With the development of the Internet, the traditional radio stations, which have been silent for a long time, have been “reborn”, including Lychee FM, Xinshixiang, Dragonfly FM, Penguin FM, Himalayan FM, Night listen, Kaola FM and other mobile radio stations as representatives. The emergence of mobile radio, or will cause a new round of radio economy tide.
According to the “2017 Q1 Mobile Radio Industry Report” of Speedway Research Institute, as of April this year, Ximalaya FM ranked first in the list of mobile radio APP downloads with 483.06 million downloads, dragonfly FM and Lychee FM ranked second and third respectively. The following mobile radio stations, such as Duotan FM, Douban FM, Penguin FM and Archimedes FM, have all been downloaded less than 60 million times. The survival situation of the second echelon of mobile radio platforms is not optimistic.
However, as a whole, there is still a great space for development of mobile radio, and with the gradual maturity of mobile radio industry, mobile radio has improved content resources and quality, so that users can better feel the good experience brought by high-quality content. With increasing acceptance of content payment, people are more willing to pay for quality content, which promotes the healthy development of the mobile radio industry.
Since mobile radio came into people’s sight in 2011, mobile radio has developed from the period of blue ocean to the present Red Sea and entered the second half. Nowadays, each major mobile radio station wants to become the head platform in order to attract listeners, gain more profits and increase the layout of the market. At present, the mobile radio station on the network audio market is mainly divided by lychee FM, Dragonfly FM and Himalayan FM.
Lychee FM: Rich content resources behind the profit is difficult
Lychee FM is a relatively popular mobile radio station. Its proposal of “Everyone is an anchor” encourages users to create content resources by themselves, which brings good results to the platform users. The user activity of Litchi FM is very high, which indicates that the platform has certain stickiness to users. In the current situation of mobile radio “everywhere”, lychee FM can become one of the three giants of mobile radio industry, mainly rely on the following two aspects.
On the one hand, litchi FM pays more attention to users’ voice live broadcasting and the platform’s cultivation of ordinary anchors. The voice broadcast mode enables users to demand the content they are interested in, narrowing the distance between the audience and the anchor. Content is one of the most critical factors for mobile radio to attract audiences, so the native anchors cultivated by Litchi FM can better ensure the attractiveness of their content, and “speech value” has become the basis for the development of Litchi FM.
On the other hand, Litchi FM also attaches great importance to user interaction. In order to strengthen the connection between users and users and between users and businesses, litchi FM platform creates community users. In September this year, the newly changed Lychee FM version added a variety of social play, the user communication single linear to multi-linear transfer, forming a large chat room. In addition, Lychee FM aims its market at the two-dimensional vertical field and invites four top voice actors in the industry to create a new attempt to “break the wall” in the three-dimensional three-dimensional world, attracting many animation fans to join.
However, lychee FM’s flagship “everyone is an anchor” brings rich content and resources to the radio platform, but at the same time causes uneven content quality of the platform. Moreover, litchi FM is mostly mass entertainment content of emotion, literature and art, and lacks professional and excellent course content that can make users pay, which is not conducive to the profit of the platform.
Dragonfly FM: Hidden non-UGC pain points under huge financing
On September 28 this year, Dragonfly FM obtained 1 billion yuan of financing led by Baidu and Micro film Capital. This case has caused a lot of attention. What makes these investors willing to invest such a large amount of money in a mobile radio station?
Dragonfly FM is the first mobile radio station in China to provide users with audio content services in the form of online radio. Its content includes radio, audio reading and head KOL’s homemade programs. Since its launch in 2011, the platform has surpassed 300 million users, with 12 million daily active users. Dragonfly FM also combined with traditional radio, the content of 3000 radio stations in the country into the bag, “combination of old and new radio” mode so that dragonfly FM content is different from other mobile radio, expanding the content width.
With consumption upgrading, people are increasingly willing to pay for quality content. The recent development of content payment industry is also more and more hot, each platform began to pay content layout. It is understood that the proportion of users willing to pay for quality content is increasing. In today’s big entertainment era, the dragonfly vertical domains such as FM and the Himalayan, get the mobile station is different, the Himalayan FM and get away is specialized class quality hard knowledge pay mode, the dragonfly FM is walking the road of the entertainment, through soft knowledge to attract users, meet the demand of high quality culture of audience.
In the content, Dragonfly FM signed a contract net red, big V as an anchor, to provide users with their own content. At the same time, the fan effect of these Internet celebrities and big V’s can also attract the platform, and can “heat up” the topic temperature, and increase the click rate of the platform content.
However, unlike Litchi FM, dragonfly FM is not an UGC platform, which limits the originality of dragonfly FM content to a certain extent. In terms of content recommendation, Dragonfly FM basically takes album as the main recommendation form, and the mode is relatively simple, which is different from litchi FM and Ximalaya FM in the form of single sound and album promotion. In addition, the social attributes of Dragonfly FM need to be strengthened. At present, the interaction channels between audience and audience and between audience and anchor are relatively single, and the user activity of the community is low.
