The deliberate mistranslation of the Chinese name and the sale of dog meat on the head of a sheep are the usual tricks of the "water group".Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Tao TaoEdited by Li Wei
Header image** Visual China
Orchestras with the titles of "Royal" and "Philharmonic" are not always equated with high-end orchestras.
On December 30, 2023, the Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra issued a clarification statement on the fraudulent use of its name by the Hubei Yangtze River Philharmonic Orchestra
The 2024 Wuhan New Year Symphony will be performed at the Luojiashan Theater on December 31, 2023 released by Damai.com, and the Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra's 2024 New Year** will be performed at the Wuhan Qintai Hall on December 31, 2023, and tickets will only be sold in the official hall of Qintai. The performance orchestra in the ticket sales information on Damai.com is marked as "Hubei Yangtze River Philharmonic Orchestra", but the profile of the Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra is used, which is false information.
Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra's official WeChat information. Coincidentally, approaching the New Year's Day holiday, on December 22, at the Shijiazhuang Grand Theater in Hebei Province, the "Royal Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra" staged a New Year's party here. After the performance, many audience members shouted "refund tickets", causing an uproar. Afterwards, the Shijiazhuang Grand Theater gave a full refund on the grounds that the actor was "ill".
As mentioned above,Deliberately mistranslating Chinese names and selling dog meat on sheep's heads are the usual tricks of many "water groups".
Amateur performers or students from some European countries may want to travel to China, and they will find some recruitment information for touring orchestras in China, so that they can earn money while traveling. Li Jue, a musician who has worked in a symphony orchestra for more than 20 years, said.
In terms of external factors, there are many reasons why "water masses" can be popular. "The lack of discernment of the orchestra's qualifications by ordinary audiences is one of the reasons for being 'cut leeks'. Li Jue added.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, some characteristics of the theater's business model and business indicators also restrict the quality of the orchestras and song and dance troupes that cooperate with the theater.
Sun Tong, a young performance planner, revealed: "In order to achieve the revenue target of the theater, domestic theaters will have certain assessment requirements for the number of performances in a certain period of time, and the cooperation with the 'water group' can objectively reduce the pressure on the theater's operation." A large number of theaters in China cooperate with orchestras on a rental basis, and the box office of the orchestra will not affect the revenue of the theater, so it is difficult for the theater to directly control the quality of the orchestra. ”
The presence of a water mass,It is also because the ticketing platform has failed to play a basic gatekeeping role in the basic qualifications of the performance. Regarding the above-mentioned Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra's sale of performance tickets with false profiles, Damai Wuhan's official Weibo did not give any explanation after the incident. "China Entrepreneur" contacted the relevant person in charge of Damai in this regard, but the other party did not reply.
Although the "water troupe" continues to survive to this day, industry insiders are still optimistic about the future development of theater and orchestras.
Today's theaters often carry out ** appreciation courses on weekends to enhance the public's ** appreciation, and through the way of benefiting the people, they can avoid the pit 'water group' for the audience as much as possible. Sun Tong introduced.
In Li Jue's view, the market itself can also do good money to drive out bad money: "From the perspective of management, there is actually a professional difficulty in the identification of 'water mass', not only in the translation problem, but also in the appreciation of demo (sample). But,The fermentation of word-of-mouth can make the touring 'water ball' gradually lose the market, which will be the best way to eliminate it. ”
On New Year's Day 2024, Xu Li gritted her teeth and bought three tickets for the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra Berlin for her family of three, each ticket ** as high as 880 yuan. She was full of joy and thought that she had fulfilled her daughter's wish to watch a famous orchestra, but she didn't know that she had fallen for the impostor.
According to Xu Li's inquiry, the full foreign name of the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin is "Deutsches Symphonie- Orchester Berlin", which is a famous German symphony orchestra, and the foreign name of the orchestra on the promotional poster of the "Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra" purchased by Xu Li does not have the word "symphonie (symphony)".
After learning that she had been deceived, Xu Li first applied for a refund for Damai, but Damai refused to refund on the grounds that "the ticket is a valuable performance voucher, not an ordinary commodity, and the cultural services carried behind it have the characteristics of timeliness and scarcity". After that, Xu Li dialed 12315 again, but there was no way to complain.
