Xiami Music has finally been shut down.

Regarding the Yinluo platform, the Xiami music team stated that Xiami will continue to explore the music road in the future, and its business will shift to music business scene services, relying on the newly established "Yinluo" platform to continue to explore and innovate to serve musicians and industry partners.

It is worth noting that some media broke the news that the short video platform to be launched by Alibaba Group may be "Yinluo". Tianyancha shows that on December 18, 2020, Hangzhou Alibaba Music Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Alibaba") applied for multiple trademarks related to "Yinluo", including those that can be used to provide online chat rooms and videos for social networks. On-demand transmission and other services have been interpreted by some as Alibaba’s decision to switch to the short video business.

Xiang Zheng, the former marketing director of Warner Music and Universal Music China, who had previously revealed in advance that Xiami Music would be closed, also posted a farewell message on Weibo, saying: "This day has finally come. Xiami has been with me for a long time. Music, finally say goodbye. ”

On the afternoon of the same day, QQ Music launched a green brick activity for importing Xiami music assets. You can import original music materials with one click by entering your Xiami account ID.

Netizens commented on Weibo: "Playlists can be transferred, information can be exchanged, and copyrights can be merged. What about Xiami's preference identification, data filtering, and culture of supporting independent musicians? Have they all been eaten?" ! ”

Ideals, regrets and abandonment

In fact, Xiami Music once stood at the top of the “listening to music despise chain”, as can be seen from a widely circulated picture.

"It is unavoidable that we have missed some key opportunities in the development process. In terms of obtaining music copyright content, we have not been able to meet the diverse music needs of users. This is also our biggest problem. Regret." On January 5, the Xiami Music team revealed in their farewell letter.

Xiami Music, founded in 2006, is one of the earliest digital music payment platforms in China founded by Wang Hao, a former Alibaba Group employee, after his resignation.

In the general evaluation of the outside world, the founder Wang Hao is a musical idealist. Although his major is applied electronics, he formed a band and played guitar when he was in college. He is a true music fan. Therefore, Xiami Music was originally named EMUMO, which means EARNMUSIC & MONEY (allowing musicians to make money).

In the subsequent development, Xiami Music will focus more on building an online genuine music distribution platform based on P2P, unifying the interests of music copyright holders, publishers and consumers, and setting up a platform for active sharing by users. The behavior enables the copyright holder to obtain corresponding profits from his or her works.

On this basis, Xiami Music has established a multi-channel, multi-terminal cloud music service, covering platforms such as websites, desktop software, mobile clients, handheld computers, and vehicle-mounted terminals. Unfortunately, these did not help Xiami Music move towards a better future.

In terms of capital, Xiami Music received two rounds of investment from Shenzhen Venture Capital in July 2008 and March 2010; by June 2010, Xiami Music received millions of yuan in Series C investment , the investor is Shanda Group.

The most critical turning point in the follow-up was the merger and acquisition by Alibaba. In January 2013, Alibaba Group announced the acquisition of Xiami.com and established a music division.

Xiami Music, with the support of Ali, had a brief moment of glory. In March 2015, Alibaba formed Xiami Music and Tiantian Dongting into Alibaba Music, and began to focus on expanding copyright channels. At the same time, it invited well-known musicians Song Ke and Gao Xiaosong to join Alibaba as senior executives.

Music copyright issues will become a factor that will continue to restrict Xiami Music in the future.

After the copyright policy was implemented, NetEase Cloud Music and QQ Music cooperated on music copyright in the form of prepaid shares, allowing them to share part of the music library while also minimizing some losses.

Xiami Music, controlled by Alibaba Group, clearly stated that it would independently operate copyrights within its own system platform, and subsequently removed more than one million non-copyrighted songs.

Reluctance, Struggle and Goodbye

Limited copyright resources have obviously restricted the development of Xiami Music in the market. After losing many copyrights, Xiami Music gradually fell off the track and never made capital splash again.

Although in the future, Xiami Music will also begin to use offline performances to expand profit channels in addition to membership and advertising, relying on Alibaba platforms, namely Damai.com, Youku Video, Ali Sports and other sectors to cooperate, focusing on fans Economically realize profits. However, due to the continuous decline in the number of users and traffic, Xiami Music has fallen behind significantly and has not shown improvement.

According to the "2020 China Online Music Industry Report" released by Fastdata, China's online music market has entered the era of oligarchy, with Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music forming a bipolar pattern of online music.

Data from October 2020 shows that among the top five monthly active online music apps, the first, second and fourth ones all belong to Tencent, namely QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo. Music, the monthly active rankings are approximately 200 million, 188 million and 72.48 million respectively; NetEase Cloud Music, ranked third, has 88.95 million monthly active users; Xiami Music ranks fifth, with only 22.36 million monthly active users.

In fact, in January 2016, three years after Alibaba acquired Xiami, founder Wang Hao resigned from Xiami. At that time, Wang Hao wrote in his circle of friends: "I have been involved in this industry for eight years. My original intention was to make the industry keep up with the times, but the current situation has become so absurd that it is outrageous. Some industries are destined to die. I just wait for it to nirvana." ”

Five years later, the prophecy came true.