motion capture and other technologies in Japan to present a unique performance. A complete concert requires an investment of tens of millions of yuan, but there is not much sponsorship for the concert, so ticketing alone cannot cover the cost.

The two-dimensional economy that is difficult to monetize

Now Luo Tianyi mainly makes money by selling editors, licensing, and endorsements. She has endorsed 4 games at the same time, and recently also contributed to a game The Chinese theme song was sung.

At the same time, due to the improvement of China's copyright market, we began to produce some peripheral products, but the current revenue still cannot cover the costs. “UGC is okay in Japan, and Hatsune got started by relying on UGC, but it’s not okay in China because the market is not mature enough. China’s post-85s and post-90s generation still only have interest and hobbies in the two-dimensional culture, and the barriers to the three-dimensional culture have not yet been completely broken. ”

More importantly, the birth and cultivation of virtual idols are inseparable from the support of content and comprehensive follow-up operations. Although in China, in addition to Luo Tianyi, in the past, there have been Le Zhengling, There are more than 20 "virtual idols" such as Lezheng Longya, Ziyan, Oriental Gardenia, etc., but few have real popularity.

"Many companies are creating virtual idols, but they have not done anything. "Good, because this is something that tests comprehensive capabilities." Ye Wei, CEO of Qilingshi, said that when outsiders observe Luo Tianyi's operations in China, they will find that her success is actually difficult to replicate.

There is another important question. In China, whether the value of fans can be converted into economic value, and how valuable the two-dimensional market is in the country is actually unknown in the industry. In mid-July, the two-dimensional market Video websites AcFun and Bilibili have removed a large number of movies and TV series from their shelves. These two websites have made many commercialization attempts in the past few years, but in the end they found that the road was extremely bumpy and they have not yet found a clear business model.

Some people place their hopes on the BAT giant - Baidu held the "Dimension Power MAX" 2017 Tieba God Ceremony, trying to drive the revitalization of Tieba with the second dimension; Alibaba's main battlefield is Youtu and Alibaba literature. Tencent's biggest advantage is QQ, with the main popular interest social product "Interest Tribe" and the QQJOY Comic Exhibition held in Chengdu. However, Tencent executives also admitted that even after gathering users and completing the closed loop, QQ's second dimension still has not overcome the monetization dilemma.

For these giants, how many core two-dimensional users there are now is a question worth facing squarely. From the perspective of age composition, the "post-80s" who were the first to come into contact with the "second dimension" are gradually withdrawing. The "post-90s" and "post-00s" have become the main group of "second dimension" users, accounting for more than 90%.

In addition, Hatsune Miku is about to enter the Chinese market. At that time, there will be more intense competition in the Chinese market. How to create a truly popular virtual idol before then is the task of all Chinese virtual idol companies. Challenge