Xu Li's experience is just a typical case of many middle-class people being deceived by copycat orchestras. Search for water mass on Xiaohongshu, and you can see related topics 8280,000 views.
Compared with previous years, on New Year's Day this year, the international "water troupe" is particularly raging, which is related to the trough of domestic performances for several years, especially the quiet period of overseas performances - the audience's consumption demand for foreign orchestras has grown explosively, butThe supply of the holiday market cannot meet the consumer demand.
According to public data, during the New Year's Day holiday in 2024, a total of 153 theaters in Beijing will hold a total of 268 sets and 807 commercial performances, attracting more than 21 audiences60,000 people, box office revenue of about 535380,000 yuan. Year-on-year growth in 2023. 8%。
However, in the notes on Xiaohongshu's "water group", many industry insiders mentioned that the global tours of well-known overseas dramas and orchestras usually do not focus on the Christmas-New Year's Day cycle, which is generally the holiday of top orchestras in Europe and the United States, or some orchestras will perform in high-level halls in their own countries.
Going back further, the "water troupe" took root in China because of the development of the domestic economy and the growth of the audience's pursuit of spirituality, but there was still a lack of discrimination about whether the performance group was a well-known orchestra and how well the orchestra performed it.
Overseas "water balls" harvest the middle class, not exclusive to China. In the 70s of the last century, Japan's economy took off after the war, and the Japanese at that time had an equally strong demand for Schubert's 15 "String Quartets" and Dior, but the Japanese people's appreciation of ** was not enough, which provided soil for the breeding of "water balls".
By the beginning of this century, the development of China's ** industry has entered a similar trajectory. According to the "2022 China ** Industry Development Report".From 2013 to 2019, the box office revenue of China's ** performances increased from 43600 million yuan increased to 737.9 billion yuan. Among them, from 2016 to 2019, the average annual compound growth rate of the box office exceeded 15%. In 2021, the box office of the ** performance market has recovered to 4.7 billion yuan.
The proportion of petty bourgeois youth continues to grow, and aesthetic education is becoming more and more important among middle-class families in China. Listening to the ** meeting has become a way for more middle-class people to cultivate their sentiments, but the popularization of music theory has not yet been achieved, plusThe prejudice of some viewers against "the moon is rounder in foreign countries" has formed conditions for the invasion of overseas "water masses".
New Weekly quoted Xu Yao, a commentator, as saying: "Since the 90s of the last century, there have been domestic performers doing the business of 'water troupes', and they have taken advantage of the Chinese audience's yearning for foreign orchestras, thinking that as long as they are from abroad, it is fine." In this way, a large number of foreign orchestras that impersonated and changed their names and resumes went to China to make money. ”
In addition to the lack of audience discernment,The current situation of supervision and operation of the offline industry is also related to the fact that the "water mass" can still survive in the cracks.
The difficulty in the qualification review of the orchestra is mainly due to the lack of professionalism of the practitioners. Li Jue said that before any performance, complete procedures will be completed locally: "The name of the orchestra, the qualifications of the cast and crew, the identity information, and the performance demo are all among them." However, for the reviewers, it is not only necessary to clarify the basic information of the orchestra, but also the translation of the original name of the orchestra and the quality of the content of the demo. ”
For theaters, out of the need for survival, they have to complete a certain number of performances throughout the year, which objectively leads to the difficulty of ensuring the content quality of the orchestra cooperating with the theater, and the demands of the theater and the audience are not completely consistent. Sun Tong said.
Especially for second- and third-tier cities, the cooperation costs of well-known orchestras and song and dance troupes are very high'Water group' has become a way for many theaters to improve their performance. Li Jue also told "Chinese Entrepreneur".
In addition, the cooperation mode between the theater and the orchestra also determines the low entry threshold for the orchestra's performance to a large extent.
Li Jue introduced that at present, there are three main cooperation modes between the theater and the orchestra: the rental mode, which is also the most common, the theater only charges the orchestra for rent; In the packaging cooperation model, the theater does a good job of planning and organizing, and after paying a fixed performance fee to the orchestra, the remaining box office revenue belongs to the theater; Theater and orchestra box office share.
