The rapid growth of the main income of virtual UP surpasses that of virtual singers and super-realistic idols
China's virtual idol "to be exploded" market is expected to reach 1.3 billion yuan this year
China's virtual idol market began to develop at a faster pace after 2011. In 2022, the core market size is expected to reach 1.3 billion yuan, and the growth rate will decline in the next 3 to 5 years.
However, at this stage, China's virtual idol market has problems such as serious infringement, single IP, and lack of diversified monetization structure.
Creating IP and landing metaverse scenes will become the future development trend of virtual idols.
Not all virtual people are virtual idols
Singers, UP owners, and bloggers are the main identities
Virtual people are virtual characters created by artificial techniques such as painting and modeling.
Virtual idols, on the other hand, have higher "standards", requiring virtual people to carry out idol activities and have their own virtual settings and works output.
Different from real idols, virtual idols rely more on UGC (User Generated Content) to improve their personalities, activities and popularity, so virtual idols are closer to fans.
In the background, with the help of motion capture equipment, the person who plays and fills the virtual idol setting and content in real time is called "the person in the middle".
According to the visual style, virtual idols can be divided into two types: two-dimensional and hyper-realistic.
The visual image of the two-dimensional virtual idol is inclined to the anime style, and the visual image of the hyper-realistic virtual idol is more similar to the real person.
On the basis of this classification, according to the production method, two-dimensional virtual idols can continue to be divided into 2D and 3D styles, and hyper-realistic virtual idols can continue to be divided into virtual and real and pure CG styles.
At this stage, virtual idols mainly have three active identities: virtual singers, virtual UP hosts and virtual bloggers. Although virtual idols usually take various forms of activities on the Internet platform, such as singing, dancing, chatting entertainment, posting blog posts, etc., Each identity has its own form of focused activity.
The number of completely virtual pure AI virtual idols is very small and is still in the exploratory stage.
The main income of virtual UP surpasses that of virtual singers
Hyper-realistic idols show their potential
According to the "2022 China Virtual Idol Industry Research Report" released by iResearch, the core market size of China's virtual idol industry has maintained a high growth rate since 2019, and is expected to reach 1.3 billion yuan in 2022.
Before 2019, virtual singers contributed the main revenue of the market; by 2020, affected by factors such as the rising demand for home entertainment during the epidemic, and the deployment of domestic Internet leading companies to have their own virtual UP hosts and increase their promotion efforts, China's virtual UP hosts will become more popular. The audience has expanded, and the income scale has grown rapidly, surpassing virtual singers. After 2021, hyper-realistic virtual idols have entered the public eye, and their marketing effects have been recognized by the brand side, and they have begun to generate a certain amount of business activity income.
As one of the elements of the popular concept metaverse, the technology and marketing value of virtual idols are still expected to further increase in the future, and the core market scale will continue to expand.
However, due to the iterative speed of technology, virtual idols will not have a major breakthrough in the short term, and the growth rate of the market size is expected to drop significantly.
Specifically, the development of Chinese virtual singers faces the pain point of "single IP". Generally, it is difficult for IP to increase popularity and the degree of commercialization is low.
For example, Luo Tianyi, as China's first V-house virtual singer, has a very special meaning in the hearts of Chinese V-circle fans, and has a strong first-mover advantage. Many well-known P masters created excellent UGC songs in the early days, some of them The song became popular all over the Internet, enabling Luo Tianyi to break through the two-dimensional circle and move to the real stage.
The follow-up virtual singers lost their first-mover advantage, more competitors, and the UGC ecosystem was not as active as Luo Tianyi’s circle, and faced the dilemma that it was difficult to develop into a popular virtual idol.
The development of virtual UP owners is similar to the Internet celebrity economy, facing the restriction of a single revenue composition and a high dependence on "people in the middle".
At present, the virtual UP host is more similar to the live host under the virtual shell, and its revenue structure is very similar to that of many Internet celebrity hosts: the core source of income is live broadcast rewards.
However, unlike real-life anchors, virtual UP hosts have fewer opportunities on the corporate and commercial promotion side: only the top virtual UP hosts can endorse or link with brands.
Although the virtual UP master mainly uses virtual appearance and human design to carry out activities, it is difficult to truly escape from reality: the "people in the middle" played in real time under the virtual appearance are still the main force filling the virtual content and the core of fans' attention.
