The regional audition in the name of "The Voice of China" is just a money game to harvest music dreams?

Author | Punk Editor | Fan Zhihui

Lantai finally made a statement. 

At 11 o'clock on August 25, according to the official Weibo of Zhejiang Satellite TV, the program was suspended in view of the investigation of the problems reported by viewers and netizens about the "The Voice of China" program. 

With the exposure of the unfair audio and video recording of Li Min's complaint in "The Voice of China" before his death, it caused dissatisfaction on the whole network for a while. The situation gradually expanded, first the stock price of Star Chinese, the parent company of the program producer, plunged, and the market value lost nearly 26 billion Hong Kong dollars in three trading days, including Zhejiang Radio and Television Group, and then there were sponsor brands such as Master Kong and An Muxi who were deeply implicated. 

Even so, this "public opinion" turmoil shows little sign of subsiding. 

In recent days, previous students and industry insiders have come forward to speak out, and various problems of "The Voice of China" during the audition have also been disclosed one after another. For example, rapper Nan Nan, who participated in the audition of the show in 2019, bluntly said that "the so-called local audition is a big scam", and "Rap New Generation" contestant Giddin also revealed that after being invited to participate in the offline audition, he was required to "purchase courses to participate in the show". 

With the influence of the IP of "The Voice of China", the so-called local audition has long been harvesting every ordinary person who tries to chase their dreams, and has become a naked money game. 

The Voice, where dreams are shattered

500,000 to buy a mentor to turn around once, force trainees not to participate in other programs for three years, and the promotion quota is set early... Looking at the recent disclosure, Tetsusan, who has participated in the audition of "The Voice of China" twice, was angry and felt that "the wicked have their own natural rewards". 

But for her, who has long given up her dream of singing, it is more powerless. 

In 2019, Tetsuzan graduated from a university in Chongqing majoring in popular singing. Inadvertently, she saw the regional audition notice of "The Voice of China" on the Internet, and then registered for the Chongqing division. Soon after signing up, the staff in charge of the audition added her WeChat friends, and then Tetsuzo and the other runners were pulled into the same WeChat group, waiting to participate in the audition for the city circuit. 

In the first round of the regional competition, Tetsuzo sang with the other contestants in turn, and then entered the mentor grabbing session, and the contestants who did not get the favor of the mentor were directly eliminated. "At this time, you don't need money, you need to look at strength. Since successfully passing the regional competition, Zhezo and the other winners have entered the provincial competition in the Chongqing region. 

The provincial competition was held in the form of a "mentor team competition", and the trainees sang in turn and ranked within the team, and Tetsuzo achieved good results. She thought she could enter the national competition smoothly, but was told by the organizer of the audition that there were still two rounds of the provincial competition, and the students needed to canvass votes online. 

In the canvassing page, there are three free popular tickets per person per day, in addition to this, different amounts of gifts need to be purchased to redeem votes, some virtual gifts can cost up to hundreds of dollars. 

During that time, Tetsuzo tirelessly brushed the screen in the circle of friends every day, calling friends and companions to vote for free popularity for himself. But as the voting deadline approached, Tetsuzo found that "free popularity votes can't bring popularity", and many students threw money at gifts while those who came later came out on top.

Tetsuzo, who has just graduated, is shy, but the whole family goes out for her musical dreams and buys gifts to get Tetsuzo a chance to enter the next round. In the end, Tetsuzo entered the final round of the provincial competition as he wished, but stopped there after singing in the provincial competition. 

In March 2020, Zhesan, who returned to his hometown of Gansu from Chongqing, was still unwilling and participated in the audition of the Gansu Division again. After repeating the previous year's process once, Tetsuzo passed five levels and cut six generals that year, and competed until July, but stopped at the provincial competition again. 

"When we were in Chongqing, my family spent 40,000 yuan on gifts, and when we arrived in Gansu (the competition area), we spent more than 20,000 before and after." After such a high investment, Tetsuzo chose to give up. Over the next three years, she tried her hand at singing anchors, bar singers, and a side hustle selling cool skins, "As I got older, I stopped thinking about [singing]." ” 

What Tetsuzo didn't know was that when she emptied her wallet to throw money for the promotion to buy virtual gifts, in May 2020, "The Voice of China" had already begun recording in Huzhou. "I don't know [I can't be on the show if I win], otherwise I won't go. Tetsuzo said. 

On August 21, 2023, the judges of the Guangzhou City Circuit of "The Voice of China" released a video revealing the truth of the selection that year. The judge said that The Voice of China outsourced the regional audition, and the outsourcing company cooperated with the training institutions in the region to make the preliminary audition held in-house, and the training institution profited by providing the judges with pre-competition guidance courses for the contestants. 

The judges said the show was already being recorded while they were still in the regional track finals. In other words, the contestants selected by the training institution cannot be recorded on the TV station, but the TV station can arrange for the trainees with particularly good economic conditions to join the queue in the program being recorded.

For the "exceptionally well-off" student criteria, we are unable to obtain accurate figures. In the audition of Zhesan, one student spared no effort in online canvassing after winning the second place in the mentor team competition. Later, the trainee revealed to Tetsuzan that she had spent more than 90,000 yuan to buy gifts and advance to the national competition. 

