Text | New Sound Pro, Author | He Jing (Beijing)
"The snow is soaked in thousands of bright bells to shape the Buddha shrine, and I go to the dust to drink and feast, how can I not see the glory of the cave paintings, but I wake up to watch on the wall." In the past two months, this song "View from the Wall" has become a hit on the short video platform, especially in the second creation video related to "Black Myth: Wukong", this song has almost become the standard.
This song also frequently appears in the second creation videos of various film and television dramas, and a second creation video about Lin Daiyu on Douyin has attracted 1.8 million likes. Singers such as Deng Yujun (what are you waiting for), Tang Bohu Annie, Xiao Xiao, Xiao Yiqing and other singers also covered one after another, setting off a wave of national style circle and ancient style circle group building.
In fact, this song is not an episode of a game or film or television, but a song created and produced by the Chinese style music label "A Little Onion" in 2019. For the sudden explosion of this song, the Shallot team was also a little surprised. On the Douyin platform, the #壁上观 topic has 1.8 billion views, and their advertising cost is only two or three hundred thousand.
When writing this song, Zhou Mingcong, the manager of the "A Little Onion" label, came to mind a story that strayed into the world of murals, "There is a person, he can be an archaeologist or a traveler, strayed into an ancient city in the wind and sand of the desert, and the whole person was sucked into the world of murals, and the fairies on the murals came to life, he saw with his own eyes the most brilliant time of this civilization, and also witnessed the rise and fall of this civilization, and finally woke up from a dream."
At the beginning of August, they found that this song began to take the initiative to put some film and television accounts, music accounts, cultural tourism accounts, etc. because of the second creation video of the popular movie "White Snake: Floating Life" and the hit drama "Tang Dynasty Strange Tales: Westward Journey". After the game "Black Myth: Wukong" was launched, the Shallot team found that many of the plots in the game fit this song, so they combined music with the game. In less than a month, the broadcast data of the original "Wall View" on streaming platforms has increased from an average of about 100,000 per day to 4 million.
Compared with several popular songs this year, from "In the Clouds", "This Little Fish Cares" to today's "Wall View", we have observed that the taste of short video platforms to make explosive songs has quietly changed, from the early "Learn to Meow", "Love You at 105 Degrees" and other divine comedies combined with gesture dance gameplay, to now "emotions are greater than everything". To a certain extent, the logic of the production of popular songs changes with short videos, and the user's usage habits on the platform, the changes in the platform mode, and the social atmosphere jointly determine the direction of the current popular music.
However, the vision of the Shallot team is to become a hit song on the short video platform, hoping that users will truly appreciate the song and bring conversions to labels and artists. So they opened the copyright of the song, cooperated with singers such as Gong Linna, rearranged and recorded the music, and made more combinations with some films, television, variety shows, etc.
Emotions as the undertone
"Cloud House Fairy, Water Sleeves Lingering", "Rugged ravines and undulating mountains", "Why didn't Zhu Yankai see the glory of the cave paintings in the past, but woke up to watch from the wall".
Through the contrast between the prosperous Dunhuang scene in its heyday and the withered color of the cave murals today, "View from the Wall" creates a sense of loss and sadness with a strong sense of picture, which is why this song is often used in the second creation video, especially based on the story direction of BE.
Looking back at the popular songs on the platform in recent years, a common feature is that people empathize with the story.
"This Little Fish Cares", which has 400 million views on Douyin, is a projection of the current social mood. "It's been a long time since the room and mood are still messy, and I can't move when I want to tidy up" is the state of life for many people, "But baby, life is not like this, we are in the world to feel the sunshine", is to explain yourself.
The reason why the previous "Mohe Dance Hall" can move people is because of the poignant love story behind it, and the story behind the primary school student divine comedy "The Lonely Brave" is the attitude of the lyricist Tang Tian written on his hospital bed after suffering from cancer, which further blesses the "inspirational feeling" of this song.
The Cantonese version of "Orchid Pavilion Preface" is also based on the lyrics and songs with a strong sense of narrative, and the BGM as a second creation video has become a hit song on Douyin.
In Zhou Mingcong's view, the highest level of expression must be about emotions. "I think art is about bringing emotional fluctuations to people, which is greater than some singing and playing skills."
The sense of story provides the basis for these songs to become popular, and in addition to "harmony", the trend of national style also provides a geographical advantage for "wall view".
In recent years, with the increasing pride of the Chinese people, the rise of various national cultures such as Hanfu and folk travel photography, a number of ancient cities such as Luoyang and Dunhuang have become popular tourist destinations, and a series of national style parties of Henan Satellite TV have driven a wave of national style fever, and even in this year's Paris Olympics, many competitions such as the rhythmic gymnastics team's "King Qin Breaking Array Music" are all based on national style songs as background music.
In addition, Youku and CCTV respectively launched the national style music variety show "Chinese Chaoyin" and "National Style Super Drama", Zhou Mingcong really felt that "national style music is slowly getting better", the audience's aesthetics are constantly improving, and the number of audiences is also increasing.
How to achieve 1.8 billion views
The video "View on the Wall" released on station B in 2019 has reached 3.14 million views so far, which is the accumulation of five years. Zhou Mingcong recalled that since its release, this song has always had relatively stable playback data in the national style circle, and the playback volume has always ranked among the top few among the songs produced by their company.
