Yin Lin, Li Changchao, Dong Zhen, Winky Shi, and leading Chinese-style musicians gathered together to share their experiences and creations. There were also senior professional lecturers such as Ren Hanbing, Chen Pengjie, Hui Yuanqiong, etc. to give lectures and answer questions.
This lineup is a Chinese New Year for Chinese music lovers.
A few days ago, the offline class of "Elephant Has the Wind·Guofeng Music Academy", the annual major project of the year, announced its successful conclusion. Regardless of whether they are familiar with the Chinese style or not, the support team behind the La Yi La project will all be impressed by the luxurious lineup.
Teachers and students taking photos
Feedback from the macro perspective of the market shows that the industry is pursuing popularity, data and sociality, but Xiang Youfeng is "taking classes" and invites famous teachers to teach lyrics, music and singing.
As a Chinese-style music label, Elephant has its own style and rhythm.
Behind the explosion of "Little Idol in the Northeast":
The “national style” that Elephant wants: with content capabilities as the core
In 4 days, what can you do in the offline class of "Elephant Has the Wind·Guofeng Music Academy"?
In April 2023, across thousands of kilometers, students from all over the motherland gathered at Gubei Water Town Academy to start a four-day study of Chinese customs.
As early as September 21 last year, Elephant Youfeng’s official Weibo released news that it plans to open a Chinese style music academy in the future, aiming to provide “professional” professional planning for creators who like Chinese style. Cooperation, offline classes have started the student selection activities.
Before the official start of the offline school in April this year, the "Elephant Has the Wind·National Style Music Academy" spent half a year collecting works online, and finally selected 18 outstanding Chinese style musicians from the three major tracks of songwriting, singing and singing. Students participate in this course.
The course content covers music copyright classes, lyric composition classes, composition classes and opera classes, vocal music classes, music appreciation classes, as well as lyrics and composition practical guidance classes, etc. In terms of the instructor lineup, Elephant Youfeng has deployed a team of top instructors in the industry for this course to work together to polish the quality of national style.
On the first day of the course, Elephant Music Group CEO Li Sirui, Elephant Youfeng manager Liu Guangtao, Wanxiang Fanyin founder Zuo Muxiu, senior music producers Ren Hanbing, Liu Yanjia, Chen Pengjie, Haiyuan Qiong and senior music lyricist Li Shu teaches the students.
Among them, it is worth noting that Elephant Youfeng also carefully considers the educational assistance in the field of intellectual property rights for musicians, and invites senior intellectual property lawyer Cui Qing to explain relevant copyright knowledge to musicians.
It is well known that the copyright protection related to music property rights is difficult, and many well-known musicians have been besieged by it. The importance and necessity of knowledge about property rights are self-evident to the new generation of musicians.
On the second day, vocal teacher Li Fuxin led the students to sing in the courtyard, and the well-known music critic Deng Ke conducted a music appreciation class. Opera lecturer Cao Kaiquan and Kunqu opera actors Wang Hao and Lu Peiye jointly presented the charm of traditional opera. The practical guidance class on the third day was provided by many industry elites to provide on-site guidance and answer questions.
At the same time, during this four-day course, Elephant Youfeng also arranged for four senior representatives of Chinese-style musicians, Yin Lin, Li Changchao, Dong Zhen, and Winky Shi, to share their real industry experience with the students at the course site.
From songwriting guidance, popularization of property rights knowledge to opera appreciation, Elephant Youfeng’s Chinese style offline class is committed to allowing every student to gain something in a more secure and focused environment. There is so much good stuff that even Winky's poem said, "It's so good that it can choke people to death."
In addition, according to official information, Elephant Youfeng will also produce and release a high-quality graduation album for the students participating in the course. With full-process support including teaching, creation, production, distribution and promotion, from the most practical perspective, it truly helps Chinese-style musicians continue to "break out of the circle" together with excellent Chinese-style music.