Himalayan FM: high popularity and low quality
By December, Ximalaya FM had reached 450 million users. The reason why Himalaya FM, which was only launched in 2013, can get such achievements is inseparable from the following factors.
In Ximalaya FM, there is a large flow of V to pay for knowledge topic publicity, improve the topic heat, attract users. On November 18 this year, mimong team announced that they would launch a paid audio course entitled “Mimong teaches you 50,000 yuan a month” on Himalayan FM. As the “king of drainage”, Mi Meng bundling a controversial topic with it, enhancing the user attention of Himalayan FM in a short time.
The content of Himalaya FM is mainly produced by PGC+UGC and exclusive copyright, and the platform is rich in audio resources. These high-quality content resources have laid a solid foundation for Ximalaya FM’s position in the arena of mobile radio, which not only brings it many users, but also gives it more advantages in meeting the diversified needs of users.
Besides producing professional audio content, Ximalaya FM also forms an ecological chain of content industry by connecting upstream and downstream. Upstream is PGC+UGC and exclusive copyright based to provide a complete set of incubation system; Last year, Ximalaya FM completed cooperation with many big publishers to ensure the output of copyrighted content and bring exclusive content to the platform. The downstream Ximalaya FM has cooperated with about 400 brands in the fields of mobile phones, automobiles and audio, increasing the realization channels, maximizing the value of the platform users and ensuring the benefits of the platform.
In addition, himalaya FM users can apply for adding V when the quality and quantity of their programs reach a certain standard. This V adding system can screen and settle the content quality of Himalaya FM, promote the production of high-quality content by anchors, improve the quality of content, and create high-quality content community for users.
As a mobile radio station, Himalaya FM is undoubtedly successful, but there are still some problems to be solved behind its success. Ximalaya FM has diversified content styles, but this means that users will put forward higher requirements for platform services, and the platform will have to bear higher risks. In addition, the current layout of Ximalaya FM is not clear enough, requiring users to spend a lot of time to find the content they are interested in, which to some extent consumes users’ patience and is easy to cause user loss.
Resurrected mobile radio is not for good
Now the mobile radio market has entered the Red Sea period, lychee FM, Dragonfly FM, Himalaya FM, these three mobile radio stations occupy the major market. Competition between the giants is still in full swing, in addition to the three giants, there are other such as Penguin FM, Koala FM, Douban FM and other mobile radio stations are also stepping up the layout of the audio market. However, behind the resurrection of mobile radio, there are still some problems that can not be ignored.
At present, the difference of audio interactive platform on the market is not obvious, and the product content tends to be homogeneous. No matter litchi FM, Himalayan FM, or penguin FM, their basic operation mode is the same, there are also many similarities in the content. Or have a storytelling section, or have a late-night emotional radio, the content of the form of ten thousand changes from its zong. In order to change this situation, it is necessary to create the platform content quality and differentiation, highlighting their own personalized characteristics.
In addition, in an era of short video and live streaming, revived online audio software is under pressure. At present, in addition to the attention of the audio market, short video, live broadcast is also the field of concern. First, live broadcast formed a storm, and then short video ushered in a big wave. Although the development of live video and short video has entered the decisive stage of the second half, the pressure brought by both to mobile radio cannot be ignored. If mobile radio wants to break through the siege, firstly, it needs to screen users with the help of science and technology, analyze radio audience with big data, and carry out accurate matching push; Secondly, the audience with the same hobby will be focused on the topic they are interested in, to stimulate the community user activity and promote the communication between users; Three to organize the application section, save the audience to find the content of the time. Enhance the interaction between users and the platform.
Content payment is the breakthrough for mobile radio to make profits in the future. However, on audio platforms, users have not formed payment habits like short video and live broadcast, and the development of mobile radio in reward and payment mechanism is much slower than that of short video and live broadcast. Through voice communication with users, users can chat with anchors at will and order at will, but users lack paid scenes, especially implanted advertisements, which are easy to bring bad experience to listeners. Therefore, in order to make users willing to pay, it is necessary to create efficient content services. Only by providing users with better content services can users be driven to consume content, thus promoting the development of the industry.
With the acceleration of the pace of people’s life and the increase of fragmentation time, people will pay more attention to the mobile radio that can be “dual-purpose”. As far as the current situation is concerned, the general pattern of audio field has been determined. Now though mobile station there are users to pay hard, content homogeneity and so on many issues, but as long as the platform for building content quality, strengthen the interaction between the user and the platform, patience to develop habit of users pay, so “resurrection” of the mobile station in the capital and technology support, or will again be a wave of the big swing.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110