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——Focus on data and change business
A company with a small size has provoked public outrage many times, but the company is still doing well. How does such a company operate? This can't help but make people curious.
For the mass media, especially self-media, Visual China is a special name. Also because of its "unique" profit model, it has been on the hot searches of public opinion many times.
I often walk by the river without getting my shoes wet. Recently, this company has overturned again.
The author checked the Baidu index, and the attention of Sight China has skyrocketed. Its information index increased by 1944% year-on-year and 2588% month-on-month.
Public opinion is not irrelevant, and the photographer's photo infringement incident that occurred in recent days is also directly reflected in its stock price.
The general course of events is as follows: On the evening of August 15th, photographer Dai Jianfeng (Jeff) posted on Weibo that he received a call from Visual China, who claimed that his pictures were infringing and claimed more than 80,000 yuan. The paradox is that all these pictures that claim to be infringing on Visual China are all taken by Jeff himself.
"I infringe on myself", what kind of experience is this?
Just imagine a situation where Jay Chou just finished a concert and sang 10 songs he wrote. Not long after, a company popped up out of nowhere and called to say that the copyright of the songs he sang at the concert belonged to his company, and that Jay Chou had infringed the copyright, and he had to pay 100,000 yuan for each song. That's probably how it feels.
Of course, this matter itself has been discussed by many people, so we won't repeat it here. Now, let's change the angle. Don't forget that Vision China is a listed company. How and how much money they make has been clearly written in the financial report. Then why don't we look through the financial report to see what kind of business model this company is?
After being suppressed by the "black hole picture incident" for a while, I started to "do it" again in the past two years
According to the performance forecast for the first half of 2023 released by Vision China (the official "Interim Report 2023" needs to be released on August 18), its net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies is 89 million to 103.5 million yuan, an increase over the same period last year : 62.18% - 88.60% , which can be said to be quite "excellent".
Looking at the financial performance of Visual China in recent years, we can find that before 2018, both revenue and net profit maintained a high-speed growth trend.
However, this situation was broken in 2019. What happened in 2019? After the "Black Hole Picture Incident" in 2019 (Vision China took the first black hole photo in human history that a group of scientists worked hard to "take as its own", included it in its own gallery and marked its own copyright). This incident and the many black materials that were picked up later have brought a big blow to the image and commercialization of Visual China.
However, two years after the "black hole picture incident", starting from 2021, Visual China seems to "slow down" again, and its revenue will resume growth from 2021. Although the net profit fell in 2022, it will be realized in 2023. Substantial growth.
The essence is a picture copyright intermediary
Next, we will go deeper and look at the business model of Visual China and how he makes money. Because the 2023 semi-annual report has not been officially released, we will use its 2022 annual report to analyze the business structure. Generally speaking, a company's business structure and business model are relatively stable. Therefore, even the 2022 annual report can basically reflect the core business situation of Visual China.
Let’s first look at the business model of Visual China. In essence, Visual China is an image copyright intermediary. It purchases copyrights from real creators, and then sells them through various channels, and then shares the income with the creators.
There are three sources of its digital content, professional suppliers, individuals and companies own copyrights. According to the 2022 annual report of Visual China, it currently has 500,000 contracted creators , which are an important source of content. According to its 2022 financial report, Visual China currently has 400 million pictures, 30 million videos and 350,000 pieces of music.
In terms of sales, Vision China has 24,000 direct contracted customers, of which more than 80% have annual sales of more than 100,000 yuan. In addition, the company has more than 2.2 million long-tail users. Visual China's current core business is pictures, and its sales of visual content will account for 100% in 2022.
It should be noted that its audio and video sales will increase by 119% year-on-year in 2022. In other words, when you receive a call from Visual China in the future, they may not only ask you for money for pictures, but also for voice and video.
In terms of industries, there are mainly four types of customers in Visual China. In 2022, the revenues of party and government media, advertising marketing and services, brand enterprises, and Internet platforms will account for 36%, 21%, 31%, and 12% respectively. The media + advertising marketing accounted for more than 50%. What this means, the media, especially the majority of self-media practitioners, should "have a deep understanding."
As mentioned above, Visual China is actually an image copyright intermediary. He does not create copyrighted works, but is just a copyright "porter". Therefore, on the one hand, he collects copyright fees, and on the other hand, he must pay copyright fees to the real creators, that is, share.