At a macro level, such projects provide practical and effective communication and learning opportunities for Chinese-style musicians. From the perspective of Elephant Youfeng, we cultivate the production and songwriting skills of our own musicians, thereby helping Elephant Youfeng erect high-quality content barriers and gradually build a content moat belonging to Elephant Youfeng.
Taking the richness of the musician ecosystem as an example, the four leading Chinese-style music singers participating in the offline class this time are all musicians signed by Elephant Youfeng. Including Li Changchao, the true OG of Chinese style, the drama "Ten Years in the World" has not yet been replaced on the Internet; he has already mastered two hit-level masterpieces "Koi Chao" and "Silk Opera", and is famous for his lyrics and music creation. The famous Yin Lin; Dong Zhen, the first person in "Xianxia style music"; and Winky Shi, who fans jokingly call the "all-in-one singer and composer" in the Chinese style world.
According to official information, the musicians signed by Elephant Youfeng to cooperate with the Chinese music circle include Yin Lin, Huang Shifu, Li Changchao, Dong Zhen, Winky Shi, Yan Yongqiang, Sinan, Bai Zhi, Yidong, Rabbit Wrap Omelette, Xiaozhui and Popular musicians such as Tintin, RaJor, etc., and also signed Chinese content creators such as Jingzhujiao.
Whether it is the layout of the content ecology or the cultivation of creative richness, Elephant Youfeng’s determination to be a Chinese-style music label is clear.
Through music, find music
"I hope our musicians can truly contribute to Chinese music."
Li Sirui, CEO of Elephant Music Group, once mentioned in an interview that the most fundamental pursuit of doing Elephant style and national style planning is.
From an industrial perspective, the underlying logic is not difficult to understand – by building a foundation for the quality of works, we can achieve the accumulation of top creators and high-quality works. After that, Elephant Youfeng continued to follow industry trends in the field of Chinese style, taking into account both content quality and commercialization, and rolled out related businesses on a large scale.
The results are also remarkable.
First of all, in terms of musical works planning, there are the "Variety of Styles" national style project, Bai Zhi's "Phantom" project, Yi Dong's "Fifth Prophecy" and "Interlaced Poetry" project, and the rabbit-wrapped omelette "Floating Roll" project , Senior Xiaoyi’s "Flower World" project, etc. have produced many high-quality national style songs.
The production of new songs is also very efficient. In April alone, the official delivered 10 new songs. This is a manifestation of productivity. In the long run, music labels have efficient production capacity and can collaborate with young Chinese-style musicians to continuously and stably produce high-quality works on the road to "professionalization."
In addition to the output of online music planning, with the overall recovery of the performance industry, Elephant Youfeng’s offline business is also rapidly following up. In order to meet the market demand, we can connect the ecology of online content works and offline performances to achieve a wider range of expansion.
Regarding the personal tour arrangement of Chinese style singers, Elephant Youfeng planned the "Channel Player" tour for Li Changchao this year. The first tour in Guangzhou ended on May 1, and tickets sold out quickly after they went on sale. At present, the tickets for the second Nanjing show are also sold out, and there will be arrangements for the Chengdu show in the future.
At the same time, Huang Shifu's 2023 "Human World" concert tour is also in full swing.
The Guangzhou show ended successfully on May 2, followed by three consecutive performances in June, namely the Wuhan show on June 10, the Chengdu show on June 17, and the Nanjing show on June 22. Huang Shifu will also appear in Xi'an on July 8.
The feedback from the performance market has been good. According to relevant information, the two singers’ official performance fan bases in various places are all full, and the super chat on Weibo is full of shouts from the audience who are looking forward to joining the show.
Elephant Music Group has a wealth of business strategies for artist signing, training, and promotion. The support of the group structure also provides more sufficient time and space for Elephant Youfeng to build a musician cultivation structure and improve the production capacity of works. From a creative perspective, tracing back to its origins achieves the overall advancement of national style music.
