On the morning of January 5, Xiami Music issued an announcement: Due to business development adjustments, we will stop Xiami Music services at 0:00 on February 5, 2021.
As soon as the announcement came out, senior users said goodbye to Xiami Music. For them, Xiami is not only a tool for listening to music, but also a container that carries their memories for more than ten years. The day when youth ends is finally here.
The rumors came true, Xiami will cease services
"There are rumors in the world that Xiami Music will be closed in January next year. Is an era coming to an end?" November 29, 2020, Weibo Xiang Zheng, a Weibo user certified as "former marketing director of Warner Music/Universal Music China", posted on Weibo that Xiami Music will close in January next year.
With the announcement on January 5, the rumors of the closure of Xiami Music became a reality.
According to Xiami Music’s announcement, at 0:00 on February 5, 2021, Xiami Music will stop all music content consumption scenarios, and will only retain account asset processing and web-based musician withdrawal services; March 5, 2021 At 0:00, except for the Yinluo musician authorization service on the web page, which remains in operation, all other operations will stop and the server will be closed. You will not be able to log in at that time and in the future.
Xiao Yao is an experienced user of Xiami Music. After so many years of habit, she suddenly lost it, and she felt empty. "I started listening to SHE in junior high school and Mayday in high school. At the end of last year, it suddenly came out that it was going to close down. I panicked at that time. I quickly logged on to see that the playlist was still there and that I could listen to the music. But this day still came. Why? To put it bluntly, it feels like I have lost all my youth, and many songs have no resources when they are transferred to other platforms.”
In the minds of many users, Xiami Music is “professional”, “niche” and “fresh”. There are many other labels, and the reason why Xiami Music is inseparable is mainly because of the classification of Xiami Music. It has a very detailed list of music styles, which is very friendly to audiophiles.
"What a pity. Even if we just look at music categories, albums, singles, EPs and other categories, Xiami is still the most professional." It’s really the most secret Bai Yueguang in my heart.” “Before I saw the launch of NetEase Cloud Music on 88VIP’s homepage, I expected that there would be industry consolidation. Such a day will come soon, but I still feel reluctant to leave it. The memories of my middle school days, I am grateful for my companionship. "... When news of Xiami Music's closure came out, many netizens expressed their dissatisfaction with Xiami in their official Weibo comments.
VIP refunds arrive in seconds, it’s hard to say how much they can refund
For ordinary users, whether the music data they have carefully stored will be lost, and what to do with the digital music albums they purchased. , is a big problem. In this regard, Xiami Music provides a solution. On the Xiami Music homepage, specific methods for transferring playlists are provided. Users can also export the tracks in the playlist through static web pages, Excel, etc.
Xiami Music has also opened a membership refund portal. From January 5 to March 4, users can apply for a refund on the "Service Suspension Announcement Page" on the Xiami Music mobile APP. Judging from the actual operation of China News Network reporters, the refund speed is very guaranteed.
On the morning of the 5th, after the reporter verified his identity and filled in the verification code, the refund was sent to the associated Alipay account in less than half a minute. However, it should be noted that if the Xiami VIP is sent by 88VIP, there will be no refund.
Xiami VIP refunds will arrive in seconds. Alipay screenshot
Although refunds are possible, how much money can be refunded is a big mystery.
Zhang Wendao (pseudonym), a senior user of Xiami Music, said that Taobao’s order history shows that he once purchased super VIP at the end of 2017. The original price was 128 yuan a year, and the actual payment was 28 yuan. Currently, his Xiami Music has been a super VIP for the past three years and a one-year VIP. Even based on the promotional price, the three-year super VIP refund amount should be more than 28×3=84 yuan, but the refund he actually received was only 46.6 yuan.
Many netizens on social media also had similar feedback. A user who purchased Xiami's 10-year VIP has a refund amount of up to 990 yuan. He said: "Many people bought their 10-year VIP at a low price. Xiami actually refunded the full price. It's so conscientious." But there is the same For users who have purchased VIP for 10 years, the amount shown on the refund page is only 432 yuan. I don’t know why the amount is doubled.