Let's take a look at the cost structure of Visual China:
It can be found that the biggest cost of Visual China is the operating cost, the main of which is the fee paid to the creator. Taking 2022 as an example, its operating costs account for 46% of its revenue, and its gross profit margin in 2022 is 56.58%. Combining these two data, we can calculate that the share ratio of Visual China to creators is 40%-50%.
Interestingly, the gross profit rate of Visual China continued to rise before 2018. Its gross profit rate in 2017 was 65.86%, which means that the proportion of creators will not exceed 35%. After 2019, its gross profit rate began to show a downward trend, and it is currently stable at around 55%, which means that in recent years, the share of creators has been around 45%. I don’t know if this change is caused by the “black hole” in 2019. picture event".
According to the data of Flush, in the digital media industry, 15 digital media companies such as Visual China, Mango Super Media, Xinhuanet, People.cn, Excellence, and 365.com were selected for comparison. In terms of the net profit rate in the first quarter of 2023, Visual China ranked first with a "good result" of 43.13%, and it was the "No. 1 fault". As a comparison, the industry median is 6.01%, while Xinhuanet and People.cn only have 7.95% and 6.01% respectively.
This data is an achievement for Visual China, but it is not necessarily a good thing for the entire digital media industry.
Such "good results" may be hidden behind many ironic oolongs like taking photos of black holes as their own in 2019, and recently asking photographers to pay copyright fees for their photos.
There is a famous "Haine's Law", any serious accident has symptoms, and behind each accident there are often about 300 accident signs and thousands of accident hazards. It is conceivable that Visual China can make such a funny oolong, and its abuse of copyright must be more than these few times. Otherwise, assuming that Visual China is usually a "law-abiding citizen" and was arrested for the only two violations, and it was known all over the Internet and everyone shouted and beaten, then it would be too unlucky.
Visual China must solve three problems
Whether it is the black hole image incident in 2019 or the recent photographer infringement incident, they are actually sounding the alarm for Visual China - it is no longer possible to continue with the previous approach, and sooner or later something will happen. The author believes that in order to achieve sustainable development, Visual China needs to make significant changes in the following three aspects.
First, the source of content copyright must be legal and compliant, and don't take things that don't belong to you as your own.
If there is an original copyright and the fee is reasonable, it is right to pay a certain copyright fee, which also helps to protect the original. However, there is a premise that you really own the copyright, not claiming to have the copyright.
Visual China has suffered a serious "overturn" twice. The root cause of the problem is that it claims copyright for pictures that it does not have copyright, and charges everywhere. Taking the black hole in 2019 as an example, the European Southern Observatory ESO released the first black hole photo in human history. The copyright belongs to the event horizon telescope cooperation project, and ESO clearly stated that they firmly deny the copyright claim of Visual China. ESO has never copyrighted the picture. Transfer to any individual or organization, and have no contact with Visual China. Visual China has never contacted the real copyright owner. Where did you get the copyright, and you still claim copyright to the common wealth of mankind, such as the first black hole photo, which is too blatant.
Take the recent infringement of photographers as an example. If Visual China has really been authorized by the photographer, then it will be fine. But the actual situation is that there is no such thing at all, and people don't even know that there is such a thing.
Later, Visual China responded: photographer Jeff authorized the pictures to Stocktrek Images, and then tocktrek Images authorized them to Getty Images. Visual China is a partner of Getty Images, so it has the right to sell Jeff's pictures. It's a bit convoluted, but if it's true, it's reasonable.
But the actual situation is not the case. Jeff asked the "Shangjia's Shangjia" Stocktrek Images of Visual China, and they clearly stated that there is no such thing. This is more embarrassing.
Obviously, Visual China does not really own the copyright of Jeff's photography pictures. They probably found a bunch of pictures directly on the Internet, put them in their own library, claimed the copyright of the pictures, and then went around to collect money. I just accidentally kicked the "iron board" this time, and the money has to go to the real author. Before Visual China approached Jeff to ask for 80,000 yuan in copyright fees, they had probably asked many other companies or individuals for money, because Jeff’s photos should not only be available on his own official account, but other media or institutions It should also be used.
Of course, if Jeff's photos were only published on his own account and not anywhere else on the Internet, then this matter would be even more ridiculous. This is like I published an original article on my official account, and then another account reposted it, and the reposted account actually came to sue me for copyright infringement and asked me to lose money.