This is what makes the content industry different. The cultivation of high-quality works and creators requires sufficient time and conditions from upstream and downstream of the industry chain to incubate.
Through plans such as offline classes, we can indeed discover more talented young Chinese-style musicians. At the same time, Elephant Youfeng also actively provides help for this group of musicians to improve their content production capabilities, so that more Chinese-style musicians can be discovered. Music has advanced from a hobbyist to a professional Chinese style musician.
As Wang Sulong said in the introduction to his popular "Joint" album last year, "We know that good music is not an algorithm, not big data, and not an industrialized assembly line."
For the entire music industry, this may also be one of the core concerns at this stage.
Brand operation, focusing on content but more on "attitude"
"It's better to wait for the wind to come than to chase it."
This "Elephant Has the Wind·Guofeng Music Academy" offline class plan is certainly not a short-term plan on a whim.
On the one hand, national style has always been an important part of content production in the music industry in recent years. The huge music demand market has led to the growth of the creator base, and commercialization has further promoted the market to continue to heat up.
According to data from the Tencent Music Data Research Institute, the total number of Chinese-style music plays in 2020-2021 is more than double that in 2019-2020. At the same time, compared with 2019-2020 in 2020-2021, the number of Chinese-style music works that have played over one million or even over ten million is on an upward trend. The number of popular Chinese-style music in 2020-2021 (over 100 million plays) is 51, an increase of approximately 34% compared to the first year.
But on the other hand, from an industry perspective, the understanding of national style is unclear and the creation market is uneven, resulting in the overall failure of national style music to handle the overwhelming traffic. This further affects the upstream production side – excellent Chinese-style musicians lack the time and space to patiently polish their fine works, and their masterpieces are easily lost in a sea of short-lived emotional choruses.
The Elephant Has Wind was formed under this background.
2022 is regarded as the "super planning year" of Elephant Music Group. This year, Wang Sulong's "jointly signed" album exploded across the Internet with the help of "Let the Heavy Rain Fall". This year, Elephant Music announced that the group will be divided into three major music labels: Elephant Invisible, Elephant Windy, and Elephant Wushuang.
In order to provide stage support for potential newcomers, Elephant quickly launched a live music brand and completed its first performance "Audio" on March 10, 2023. Currently, tickets for the second show "Listen to Summer" in Chengdu have been officially opened. Performance information shows that Si Nan, Hu Rui, Wei An, Pan Huiqi, and Weng Junqi are all on the guest lineup.
It can be found that in the collaborative operation of the label, Elephant's planning and operation for artists can be more holistic.
Returning to the sub-circuit, Elephant Youfeng is vertically exploring the Chinese-style music track. The industry regards this move as one of the strategies of the Elephant Music Group to cope with changes in the Chinese-style music market. Its core goal is to further expand the team of high-quality content creators and produce more homemade Chinese-style content.
Take the leading Chinese-style musician Li Changchao as an example. Since 2023, Li Changchao has released 4 personal singles, and the cooperation scope spans games, radio dramas and animation theme songs. From an operational perspective, expanding the scope of cooperation can help Chinese-style musicians and even Chinese-style music go further.
At the same time, in terms of enriching and diversifying the image of musicians, especially when the performance industry has not fully recovered last year, Li Changchao is equipped with personal micro-documentary short films to maintain exposure. In addition to tours, the business section also includes personal performances.
All of this is conveying an important message to the market and audiences for musicians, that is: Chinese-style musicians are serious about making Chinese-style music. In the process, Elephant Youfeng also showed his insight and understanding of Chinese style music and his ability to amplify the talents of musicians.
Returning to the "Elephant Has the Wind·National Style Music Academy" offline class, Elephant Has the Wind to practice Chinese style, in addition to continuing the steady growth of existing business lines and the steady advancement of offline performances, this year will continue Deeply cultivate creative talents.
No matter how the times change and how the music communication model changes, only by building a healthier content production model can the healthy growth of the industry be achieved. The elephant has the wind and is chasing the wind.