For the same 10-year VIP, some people can get a refund of 990 yuan, while others can only get a refund of 432 yuan, which is double the difference. Picture from Weibo screenshot
Born to "let musicians make money"
Looking back on Xiami's trajectory over the past 14 years since its birth, "idealism" is an unavoidable word.
In 2006, Wang Hao, who was working as an engineer at Alibaba, decided to regain his musical ideals in college, so he teamed up with several friends to establish the website Emumo, the predecessor of Xiami Music.
Emumo is the abbreviation of Earn Music & Money, which means "allowing musicians to make money." Wang Hao is a band guitarist. Being in this circle, he can especially understand the difficulty of being a musician. Xiami is one of the first music platforms in China to launch a payment model. Although the songs on the platform are uploaded by users, they need to pay to download them. These fees are paid to the copyright owners to realize the ideal of "letting musicians make money".
Users of Xiami Music can modify Xiami’s music categories and upload various tracks. At that time, domestic Internet music copyright supervision was still relatively loose. This choice made Xiami the "most complete music category" and "the most diverse music library", gathering the most elite music fans. It is precisely because of this that Xiami Music still occupies the top of the disdain chain for music apps that circulated at the end of 2020.
The big fish eats the small fish, and Xiami is in decline
In 2013, Xiami Music joined the Alibaba business group. At that time, Wang Hao judged: "The future will be an era when big capital enters the game of giants. Xiami will be more dangerous as an independent music platform. It will be safer to be with some big groups and big platforms."
After acquiring Xiami Music, in March 2015, Alibaba merged Xiami Music and Tiantian Dongting to form Alibaba Music. When Alibaba Music was founded, domestic online music encountered the most stringent copyright laws, and the industry entered the era of legalization, with copyright becoming the key.
On July 15, 2015, Alibaba Group announced that Gao Xiaosong and Song Ke had officially joined Alibaba Music, serving as chairman and CEO respectively. After Gao Xiaosong took office, he rebranded Tiantian Dongting into Alibaba Planet, aiming to create a "full industry chain platform for online music trading", while Xiami Music was gradually marginalized. This is generally considered by the outside world to be a key node in the decline of Xiami.
Tiantian Dongting users found that after the update, the familiar LOGO turned into a purple planet. The original entrance to listening to music could not be found, but it seemed as if they had entered a shopping website. This is why Ali Planet got its name. "Music e-commerce". This revision was met with massive resistance from users, and the Ali Planet project quickly fell into decline within one year of its launch.
During this process, Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music have made rapid progress, leaving Xiami Music behind. Backed by the wealthy Tencent, QQ Music has become the king in terms of copyright. Although NetEase Cloud Music does not have as many copyrights as QQ Music, the social nature of NetEase Cloud Music has made the comment section a popular culture. Since then, it has continued to catch up in the copyright field, allowing it to survive the brutal fight.
Although Xiami Music has made some efforts in copyright, the gap with its competitors is getting wider and wider. There is a question on Zhihu, "Why is Xiami Music gradually declining?" The answer with the most likes to this question is: "It is difficult to judge whether it has declined, but it is an indisputable fact that copyrights are decreasing day by day. Many of the music collections are not available because Copyright has become a blank for blockbusters, which is quite heartbreaking to think about.”
Data show that in December 2019, the number of active users of QQ Music was 316.441 million; Kugou Music and Kuwo Music ranked second. , three, the number of active users are 267.991 million and 116.847 million respectively. NetEase Cloud Music and Xiami Music ranked fourth and fifth, with 80.818 million and 28.174 million monthly active users respectively.
It is worth noting that the top three music APP market shares are all owned by Tencent. Judging from the data, the monthly activity of Xiami Music and Tencent are no longer in the same order of magnitude.
NetEase Cloud Music is also doing well. In August 2020, NetEase Cloud Music vinyl VIP annual card rights were officially added to Taobao 88VIP membership rights. 88VIP members can choose independently between Xiami Music or NetEase Cloud Music. This means that in Alibaba’s ecosystem, NetEase Cloud Music’s status has been regarded as its own.