January 5 morning, shrimp music announcement: due to business development on the adjustment, we will stop shrimp music service on February 5, 2021 at 0:00 pm.

Announcement, senior users have said goodbye to shrimp music, for them, shrimp is not only a tool to listen to songs, but also carries their own memories of more than a decade of containers. The day of the youthful dispersal has finally come.

Rumors come true, shrimp will stop the service

"Jianghu rumors, shrimp music next year in January to close, an era to end?" November 29, 2020, microblogging authentication for the "former Warner Music / Universal Music China marketing director" microblogging user Xiang Zheng microblogging said, shrimp music is about to close in January next year.

With a January 5 announcement, the rumors of Shrimp Music's closure became a prophecy.

According to the shrimp music announcement, on February 5, 2021 at 0:00, shrimp music will stop all music content consumption scenarios, only to retain the account asset processing, web-side musician cash services; March 5, 2021 at 0:00, in addition to the web-side sound screw musician authorization services to maintain operations, all other operations are halted and shut down the servers, at that time and later will not be able to log in.

Small Yao is a senior user of shrimp music, so many years of habit, suddenly to be gone, she felt empty. "From junior high school to listen to SHE, high school to listen to Mayday, the end of last year suddenly said to close down, I was panicked, and quickly boarded to see the song list is still there, the music can be listened to, the results of this day still came. How to say it, the feeling is that the youth are gone, so many songs transferred to other platforms have no resources."

In the minds of many users, shrimp music has a "professional", "niche", "fresh" and many other labels, can not leave the shrimp music is mainly due to Shrimp music classification, there is a very detailed list of music styles, audiophile friendly.

"Too bad, even if you simply look at the music classification and album singles EP and other classifications, so far it is also the most professional shrimp rice" "cry! Shrimp daily push than NetEase cloud do not know where to go high", "shrimp is really my inner most secret white moonlight", "before looking at the 88 VIP homepage on the line of NetEase cloud music have predicted that there will be industrial consolidation, there will soon be such a day, but still very reluctant to give up ah, the The memory of the middle school era, thanks for the company"...... shrimp music shutdown news came out, many netizens in its official microblogging comments to express their reluctance to shrimp.

VIP refunds arrive in seconds, how much can be refunded is not easy to say

For the average user, whether the music data stored by heart will be lost, and what to do with their own purchased digital music albums, is a big problem. In response, Shrimp Music offers a solution. In the shrimp music home page, provides a song list of specific methods of transfer, the user can also be static web pages, Excel and other forms of export song list in the track.

Shrimp music also opened a member refund portal, from January 5 to March 4, users can shrimp music mobile app terminal "stop service announcement page" to apply for a refund. From the practical point of view of the China News Network reporter, the refund speed is very guaranteed.

5 morning, the reporter in the verification of identity and fill in the verification code, less than half a minute, the refund has been sent to the associated Alipay account. However, it should be noted that if the shrimp VIP is 88VIP sent, it will not be refunded.

Shrimp VIP refunds arrive in seconds. Alipay screenshot

While refunds are available, how much money can be returned is a big mystery.

Shrimp music veteran user Zhang Wendao (a pseudonym) said Taobao history orders show that he once bought Super VIP in late 2017, the original price of 128 yuan a year, paid 28 yuan. At present, his shrimp music still has nearly three years of super VIP and one year of VIP. even at the promotional price, the amount of refund for three years of super VIP should be more than 28 × 3 = 84 yuan, while the actual refund he received was only 46.6 yuan.

Social media also saw a lot of netizens with similar feedback. One user who purchased a 10-year VIP for Shrimp refunded as much as 990 yuan, saying, "Many people got their 10-year VIP at a low price, and Shrimp actually refunded it at the regular price, which is too conscientious." But some users who also bought a 10-year VIP had their refund page show an amount of only 432 yuan, and wondered why the amount was twice as bad.

The same 10-year VIP, some people can refund 990 yuan, some only 432 yuan, the difference is double. Image from Weibo screenshot

Born in "Let musicians make money"

Looking back at the trajectory of Shrimp's 14-year birth. "Idealism" is a word that can't be avoided.

In 2006, Wang Hao, an engineer at Ali, decided to pick up his college-era musical aspirations and joined forces with a few friends to launch Emumo, the predecessor of Shrimp Music.

Emumo is an acronym for Earn Music&Money, which means "let musicians earn money". Wang Hao is a guitarist in a band, and being in this circle, he can especially appreciate the difficulties of musicians. Shrimp is one of the earliest music platforms in China to open a payment model, although the songs on the platform are uploaded by users, but if you want to download them, you need to pay for them, and these fees are paid to the copyright holders to realize the ideal of "letting the musicians make money".

Shrimp music users can modify the shrimp music classification, but also can upload a variety of tracks. At that time, the domestic Internet music copyright regulation is still relatively loose, this choice makes shrimp rice "the most complete music classification" "the most diverse music library", gathered the most elite quality of music fans. Because of this, at the end of 2020 circulated in the music APP contempt chain, shrimp music still occupies the top.

Big fish eat small fish, shrimp decline

In 2013, shrimp music joined the Ali business group. At that time, Wang Hao judged: "the future will be a big capital into the giant game, shrimp as an independent music platform will be more dangerous, with some big groups, big platform together, will be safer."

After the acquisition of shrimp music, in March 2015, Ali will shrimp music and every day music merger composed of Ali music. Ali music was established in the year, the domestic online music suffered the most stringent copyright order, the industry entered the era of genuine, copyright has become the key.

July 15, 2015, Ali Group announced that Gao Xiaosong, Song Ke formally joined the Ali Music, respectively, as chairman and CEO.Gao Xiaosong took office, will be every day music will be reformatted as the Ali Planet, aiming to create an "online music trading platform for the whole industry chain", shrimp music is gradually marginalized. This is widely regarded as a key point in the decline of shrimp.

The daily music users found that after the update, the familiar logo into a purple planet, the original listening entrance can not be found, but as if into a shopping site, Ali Planet is also named "music e-commerce". This revamp was met with a massive user boycott, and the AliPlanet program quickly fell off after one year on the market.

In the process, Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music have surged ahead, leaving Shrimp Music behind. Backed by the rich and powerful Tencent, in terms of copyright, QQ music has become the king. Netease cloud music copyright is not as much as QQ music, but Netease cloud music social attributes so that the comment area has become a kind of pop culture, and since then in the field of copyright to catch up, but also let it in the brutal fight to survive.

Shrimp music in the copyright although some efforts, but the gap with competitors is widening. Knowing the question, "Why shrimp music gradually to decline?" This question under the most liked answer is: "there is no decline is not good to judge, but the copyright is decreasing day by day is an indisputable fact, the collection of a lot of music because of the lack of copyright, turned into a large large piece of blank, think about it quite heartbreaking."

The data show that in December 2019, QQ music active users 316.441 million; cool dog music and cool my music in the second and third place, the number of active users were 267.991 million and 116.847 million. Netease cloud music and shrimp music monthly activity ranked four or five, respectively, 80.818 million and 28.174 million people.

It is worth noting that the music APP market share of the top three are all Tencent's, from the data point of view, shrimp music and Tencent Department of monthly activity is no longer in an order of magnitude.

And NetEase cloud music is doing well. 2020 August, NetEase cloud music vinyl VIP annual card rights officially joined the Taobao 88VIP membership rights, 88VIP members can be in the shrimp music or NetEase cloud music in the two products of their own choice. This means that in Ali's ecosystem, the status of NetEase cloud music has been treated as its own.