Virtual idols in the vortex

Wen | He Qian

The arrival of the virtual idol era is an indisputable fact.

There are virtual idols in various fields such as business performances, brand endorsements, and live broadcasts. The most watched in the first half of the year may be the "bullying incident" of A-Soul.

This incident has made everyone start to re -examine the hot track of virtual idols, and the comments and predictions of virtual idols in the future of virtual idols are also endless. True V -circle users are still singing carnival. The female version of the female version of the virtual idol Zoyana cherishes "The Orphan" and Eason Chan were launched on the same day. It has broken 25 million at station B, and even famous overseas. There are many overseas users. The virtual idol VOX in the English area settled in station B and lived for 1.7 hours, and it took 1.11 million to vote. The consumption potential of the virtual idol fan group was amazing again.

Domestic virtual idol A-SOUL

Under the promotion of domestic B and other companies in China, domestic V-UPs and fans have also formed their own groups, commonly known as the "V circle". This circle is mostly two-dimensional groups and enthusiasts.

In the V circle, the hottest domestic virtual idol is A-Soul.

It was launched at the end of 2020. It is a virtual idol group with byte beating and Lehua Entertainment's joint plan. Byte beating provides underlying technical support, and Lehua provides people in the middle, content planning and operation. Among the virtual anchors at station B, the five virtual anchors with the most "captains" are all A-Soul. The hottest member Jia Ran also occupied large and small topics on Weibo. Fans kept promoting Jiaran and A-Soul to the outside world in a language that public could not understand.

Among several members of the A-Soul, Jiaran was the first hole card from the team. On December 12, 2020, the little man in a pink skirt opened the first personal live broadcast of the team. In that live broadcast, Jiaran jumped 20 dances in a row, shocked four.

▲ A-Soul member Jia Ran

A-SOUL settled in station B before has been occupied by Japanese VTuber. Most of them use Live2D technology, which can only move the upper body, and the facial expression is relatively rigid. The emergence of A-SOUL awakened the "sleeping" V circle group for a long time.

Systematic operations, advanced technical support, and strong interaction with users, A-Soul's comprehensive dimension reduction strikes have made people and horses from all passers-by, and the once-scolding sound of 180 degrees has also changed. Praise. At the technical level, the shaping of virtual images generally needs to be planned, original painting, standing painting, 2D/3D modeling, rendering, etc. The costs include standing, modeling, live broadcast software, image production, and computer hardware equipment.

Sudden "live dormant"

One and a half years were established, A-Soul's total praise at station B reached nearly 5 million, and Weibo fans also reached 1.86 million. They frequently appear at the Lehua Entertainment Family Concert, and the ability to attract gold should not be underestimated.

A-SOUL's current commercial monetization mainly includes live revenue and commercial cooperation.

Last year, A-SOUL member Bella set a record of 10,000 captains (the captain's price of 198 yuan/month) on the day of his birthday party, becoming the first "Wan Ship" virtual anchor in the history of B Station. In January of this year, Jiale appeared on CCTV with the "income ranking first virtual anchor". It reported that the total revenue of the virtual anchor market in November 2021 was 54.66 million yuan, and the first monthly account of Rale, the first monthly income. In addition, A-SOUL also received promotion cooperation from L'Oreal, KFC, ASUS and other brands. On Douyin, A-Soul's stores are sold nearly 90,000 yuan.

In March of this year, A-SOUL operating company Lehua Entertainment submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

According to public data, in 2020, the pan -entertainment income related to virtual artists was 21.1 million yuan, an increase of 37.9 million yuan in 2021, an increase of 79.6%year -on -year. 77.7%. Lehua publicly acknowledged that the growth of pan-entertainment business revenue was mainly due to the business development of the virtual artist group A-Soul. However, the virtual idol group with extraordinary ability to attract gold has been treated very low.

From May 10th, the domestic virtual idol top-flow group A-Soul and their members Jiale and Bella successively appeared on the hot search. This is the first time they have appeared in the public vision for the first time, but unfortunately, it is not the public opinion that it is not the public opinion. Their singing and dancing works and live broadcast scenes suddenly announced "dormant".

▲ The lead singer Jiale suddenly announced "dormant"

Similar to the "graduation" of the Internet circle, "dormant" means that byte beating and Lehua Entertainment's ip image carefully designed for virtual idol Jiale, and the career of the people who provide singing and dancing performances in the leather. In addition, the privacy information of the people in the A-SOUL group members is frequently exposed, that is, the "open box" in the circle, huge controversy broke out in the fans, and the people in Jiale were "squeezed" and "bullying". So that after the news of "dormant" came out, the anger of the burning group to the operation team was completely ignited.

In the early morning of May 11, the A-Soul production committee urgently released a Q & A at station B, clarifying key issues such as salary and bullying. According to the A-SOUL production committee, the news from the Internet is not information, but they are not convenient to disclose the real salary of A-Soul members. After all, this involves personal privacy issues. These responses are still vague to fans.

Trend

A-SOUL's "bullying incident" did not prevent the virtual idol from being "hot".

Ai Media Consultation data shows that the current virtual idol industry is maintaining a stable growth trend, and it is expected to reach 186.61 billion yuan and 12.08 billion yuan in 2022. All in all, the ceiling of the virtual idol market is still high and the development prospects are considerable.

Through A-Soul's "Bellying Incident", we can see that if you want to cut into the virtual idol market to create a real idol, the producers must find out the following three directions: when shaping the "virtual idol" The soul is equally important. We must pay attention to "both internal and external practice"; how to commercialize after shaping the "virtual idol" -to promote the commercialization process with "platformization" thinking. Do not think of virtual idols as a "spokesperson" set by a certain brand or a certain field, but should be regarded as a platform that brings together young culture.

Young people like the content of the circle, the way of playing with the stalks, and the attitude and spirit that the young people upholds. As long as the basic person setting in the virtual idol, the virtual idol content can be displayed. In this way, while the virtual idol has promoted the development of young culture through its own influence, it is also constantly internalizing young culture and attitude, so as to obtain self -growth. For brands, virtual idols have also become a bridge for the brand to go to young culture.

Based on these "platform content", the cooperation between virtual idols and brands can also broaden their imagination.

It is foreseeable that with the continuous expansion of the Yuan universe, there will only be more and more virtual idols in the future. Under the tide of development, only virtual idols who have really experienced the "big waves" can open the traffic entrance for the producers and the brand owners. In the future, the top flow will be born in it, so who will the next one who can catch the wind? Let's wait and see.

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