VOCALOID BiliBili buys majority stake in VSinger

[Exemplar]

English language press release- https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/bilibili-expands-content-offering-in-virtual-idol-market-with-zenith-investment-20180921-00166

Chinese articles about the purchase- B站增持虚拟偶像“洛天依”母公司股份 成控股股东 & bilibili增持虚拟偶像“洛天依”母公司股份成为控股股东 - 国产漫画 - cnBeta.COM

The reason why the press release is in english is because the company is traded on the NASDAQ exchanges in New York City.

 

[uncreepy]

Wow, thanks for the info!

 

[Bryłka]

Sounds interesting, I wonder what we may get from it :o

 

[hakimi97]

Urm, I don't think this will be a good news... Unless they will promise that they will not jeopardize the future Vsinger concert by lying to other people that the concert is "solely" for Vsinger crews, but ending up adding "special guests" without telling people that they are adding the guests. ???

 

[uncreepy]

I looked on Wikipedia about bilibili. The creator of it initially made a website called "Mikufans" (after Hatsune Miku) and later relaunched it as bilibili.

So it's either out of love for Vocaloids, virtual idols, wanting the next best thing to Miku, or wanting a monetary part of the rising popularity of that type of nerdy stuff in China that they are doing this.

The main purpose of bilibili is for watching anime, gaming related stuff, has comics, music, and more (it's like niconico/Youtube, after all). So maybe they just want to have the Vsingers for advertising purposes or just the fact that the creator is kind of a Vocaloid nerd? I assume they might have bilibili-exclusive Vsinger concerts or something.

After a bit more research:
https://www.jiemian.com/article/2490707.html says the majority of Vsinger fans in China gather at bilibili and if my translation is correct, it says bilibili will be financing the Vsinger virtual idol group.

More research from B站成洛天依母公司控股股东 增持泽立仕股票_行业观察_电商报 :
”B站董事长兼CEO陈睿表示：“随着技术的发展，虚拟偶像文化将迎来爆发期，为用户提供全新的娱乐体验。”
My sloppy translation:
bilibili CEO says "along with development of technology, want to lead outbreak of virtual idol culture, want to give users new entertainment experience."

 

[hakimi97]

Yup, I agree that bilibili has the potential to provide a really strong positive impact on the development of virtual singers and idols in china, but I guess their execution plan could become much smoother? If we do the comparison between vsinger live in 2017 and 2018, although the 2018's one improved a lot compared to previous year, the 2017's one actually has successfully created a good atmosphere. And the 2018's one is kinda awkward in terms of inviting the guest (you know who he is). Really hope that they will overcome that problem in future concert, no more unnecessary "surprises".

 

[YunīC]

And the 2018's one is kinda awkward in terms of inviting the guest (you know who he is). Really hope that they will overcome that problem in future concert, no more unnecessary "surprises".

What do you mean with unnecessary "surprises"? The people after the vsingers, Bilibilis mascots & that one guy were known to perform as well as far as I know.

Bilibili Macro link 2017 also had many other guests next to the vsingers (Stardust, Yan Xi, IA, Miss monochrome and of course Bilibilis mascots and some more that idk about)
The difference is that last year Vsinger had 2 concerts, one was Bilibili macro link while the other one was vsinger live.

This year however it was different. This years bilibili live was also handled as this years vsinger live. Possibly because of the lack of other guests + I am guessing making 2 concerts again would have been to expensive.

Tbh. in a way you can feel sorry about what came after the vsingers because nobody cared about them honestly.

 

[hakimi97]

If you want to know, Ootengu from Onmyoji is kind of the "big surprise" due to last minute addition of him into the concert. The last minute that I meant is 10 days before the concert began. And unfortunately they didn't mention anything about "special guest" or anything related, and in this situation, bilibili could execute better by just adding the words or space "special guest" into the poster, and just this small addition can mean a lot in reducing the tense between two fan bases.



If you want to know how critical the situation, you might have a look onto this page. (many fans blame the bilibili on their poor execution)

微博正文 - 微博HTML5版

如何看待2018年bml-vr的vsinger专场出现大天狗且bilibili锁票？ - 知乎

https://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=5803326779&mo_device=1&ssid=c551353636323539356c6169460f&from=844b&uid=0&pu=usm@0,sz@320_1001,ta@iphone_2_7.0_3_537&bd_page_type=1&baiduid=E948698B90E6BDCAA1488446F25AC750&tj=www_normal_1_0_10_title&referer=m.baidu.com?pn=0&

And what happened during the concert? Many of chinese vocaloid fan base who is not fans of Ootengu has decided to ignore his existence during the concert. The evidence is on this concert video, which shows less amount of audience supporting him compared to support that is received from Vsinger and 22 33. You may have a look onto the youtube link provided as below, and you can see many people didn't put up

For me, indeed this is not a good vibe especially for a concert to have this kind of awkwardness and tense during the concert. And because of this, I really wish that in future bilibili will plan better in future concert

Urm not really, in china there is quite majority of people who care vsinger, so the things "no one doesn't care" is not appropriate to talk about due to Vsinger has a quite large fan base in China, and there are lots of people who indeed care even loyal to Vsinger's future development.

