中国流媒体市场充满了可能性和陷阱
上周, a who’s who of the streaming media industry gathered on the shores of the Pacific Ocean to breathe in the salt-laced air, 与同事交流, and hear presentations spanning the gamut from how-tos to how-not-tos.
在日落时分，下班后的活动 流媒体西部 at the Huntington Beach Hyatt Regency—while the streaming industrialists are enjoying cold beverages, 良好的谈话, and an awesome band—it would have benefited the industry as a whole to collectively cast our gaze as far west as possible across the ocean waves.
The other side of the Pacific is ringed with countries such as Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and China. 这, 亚太市场(APAC), 流媒体市场是否充满了潜力和陷阱, full of growth opportunities and tricky licensing bridges to navigate.
这是最新的陷阱之一, which only recently came to my attention in the form of a data point on an enterprise video platform (EVP) white paper I was commissioned to create, is the need for online video providers to obtain an Internet Content Publishing (ICP) license in China.
事实证明, 不管你的内容在中国有多受欢迎, it will most likely suffer significant delays and lower quality if it is streamed from a content delivery network (CDN) outside the Great Firewall of China. In fact, some of the content itself may not even traverse the firewall.
这 leads to the natural technical conclusion: Host Chinese-facing videos within the Great Firewall of China, 或者至少将内容缓存在中国大陆的某个地方. But this delivery conundrum, it turns out, is more political than technical in nature.
Companies that want to host on-demand content in China need to either host it with an ICP-compliant company or obtain their own ICP licenses. Even those multinationals that use an EVP for subsidiaries or key Chinese partners—which may be linked to the corporation’s headquarters country in Europe or North America via a virtual private network (VPN)—need to obtain an ICP for content that will likely never be available for public consumption.
Recent statements by Chinese government agencies are adding an additional wrinkle, even for those websites and applications that emphasize live- and social-media-focused video delivery.
Chinese government agency SAPPRFT (short for the State Administration of Press, 出版, 广播, Film and Television) halted live streaming on several Chinese websites in late June 2017, 包括火爆的微博, which is a NASDAQ-listed company (ticker symbol WB) owned by a Chinese government entity called Sina (ticker symbol SINA).
最初的公告导致新浪股价下跌近20美元, 或者大约20%, 在新闻出版广电总局对微博进行打击后的几天里. 此后，该股已恢复到6月前的水平, and Weibo itself seems to have weathered the storm by quickly issuing a few key changes to its live-streaming and video-sharing features, 其股价在过去两个月里上涨了25%以上.
根据 Marbridge日报》 two parts from the new Weibo terms of service highlight the changes:
第一个, “With the exception of accounts operated by media and government entities, account holders who do not have a type-1 audio-visual license may not upload political and current affairs news programming.”
第二个, even those with a license weren’t allowed to continue posting until verified, 正如微博所说:... account holders who have a license must provide proof of licensing to Weibo, 这样微博就可以验证他们的身份.”
What’s interesting about this move by the SAPPRFT is the fact that Weibo hosted its content on two approved and licensed service providers: Miaopai and Yizhibo.
Karen Chan, an analyst for Jeffries, made the case for Weibo to weather the storm unharmed. Her response was fairly quickly picked up by Barron’s less than 24 hours after the initial statement by SAPPRFT.
据陈说, all of the video served and streamed on Weibo “is hosted exclusively through Miaopai and Yizhibo respectively, 这两家公司都属于亿夏科技, 拥有所需执照的母公司.”
Yet, 不到2天, 微博已经改变了它的服务条款, including this potentially discourse-killing new rule: “Weibo will no longer accept uploads of videos over 15 minutes in length.”
《百家乐软件》文章中提到的另一家公司是陌陌(Momo), 提供付费直播账号的服务. 它的股票也经受住了广电总局的风暴, but at the time of this writing in late August it had seen a drop-off in value of almost 20 percent, 尽管收入比去年增长了200%以上.
股价下跌的原因? Lack of investor confidence in Momo’s ability to grow the number of paying users for its live-streaming services. 根据陌陌的服务分析, the number of new paying users is “more or less flat” compared to the previous quarter.
Might it be possible that the SAPPRFT statements requiring licenses for anyone live-streaming content in China could have significantly chilled—or at least significantly delayed —market growth for live streaming there?
That’s a question to ponder for those of us on this side of the Pacific.
[本文发表于2017年10月号。 流媒体杂志 “从西向东凝视”."]
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