In Visual China’s 2022 financial report, it clearly stated that it is necessary to improve the content security assurance system. The original words are “to ensure correct content orientation, accurate facts, standardized sources, and legal compliance; strengthen the construction of content management teams and improve content security technical support capabilities , improve the content security management system, improve the contract management system for contributors , and do a good job in accepting reports, etc.” Obviously, the source of the content is not well-regulated, legal and compliant, otherwise there would not be so many jokes.
Moreover, such a problem must not be the negligence of a few grassroots operators, but a problem at the company level. Take the infringement of the photographer Jeff as an example. If it is really the negligence of an individual, after the photographer pointed out the problem, he should quickly find out that they do not have the copyright of those pictures. Compensation and apology should be paid . But from the announcement given behind Visual China, they actually fabricated a seemingly complicated copyright link of "Jeff——Stocktrek Images——Getty Images——Vision China", obviously trying to get away with it.
This is not acceptable.
Lincoln said that you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
To ensure safety and compliance, the most important thing for Visual China to do is to really sort out the copyright of its own content and see how many of the 400 million pictures in the gallery are really copyrighted. Don't pretend to be your own if it's not yours, let alone ask others for money with these things.
Second, the real creator's copyright fee must be paid in full.
We have analyzed the business model of Visual China above, it is like Nongfu Spring, "just a porter of nature". The basis of its copyright is a large number of original authors. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that the copyright fees collected by oneself will be paid to the authors. However, whether Visual China has achieved this is a question mark.
Take the black hole picture incident in 2019 as an example. Since Visual China collected money for this picture, did it give the European Southern Observatory ESO any money?
Taking the photographer Jeff as an example again, assuming that the sharing ratio is 50%, then Visual China asked Jeff for 80,000 copyright fees, and should give Jeff another 40,000. In fact, since Visual China can find Jeff, it may have already asked many other companies or individuals for money. Assuming that these pictures brought 1 million copyright fees to Sight China, then it should give Jeff 500,000. After deducting the copyright fee of 80,000 yuan for Jeff's own pictures, Vision China should give Jeff 420,000 yuan.
Did Vision China give you this money? Definitely not. In fact, before the sales of Visual China approached Jeff, they probably never had any contact, let alone a cent of money.
It is claimed that there are 500,000 signed authors of Visual China. What percentage of them have actually received copyright fees from Visual China? How many people's works have been taken by Visual China for free, and Visual China has made money, but the original creators have not received any money or even don't even know about it? Visual China keeps saying that it is to maintain copyright and protect originality. Very well, they need to do it themselves first.
Third, charge reasonably, and don't "fish for law enforcement."
It is reasonable to charge a certain copyright fee for original works. But the charges should be reasonable, and there should be no big mouths, let alone "fishing and law enforcement".
Many content creators need to use picture materials. Most of them have the habit of searching on the Internet, such as searching in Baidu pictures. It is difficult for ordinary people to distinguish which ones are copyrighted and which ones can be used for free, let alone distinguish which ones The pictures are copyrighted by Vision China.
One point that Visual China has been widely criticized is that it borrows this kind of ambiguity in copyright and lets you use it for free for a few years, and then finds the lion to open the door. Moreover, intellectual property rights, patents, etc. are time-limited, and the copyright of pictures should also have a time limit. For example, set a 3-year or 5-year copyright protection period, and after the period, it will be free.
Another thing is that Visual China seems to be entering AIGC, which makes the author a little bit at a loss. Now many media are starting to use AIGC tools such as Midjourney, Wenxinyige (Baidu), and Tongyi Wanxiang (Alibaba) to create pictures. This is also a way for them to avoid being sued for infringement by organizations like Visual China. method. Now, this "pure land" will also be touched by Visual China. Will someday the pictures we create with Wenxinyige or Tongyi Vientiane will be marked with the copyright of Visual China?
The author used Alibaba's Tongyi Vientiane and entered "Vision China" to create pictures. Interestingly, when I tried it for the first time, Tongyi Vientiane did not generate any content and returned "Sorry, no satisfactory inspiration was found, Please try another input."
Why, are the current AIs already so intelligent, are they also afraid of being sued for copyright infringement by Visual China?
★ Follow the Data Ape official account, and reply to "Visual China Financial Report" in the background to download the full version of Visual China's 2022 annual report.
Text: Misty Rain / Data Ape