What I mean from everything that I want to talk about is, hopefully bilibili could lead vsinger to another level of high standards and being a better and more professional company, reduce these kinds of incidence

 

[uncreepy]

Thanks for your detailed explanation, hakimi. I've never heard of Ootengu before (or those 2 girls at the bottom of the ad). I guess it seems like they want to use the Vsingers to sneakily promote other idols. I'm really curious to read the comments you linked to when I have more time, but my Chinese is really bad, so it'll take a while to read. ^^;

 

[YunīC]

Tbh. in a way you can feel sorry about what came AFTER the vsingers because nobody cared about them honestly.

Urm not really, in china there is quite majority of people who care vsinger, so the things "no one doesn't care" is not appropriate to talk about due to Vsinger has a quite large fan base in China, and there are lots of people who indeed care even loyal to Vsinger's future development.

Where did you read that I said nobody cares for the vsingers? I said people didn't care about everything that isn't the vsingers!!! (I know that the vsingers are VERY popular, I mean Ordinary disco was even in a drama & a talent show so....)

Also I didn't know they only added him 10 days before the concert!! Wow what a bs they did, I would be mad too, I really hope Bilibili improves on that. (Also I can't read those articles sorry)
I just thought you assumed that Bilibili macro link was the same as last years normal live without Bilibili.

(or those 2 girls at the bottom of the ad).

Those are Bilibilis Mascots!!

 

[Exemplar]

Not trying to necro this but this is relevant to the thread. I was looking around their investor page and saw they had uploaded a PDF of their 2018 annual earnings report and it went into detail about Bili's acquisition of VSinger. On page 187 it mentioned this...

In September 2018, the Group entered into an agreement to increase its shareholding to acquire the majority equity interests in Zenith, the owner of a series of famous virtual singers, such as Luo Tianyi. Prior to this transaction, the Group owned 7.4% of equity interest in Zenith, which was accounted for as long-term investments using alternative measure method. The total consideration was RMB296.8 million in cash. Following the completion of this transaction in September 2018, the Group held approximately 71.9% of equity interests in Zenith and Zenith became a consolidated subsidiary of the Group. As of December 31, 2018, the amount of unpaid cash consideration of this transaction was RMB121.7 million.

(Note: As of April 25th 2019, the conversion of 296.8 million RMB is roughly 43.98 million dollars USD/39.51 million euros and 121.7 million RMB is roughly 18.03 million dollars USD/16.20 million euros)

Goodwill arising from this acquisition was attributable to the synergies between virtual idols and the Group’s multiple business streams, including livebroadcasting, advertising, games, virtual idol related derivative products and offline performance events. The goodwill recognized was not expected to be deductible for income tax purpose.

 

[xuu]

Oh wow, I feel like this completely went over my head at the time? This is huge. First thing to note is that this probably means VSinger/Shanghai Henian/Zenith have more money to play with than any other VOCALOID company, so they can basically do what they want. Like, I'd assume they have more money on hand than Yamaha's VOCALOID side does, which is crazy. If they get tired of VOCALOID as an engine at this point they could actually do whatever they want. I think otherwise this probably means there's a lot more gateways to product endorsements etc. through BiliBili and the contents of their concerts should increase in quality a ton. Of course on the downside it does mean that they can piggyback off of VSinger's popularity to promote their own virtual idols, but ultimately I think more virtual idols is a good thing. Heck, we could even see them using this as a way to get BiliBili's mascots onto VOCALOID/Syntheszier V/A new Chinese synth or something.

 

[Exemplar]

Can't believe I overlooked this but Bilibili bought the company who ran their concerts in July and is looking to put vsinger under it's management

Bilibili Expands Commercialization Capacity with Majority Stake in Chaodian

Bilibili Inc. (“Bilibili” or the “Company”) (BILI), a leading online entertainment platform for young generations in China, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Chaodian Inc. (“Chaodian”), through the injection of capital and the acquisition of...

finance.yahoo.com

Upon completion of the transaction, Chaodian will continue to produce and manage Bilibili’s offline-related events and operate talent agency services. In addition, Chaodian will also be responsible for operating the Company’s V-singer business as well as managing the design and production of the Company’s IP-related derivatives.