According to Baidu internal staff, Baidu content ecological department has newly established a product group, secretly hatching a new music project, which will include an online APP and a series offline music events.
The online APP will focus on the short-video area and compete with Tik Tok, also known as Douyin（抖音）in China, while the offline music will be directly get in position like a famous music TV program , I’m a singer, where the show will invite some professional musicians to compete.
The project is still in a very early stage, which will led by Chen Lei, Director of Baidu News and Content Ecology. The existing team members do not exceed 10 people, and most of them are transferred from other departments of Baidu Content Ecology.
The live streaming and short video app market is (still) absolutely booming in China. According to China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association，Chinese short video market has reached 609 million users as of June 2018. The market size of the video content industry in the whole year is expected to exceed 2016 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.1%.
Bytedance is dominating Chinese short video screens and Douyin（TikTok）is potentially the most beloved app among China’s youth at this time. Douyin has over 200 million daily active users (DAU) in China with a monthly active user (MAU) count of over 400 million as of December 2018. Baidu and Tencent are stepping into this area with series of apps, including Haokan（好看）, Weesee（微视）.
Baidu has put it efforts in the apps competition. During the Spring Festival this year, Baidu invested nearly 1.2 billion yuan to subsidize Baidu APP and the above short video products.During the Baidu Spring Festival launch event, Baidu APP’s ranking in the iOS free download list rose rapidly. From February 5th to February 7th (first to third day), it ranked first, and then began to fall rapidly, falling to 33 on February 13th.
When it comes to the content, China is one of the most populated countries in the world with over 1.3 billion people, 75% of which listen to music regularly.
Tencent and Bytedance have done a lot to maintain its video users. Tencent is programing a Chinese local idol show-Produce 101 China.
QQMusic (named after Tencent’s original messaging service, QQ), is the second largest music streaming service. Tencent acquired the #1 and #3 music services, Kugou and Kuwo, when it bought majority stakes in their parent company, China Music Corporation (CMC) in 2016.
Bytedance has a content incubator in Chinese main cities to produce high quality video contents. It’s the very field if Baidu hopes to seating at the table of short video industry.