The negative information that has appeared in the industry also shows that once the "people in the middle" or the team produces negative news, the virtual UP master will also be affected, and even face the situation of retirement.
At this stage, there is no virtual UP master who can truly get rid of real people and realize "never collapse".
Can AI virtual idols avoid "collapsed houses"?
to be further explored
At present, the real-time interactive performance of most virtual idols needs to be completed by real-life motion capture, and the virtual UP master is bound to the "People in the Middle". Once the "People in the Middle" has negative news or disagreements with the production team, the virtual UP master will play a virtual role. The UP owner will have a "collapsed house", and the idol value and fan stickiness will be greatly reduced.
The AI of virtual idols can effectively avoid this risk.
AI intelligent virtual voice assistants such as Siri and Xiaodu already have certain interactive capabilities, but "they" are functional virtual people, lacking a virtual image that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
As an entertainment virtual human active in the entertainment track, a mature AI virtual idol needs to have the ability to automatically generate actions and sounds that are close to real people, and to interact with people in real time.
In recent years, many technology companies have made important achievements in the two aspects of voice and interaction, making technical accumulation for the landing of pure AI virtual idols in the future.
Still haven't broken through the niche circle
Virtual singers have the highest awareness
Although in recent years, as the popularity of the concept of virtual idols continues to heat up, people can access virtual idols on various audio and video platforms.
However, at present, virtual idols are still a niche hobby in China, with few followers, and most people still stay at the level of ignorance or only heard of them.
According to the survey results, 16% of people follow virtual idols and have watched virtual idol programs.
Among the people who pay attention to virtual idols, the types of virtual idols with the highest attention rate are virtual UP masters, virtual singers and hyper-realistic virtual idols. Virtual singers have become the virtual idol types that most people pay attention to for the first time.
Compared with non-two-dimensional audiences, two-dimensional fans have a higher sense of identity with the virtual world, and are more accepting and willing to watch virtual idols.
According to the survey results, among the virtual idol audiences, 51% of the audience began to pay attention to virtual idols because of their love for the two-dimensional culture, ranking first among many reasons for concern. platform.
In addition, 93.4% of followers began to follow Chinese virtual idols before 2020, and many followers also followed virtual idols in other regions: 78% followed Japanese and Korean virtual idols, and 32% followed European and American virtual idols.
Compared with overseas virtual idols, Chinese virtual idol followers have more positive evaluations of Chinese virtual idols. For each evaluation indicator, nearly 50% of the followers believe that Chinese virtual idols are better than overseas virtual idols. Among them, the most prominent The five strengths are affinity, language, appearance, personality and talent level.
Chinese virtual idol followers believe that good-looking appearance, interesting personality and professional talent are the three most important elements for a virtual idol. They like to watch virtual idols sing, sing and dance, play games and interact with other idols. .
In addition, Chinese virtual idol followers are more concerned about the ornamental value of the surrounding than the practicality of the surrounding. The most popular official accessories are virtual products, home decorations and hand-made blind boxes. The surrounding with better decorative effect is more popular. .
Future trends
Create IP and land the metaverse
At present, many virtual idols on the market take technology as the core selling point, and keep improving in terms of appearance, sound, and movement.
However, the report believes that another core "idol" value of virtual idols is not entirely dependent on technology.
Starting from the idol audience, the elements that most affect the popularity of a virtual idol are similar to real idols, such as appearance, personality, talent content and affinity.
Some of the existing virtual idols highlight the technical highlights, lack of content filling and affinity creation for the virtual idols themselves, resulting in a small fan circle and fewer core fans, making it difficult to form an IP effect.
At this stage, many B-end brands choose to cooperate with virtual idols, and they see virtual idols as a pioneering "high-tech ICON", which has excellent marketing value.
In the future, with the continuous upgrading of technological concepts and the continuous improvement of technological level, the core competitiveness of a virtual idol will become more and more dependent on content output, and virtual idol operators need to spend more time improving content, creating IP, and realizing added value.
In addition, online games and online social networking are typical scenarios that are more likely to be closer to the ecology of the metaverse, and virtual idols are one of the more representative elements, making it easier to expand commercially.
In the metaverse scene, virtual idols can appear in virtual performances. In recent years, virtual idols and real singers have successfully held virtual concerts in the game, which are welcomed by many players.
Text / Our reporter Chen Si