But the popularity of "View on the Wall" does not rely only on the promotion of natural traffic, the Shallot team divided the publicity and distribution of "View on the Wall" into four stages, the first stage is the accumulation of natural traffic for 5 years, the second stage is under the popularity of the second creation video, the number of playbacks has increased several times, and in the third stage, they began to take the initiative to intervene and promote it into a national hit through marketing and streaming. Zhou Mingcong recalled that at the beginning of September, the daily peak of all versions of "Wall View" had reached six or seven million.
August 10th is the beginning of the Shallot team's discovery that this song began to explode, "Previously, the playback of this song in streaming media was basically stable at about 100,000 per day, but from the 10th, we found that the daily playback volume could reach 300,000, and at this time the spread of this song reached the second stage."
In fact, before this, there have been a lot of popular videos related to "Wall View", and in August last year, a video titled "Listening to Zhang Xiaohan's "Wall View" loudly in a million-dollar luxury recording studio" on Station B had 2.66 million views.
On August 2 this year, Douyin music blogger "Elegy" released a video with "Wall View" as BGM, which received 913,000 likes.
At the same time, the movie "White Snake: Floating Life" was released in August, and Fahai obstructed the plot of White Snake and Xu Xian together, which is in line with the sense of story presented in the song, and many netizens began to spontaneously use this song as a BGM editing video, and the content released by netizens "Fireworks Freehand" received 625,000 likes.
The "Donor" unit in the popular film and television drama "Tang Dynasty Strange Tales: Westward Journey", the story takes place in the same Dunhuang as the theme, with the theme of murals, which happens to be the same as the theme expressed in "View on the Wall".
The second creation of the content of the two film and television works pushed "View on the Wall" to a climax, and attracted more and more content parties to participate, "Tomb Robbery Notes", "Yi Nian Guan Mountain", "Celebrating More Than Years", "Youth Song Xing" and a number of fans have used this song as BGM to cut the second creation content.
Someone commented, "None of the videos using this song as BGM are complete."
The Shallot team, which noticed the enthusiasm of users, quickly followed up and promoted "View from the Wall" to a more fiery third stage. On August 20, they took advantage of the situation to launch a series of music, film and television, landscape, and painting accounts for publicity, among which Lin Daiyu's second creation video received 1.8 million and 1.374 million likes respectively.
On the same day, the game "Black Myth: Wukong" was launched, and the members of the Shallot team felt that some of the plots had a high degree of adaptability to "Wall View" when playing the game, "like the mural of Wukong's apprenticeship to Bodhi Ancestor, the story of Zhu Bajie and the spider spirit, and the story of the Headless Buddha."
So the Shallot team began to put related topics to build momentum, and soon won the recognition of game users, "Even the story of Zhu Bajie and the spider spirit is the second creation that netizens took the initiative to do, but there were errors in judgment in the middle, at that time we thought that Zixia Fairy would also be very suitable for this song, but the effect was relatively average."
From explosive songs to national songs
But for a content team, it is difficult to bring conversions to this label just by being popular on a short video platform.
From the perspective of business logic, short video music and streaming music are two modes, and short video music mainly attracts users to create a second creation and marketing gameplay to create a popular BGM; In addition to song copyright revenue, music released in streaming media such as QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music can also broaden more copyright gameplay through cover songs and other forms, and offline commercial performances, variety shows, OSTs, etc. are also the main sources of income.
The Shallot team's music is mainly focused on the latter, and they hope to push the marketing of the song "Wall View" from the third stage to the fourth stage, "We hope that this song can have a more popular dissemination, and everyone really appreciates this song and will forward this song to the circle of friends, not just as a BGM."
There have been many fans of film and television works who have sent private messages to the Shallot team, hoping that they will find a drama party to cooperate and become the OST of the series. So they decided to open up copyright and attract more people to participate.
After the copyright was opened, it quickly attracted a number of cooperation demands from drama and variety show content parties, "Because the OST of many dramas has been determined at a very early stage, the budget has been spent, and it is not realistic to use our songs temporarily, so we use the form of free licensing."
The free licensing of "Wall View" has indeed brought a good label effect to Shallot, and in some of the cooperation invitations received by Shallot content parties, in addition to adapting the drama version of "Wall Watch", I also hope that they can customize the OST for the series.
In addition, Shallot also collaborated with some singers to rearrange the music to create a more suitable studio version for singers.
On September 11, Gong Linna's "Wall View" was the first to be released, compared with the original version and the more popular mixed version on Douyin, Gong Linna's singing has a more eloquent feeling. Someone wrote in the comments of Netease Cloud Music, "Teacher Gong's voice is like the light dust fluttering through the pillar of light in the thousand-year-old cave, and from her chanting, I heard the fleeting moment of time, the ruthlessness of the sky, the impermanence of karma, the pain of sentient beings, the trembling of sacrifice, the grace of flying, the freedom of immortals, the compassion of Bodhisattva, and the smile of Buddha."
This is also Zhou Mingcong's intention, "This version is based on the already popular original version, and when re-arranging, the main song about entering the mural world is weakened, and the world of travel is faster." When working with Gong Linna, Zhou Mingcong didn't even need to think about the singer's pitch and rhythm, he just told the story to Gong Linna.
In fact, "View on the Wall" has had a good spread on various platforms before, and we can't help but wonder why Shallot still chooses such a "heavy" mode when "View on the Wall" already has a studio version?
In the view of the Shallot team, most of the popular versions serve the goal of Internet communication, and they hope to release the insights accumulated in the past five years and fully interpret the artistic connotation of the work. The new version will also be suitable for more communication fields, such as singers' concerts, OST of film and television works, etc.
In the two months since "View from the Wall" became popular, Zhou Mingming has felt that he "has more capital to focus on artistic creation".