Text | Wu Boya
As soon as the sixth season of "Ace to Ace" was launched, Hua Chenyu dressed as a strange thief Kidd, perfectly integrated "The Seventh Chapter of the Night" and "Sky Fall", and performed a musical chapter full of the mysterious atmosphere of the fairy tale castle on the stage.
Since its inception in 2016, with the fixation of the ace family members and the style of the program, the netizens' recognition of "Ace to Ace" has also moved from 6 points of Douban rating to 7 points. Although the ratings of the sixth season program did not continue to rise, from the premiere rating of 3.351%, "Ace to Ace" is still resistant.
So, how has Ace vs. Ace, which has lasted for six seasons, withstood the test of the market?
Music is the thread that runs through Ace vs. Ace
First of all, from the perspective of program design, competitiveness is its first point of view. In this, it can not only show the unity of the IP team itself, but also reflect the confrontation between different teams. Coupled with the atmosphere of 500 spectators, the group soul and the spirit of victory are more prominent in the relatively small shed space setting.
Secondly, the existence of Shen Teng and Jia Ling is the main backbone of the show. As comedians, the duo not only have the ability to control the laughter point just right, but also can humorously catch the stems thrown by other guests to make the show look relaxed.
Although due to the limitations of the venue, "Ace to Ace" is not free in the setting of the game compared to the outdoor competitor variety shows "Running Bar Brothers" and "Extreme Challenge", director Wu Tong fully focused on the special effects of the stage, lighting and music in the studio, and played the memory killing and feeling cards.
Therefore, from the first program of the first season, the entertainment, sentimentality and ornamentality of the music have always been the unchanging characteristics of "Ace".
In the first episode of the first season, "Ace" invited the popular variety IP "Run Bar Brothers" and "Challenger League" to compete, and the whole program contributed "Niangniang I was wrong", "Passionate Desert", "Flower Room Girl", "Bad girl", "New Can't Love", "Give Me a Kiss", "The Most Beautiful" and other song cover versions.
In the following multi-episode program, the reproduction of the classic theme song when the film and television drama IP participated in the program has been the most bizarre plot of "Ace to Ace", but it is this kind of content that can often hit the audience's memory point the most.
Whether it is "The Legend of the New White Lady", "Huan Zhu Gege", "Tianlong Babu", or "Meteor Garden", "Love Is Deep and Rainy", many classic plays have staged memories in "Ace to Ace", and the theme song singing link can always resonate with three generations from the 60s to the 95s.
In addition to interspersing IP feelings with music, in the program on March 19, 2021, "Ace to Ace" even directly created an Ace Music Festival, with Wang Feng, Zhang Liangying, Wang Sutaki, and the Times Youth Group coming to kick the museum. The ace Tiantuan with Brilliance Chenyu as the core and the Explosive Stage Tiantuan led by Wang Feng not only listen to the classical piano song to guess the name of the song, but also upgrade the difficulty, but also compete in the creative ability.
In the talent show, Zhang Liangying, Wang Sutaki partnered with Guan Xiaotong and Song Yaxuan to sing the song "Wuhua", all the members of the Times Youth League sang "The Little Girl Under the Street Lamp", and Hua Chenyu and Wang Feng sang each other's representative works. In the end, the program ranked first in the premiere ratings of CSM59 City Network with a rating of 2.848%, accounting for 11.09% of the viewership share.
There is no shortage of music in the game entertainment. In the "Golden Song Flying Flower Order" link, the program team asked everyone to sing songs related to their professions, but when giving examples: "La-la-la, I am a small expert in selling newspapers", Zhou Shen picked up the stem "Don't give an example, our answer will be finished".
Ornamentality is also another way of presenting the use of music in "Ace to Ace", which is embodied in the "talent show" link of the show. In the sixth season alone, Hua Chenyu has covered the strange thief Kidd's version of "Shaolin, Shaolin + Chinese Kung Fu", "Little Lucky", "Kill the Wolf", "Empty + Nobody Cares + Beijing Beijing" and other songs.
The use of music in comedy variety shows is inseparable from the control of the team behind the scenes. Since 2016, Wu Tong, a post-85 producer known as the fastest growing producer of Zhejiang Satellite TV, has served as the general director of "Ace to Ace", and in September 2020, Wu Tong's team established Ace Studio, one of the clusters of Zhejiang Satellite TV Studios.
The music directors of the six seasons are lou enchi known as Brother B. He has served as a record producer or concert music director for feng feifei, Fei Yuqing, Li Zongsheng, Zhen Ni, Fan Weiqi, Zhou Huajian and other well-known artists, and has also been the asian music director of Disney and DreamWorks Pictures, responsible for producing Asian versions of films such as "The Prince of Egypt", "Aladdin", "The Lion King" and "Shrek".
The cover songs directed by Lou Enqi have been well received in the program many times, and many netizens have asked about the source of the songs on the Internet to add the songs to the playlist.
Live audio sources are both a limitation and an opportunity
As a comedy national variety show for all ages, the live sound source of "Ace to Ace" has also been competed for by major music platforms, and the current genuine song source of each issue will be online official partner Cool Me Music, QQ Music can be shared.
In addition to "Ace to Ace", the competition for variety music sources by music platforms has become a new round of copyright competition for music platforms. TME has obvious advantages in the copyright of the music synthesis, and the audio source copyright of many Tencent video programs is directly in the pocket.
For example, in 2020, the network variety show "Summer of the Band 2", "Rap New Generation", "Tomorrow's Children Orchestra Season", "The Name of the Teenager", "Rap Listen to Me"; satellite TV variety show "The Voice of China 2020", "Good Time", "The Voice of China Dream • Our Song", "Crossover Song King 5" and "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" and other popular variety shows are owned by TME.