"But I didn't see her on TV," Tetsuzo told Music Herald, "and she got a chance to release a single, and the program team recorded a single for every student who made it to the national competition." ” 

On QQ Music, this song, which was uniformly arranged and recorded by the program group, rarely cared for, with only a dozen comments. And "The Voice of China" can only bring her the lonely sentence on her personal profile: "The runner-up of the "Voice of China" urban track". 

The good voice of China has become China's good business, but it has also become a place where many people's dreams are shattered in the invisible audience. 

Good voices are never "auditioned"

In May 2021, the "milk pouring storm" was raging, and the state demanded that the auditions of all variety shows be stopped. The auditions of "The Voice of China" in various regions were also completely stopped, and it was once rumored on the Internet that this move would affect the scheduled launch of "The Voice of China". 

To this end, Lu Wei, vice president of Canxing Production, said in an interview with Red Star News: "Our director team is looking for good voices across the country, and we really met one by one, some of which were introduced by musicians and TV people in the circle... In addition, the director team will also go to some bars, professional colleges to select, and even some large enterprises' trade unions and literary troupes to find. ” 

The implication is that the students of "The Voice of China" were not auditioned, but dug up by the program team all over the country. Therefore, even if the audition channel is closed, it will not affect the recording and broadcasting of the program at all.

At the same time, the host companies in various regions have changed the name of the regional audition to events such as the "The Voice Festival", making up for the large cost of the initial investment while constantly accumulating the voice for the new season.

In the official report of Red Star News that year, it was clearly pointed out that "the regional audition of "The Voice of China" is a strategic cooperation unit of Canxing Production, and the ground promotion activity of "The Voice of China" carried out nationwide." In other words, the so-called "regional audition" is not the selection of trainees, but the marketing behavior of the program team accumulating voice in various places before the broadcast.

Specifically, the program team cooperates with organizers across the country in the form of IP authorization, allowing them to run so-called "regional audition" competitions. Then, the organizer in charge of the audition further solicited sponsorship and collected money from the trainees, and the organizer also received the authorization fee after saving a large amount of publicity costs. 

After this set of processes ran down, Canxing Culture and local auditions achieved a "win-win", and whether it was Tetsuzo who emptied his wallet or a student who successfully released a single, they became the "cannon fodder" of this marketing promotion activity. 

In this regard, Xu Zhisheng, a lawyer at Yingke Law Firm, said that whether these trainees can defend their rights depends on the contract details of both parties. 

"There is also a contractual relationship between the program audition organizer and the program audition contestants, if there is a promise in the program audition rules that the winner can enter the program recording, but the final winner cannot enter the program recording, or even the audition has nothing to do with the program recording, and the purpose of the contestants' participation in the audition cannot be achieved at all, the program audition organizer may be required to bear the reasonable losses of the contestants, such as transportation and accommodation fees, registration fees, etc." 

As for the expensive "gift" paid by Zhesan in the audition, lawyer Xu Zhisheng believes that "if it is collected by the organizer of the audition program, it can request a return, and if it is paid to a third party in accordance with the audition rules, the organizer of the audition can be required to bear part of the loss according to the fault." ” 

Therefore, in the name of auditions, the promotion is actually a word game played by "The Voice of China" with the public, which has attracted a large number of unknown young people.

From the news information that can be retrieved so far, the news notice of the regional audition of "The Voice of China" in the fifth quarter of 2016 also clearly pointed out that the top trainees are expected to participate in the program recording of Zhejiang Satellite TV; In 2017, after "The Voice of China" was renamed "New Song of China", the winners of the regional auditions would not be able to participate in the stage, and most of the words flashed in the official news were "let the Voice go to the whole country". 

This year, judging from some videos released by Douyin Internet celebrity Li Canger to participate in the audition of "The Voice of China", the event he participated in was not a veritable audition, but a direct selection of the Shenyang Division of The Voice of China National Tour Singer Competition, and he also played a word game with many netizens who did not pay attention to details. 

If the contestants have no intention of standing on the final stage, but just want to accumulate a small part of the voice through the IP of The Voice, then the behavior of the program team and outsourcing companies is understandable. But for people like Tetsuzo who put their hopes on the stage, the behavior of the program group is somewhat "hanging sheep's heads and selling dog meat", which is really inappropriate. 

When we asked Tetsuzo whether the regional audition organizers had signed a contract to participate in the recording of the program, Tetsuzo said, "We didn't sign any contract." 

epilogue

In 2012, Zhejiang Satellite TV introduced the copyright of "The Voice of Holland" in the Netherlands to create "The Voice of China". 

Looking back at this moment, the introduced copyright has brought two differentiated symbols to "The Voice of China": one is the selection mode of the instructor who does not look at the appearance of the trainees and listens to the singing voice and turns around, and the other is the personal label that appears next to the name of each student when singing. 

As a music show with no stars except for the mentor, the topic and discussion of the show rely more on the stories about music and dreams on the trainees. 

It can be said that from the beginning of the production of "The Voice of China", its core characteristics are directed to "ordinary people chasing dreams". Nowadays, when we see that the program team clearly marked the price of every step of ordinary people's dream chasing road, and directly generated income through the contestants, all this is particularly ironic. 

When the chain reaction caused by Li Min's recording, the "riot operation" of the program group in the regional audition was finally brought to the table, and the future fate of the program "The Voice of China" after it was suspended is still unknown.