For the first model, the theater does not bear the box office risk, so it does not interfere too much with the orchestra's content moderation. During holidays such as New Year's Day and Spring Festival, when the rental fee is high, the more orchestra cooperation is better. Under the second model, since the theater bears all the revenue risks and is responsible for planning, the theater may also be in trouble in terms of external publicity. The third model does not rule out the existence of theaters and orchestras working together to exaggerate propaganda. Li Jue revealed.
In order to maintain the lasting influence of the brand, the quality of the performances is relatively high. Sun Tong introduced.
It is understoodAlso under pressure from KPIs are major ticketing platforms. According to the staff of a ticketing platform, the ticketing platform will also issue relevant indicators for the number of online performances every year, "Towards the end of the year, especially when rushing KPIs, the 'water group' may be used to rush the year-end performance."
In addition to the perennial performance pressure, since 2023, the performance pressure hanging over the theater and platform has also increased further after the special period.
Although there are a wide range of factors for the spread of "water mass" in China, in the view of many people in the industry, the living space of "water group" in the market will be gradually compressed over time.
First of all, in Li Jue's view, after the audience consciously improves the discrimination of the "water group", the market has a strong ability to drive out bad money.
Li Jue gave several simple ways to avoid pits and "water masses"."Use a search engine to search for the original name of the orchestra in foreign languages, not just the Chinese name; Search for command resumes; Find out whether the soloists and soloists of the orchestra are famous ** artists, such as Lang Lang and Wang Yujia. ”
According to the ** weekly report, consumers can start from three aspects when screening orchestras:
First, select overseas famous groups to compete to visit China during the peak period. For example, the Shanghai Spring International Festival, the Chengdu International Festival, the Harbin Summer Festival, the Beijing International Festival, etc.
Second, if you want to choose the New Year's schedule, you need to recognize the brand of the New Year's meeting, preferably a famous theater meeting in depth. For example, the Great Hall of the People, the Beijing New Year, the National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and the Xinghai Hall Guangzhou New Year, etc.
Third, in second- and third-tier cities, consumers need to pay attention to whether the order will be within the season announced by the orchestra before consumption. **Season refers to the annual performance plan of professional orchestras, which is generally carried out and planned according to the time of the New Year.
In fact, with the growing efforts of social ** in word-of-mouth fermentation and "water group" pit avoidance teaching, the living space of "water group" has been compressed on a large scale.
Independent music critic "Gege Says ggtalk" mentioned on Xiaohongshu: "The water group can't be sold, so I have to launch a ** fire sale!" A Christmas **meeting in Beizhan**, a 1200 yuan ticket is only 60 yuan, and a 400 yuan ticket is as low as 20 yuan! "This is obviously the result of the joint education of the market by industry practitioners and senior music fans.
Notes from independent music critic "Gege Says GGTALK". At the same time, theater companies and theaters have been focusing on improving the appreciation of classical music among ordinary audiences. According to Sun Tong, many theaters will do some performances for the benefit of the people on weekends, including guided tours of famous artists, and will guide the content of the performances between performances.
Of course, in addition to the audience itself, if the "water group" is to withdraw from the market, the managers of other institutions in the industry are also duty-bound.
The professionalism of the orchestra planning also needs to be improved. At present, our theater will do some relevant training on weekends to enhance the understanding of art disciplines and music theory knowledge of the management personnel, and improve their professionalism. Sun Tong revealed.
As a performance planner, Sun Tong said that he is also a very important gatekeeper of the performance. "Before I work with a performance group, I will check the performance qualifications of the company behind it, the time it was established, the representative works, whether it is on the list of dishonesty, and whether it has operated successful cases. Sun Tong introduced. These can also be used as a reference for the audience who have an understanding of the company's operation.
In addition, in Sun Tong's view, for performance venues across the country, more policy support may be needed, so that offline performances can completely recover the vitality of a few years ago: "'Water group' is objectively a way to quickly monetize, and when the operating pressure is reduced, the quality will also be improved." ”
Sun Tong and Li Jue are pseudonyms in the article.
Reference: Don't be fooled, many classical orchestras are "water groups" who come to China to make money", New Weekly.
The water group "returns, how should the audience polish their eyes? |Controversy", *Weekly.
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