From the data point of view, the 13 episodes of the variety show "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" launched a total of 10 albums on QQ Music, and its total playback was 1.1 billion. "Children of Tomorrow Orchestra Season", as of the closing date, also received 380 million views on QQ Music.
QQ Music, which holds a huge copyright advantage, even played the slogan of "listening to variety shows, qq tone". And in its "poker community" to create a social interaction model, fan voting to help singers popularity, mentors and contestants airborne comment area and live broadcast room, as well as the community variety group with topics to publish and discuss and other diverse play closely followed.
NetEase Cloud Music does not exceed TME in the number of copyrights of variety music sources, but its competition in this regard is not soft.
At the beginning of 2020, it won the copyright of "Singer Dangda Year" and received up to 1.5 billion views, and then exclusively cooperated with "China New Rap 2020", and won the second season of the online variety show "Street Sound Wave" and the satellite TV variety show "Flowing Song" and the second season of "Hi Sing up".
From the perspective of interactivity, starting from the "Year of the Singer Dangda", NetEase Cloud has opened the interactive mode such as the mentor airborne comment area, and for "New Rap 2020", NetEase Cloud has set an entrance specifically for the program in the search bar, the singer airborne comment area, and users can also go directly to the singer's personal information page through the name brand.
In addition to music variety shows, the sound sources of more comedy variety shows have also been divided up by the platform. For example, Tencent Video's Deyun Society Variety Show "Deyun DouXiao Society" will launch the cross-talk pure version on QQ Music and other platforms; all the sound sources of the talk show variety show "Talk Show" conference featuring Xiaoguo Culture are also in QQ Music; Mango TV's slow life variety show "Longing for Life" and "Brother With Thorns" and other sound sources are owned by Tencent and NetEase Cloud at the same time.
In addition, the two major platforms have set up a variety section under the menu bar, but QQ Music, which holds more official resources, releases the official live song list, while netease cloud is more user-made song list.
Obviously, the consumption and production of songs have long expanded from music variety shows to full-scene entertainment variety shows, and while various variety shows need soundtracks and cover songs, they have also formed a music content output channel. For a high-quality popular variety show, the music copyright value generated by its soundtrack and cover songs is increasingly valued by the platform.
On the other hand, copyright will also restrict the adaptation of music by variety shows, and even cause legal disputes.
On April 22, 2020, the "Yin Que Poetry Listening" Music Society issued a statement of rights protection, mentioning that "Ace to Ace" was unauthorized to use, adapt and sing "Mangsang" and "Red Zhao Wish" at will, and said that the original works were adapted and covered without respect, and there was too much helplessness, "Behind each work is the team's thousands of days and nights of hard work and efforts", hoping that more people will respect the music copyright.
The copyright of a song mainly includes two parts: songwriting copyright (copyright) and recording copyright (neighboring right), and the program plays the singer's original song as a BGM involving the recording copyright, while the music club refers to the songwriting copyright involved in the cover song adaptation.
The Copyright Law stipulates that the copyright owner shall enjoy personal and property rights, including the right of publication, the right of authorship, the right of reproduction, the right of distribution, the right of performance, the right of dissemination of information networks and the right of adaptation, etc., and that the performer (actor or performance unit) shall obtain the permission of the copyright owner and pay remuneration when using the works of others for performance.
Therefore, only after the producer has obtained the song authorization can the designated artist carry out live adaptation and reproduction of the song.
However, due to the complexity and dispersion of music copyright rights, the complete copyright of a song may belong to multiple different rights holders. Therefore, songs used in variety shows may not be able to find all the copyright owners of the songs and obtain authorization.
On April 21, 2020, the Beijing Higher People's Court issued the Guiding Opinions on Determining Damages in Cases of Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights and Unfair Competition and the Adjudication Standards for Statutory Damages, which clarified the relevant standards for statutory damages in seven types of cases, including musical works. Among them, the unauthorized use of the music works involved in the case in popular variety shows is a serious situation of infringement, and the amount of compensation may be increased by 1-5 times as appropriate in accordance with the above basic compensation standards.
In general, from the perspective of some producers, music copyright fees are already a fixed cost for the production of variety shows, but at the same time, the live sound sources produced by variety shows will also be acquired by music platforms to generate revenue.
From the perspective of the entire variety market, according to Yunhe data, the four major platforms added 100 new domestic seasonal variety shows in the first half of the year, an increase of 2 over the same period last year, but the effective broadcast of the whole network variety show was 16.4 billion, compared with last year's 20.1 billion, a decrease of 19% year-on-year.
From the perspective of the track, the variety market is becoming more and more segmented, including 23 types of theme content.
Such a detailed variety category also provides another way out for musicians. In the "Spit Conference", which has been broadcast for 5 seasons so far, more than 60% of the programs have musicians participating.
In addition to the eye-catching performance of rappers such as Eggshell and Naiwan in language programs, musicians such as Huang Qishan, Mao Buyi, Li Yundi, and Hu Yanbin also showed another side of themselves through the program. The show's resident guest, Da Zhang Wei, jointly planned a new performance form of "talk show + rap" with Wang Mian, in addition to adding heat to the show, Wang Mian also became a hit.
In addition to language programs, musicians are increasingly appearing on the variety stage of different categories.
For musicians, if they realize that their professional identity has the attribute of an artist, and at the same time they are eager to have more opportunities to be seen, then letting go of the burden of artists and crossing over to win the announcement of variety shows for themselves is not only another way out for themselves, but also in line with the current trend of mass entertainment consumption.
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