Live streaming is the future (and we’re there for it)

By Vertex Growth

If you cross paths with Ya in Taipei, she might seem like a typical young working adult, but she is quite special. Ya starts her day by greeting her fan group (yes, she has one) online via live streaming app 17 Media. At night, Ya morphs from her usual quiet self to a starlet who is comfortably chatting and engaging with her audience online, quickly commanding thousands of viewers on her live stream channel in a few short minutes.

Meet Ya, 20, the Most Popular Streamer of the Year (2017) on the 17 Media live streaming app, the flagship entertainment service under the M17 Entertainment Group (“M17”).

Ya started live streaming early in 2016, when her friends introduced the 17 Media app to her. She enjoyed the interaction with her online audience and quickly became a full-time streamer, going online whenever she had any free time, even during her work hours as a model for events and exhibitions.

“I find the most fun method to interact with fans is to chat directly with them,” says Ya. “I can talk about almost everything with them; we share our day-to-day lives like real friends do.”

It seems like the feeling is mutual – Ya’s fans have reciprocated her efforts of constant interaction – she sings, chats and even plays games online with them – by sending virtual gifts that have become a source of income for Ya to pursue her passions further.

Empowering artists

Many others like Ya have turned to live streaming platforms over the years, seeing it not just as an avenue to showcase their entertainment talents to a wider audience, but also as a viable source of livelihood to support their passion.

In Japan, Maaami is one of M17’s top streamers – a single mum, she started live streaming in 2018, hoping to supplement her income. Maaami quickly learnt the habits and preferences of her audience, collecting and analyzing followers and engagement statistics each time she streamed. She soon found her own niche, performing music and interacting with her fans during “golden hours” to maximize engagement.

“The longer you are ‘live’, the better your chances of success. Even people who initially thought they weren't interested will become engaged if you are constantly streaming,” shared Maaami. “I once streamed for 12 hours straight, no breaks!”

Photos: 17 Media

In 2019, Maaami became M17’s top earning streamer in Japan, at one point receiving more than 660,000 virtual gifts! However, beyond the financial support, she has also gained emotional support from live streaming.

“Live streaming has changed my life. Looking back, I've been fighting alone all the time. However, after I started live streaming, I found in my fans a group of people who understands and supports me. I feel such a sense of security and reassurance,” says Maaami. “I will continue to entertain my fans and spend time together with them.”

Xian Zi is another one of M17’s live streamers who has benefitted from moving his work online. He had an established career as an emcee for entertainment and music events, but his income suffered considerably when the ‘offline’ music and entertainment industry declined.

With decreasing opportunities to host on stage, Xian Zi turned to live streaming.

As a full-time live streamer, Xian Zi has full creative control over his content and delivery. He says that the two-way live interaction with his fans that M17 provides on its app gives him real-time feedback and inspires him to come up with better content each and every time.

“In the past, the high production expenses made the TV station tend to listen to the sponsors and not to the audience. Now, live streaming means I can interact freely with my audience, and I can host whenever I want,” added Xian Zi.

And it is for people like Ya, Maaami and Xian Zi that the pioneer team behind M17 decided to start the business.

The live streaming app was started by Jeffrey Huang, a member of Taiwan’s original boy band L.A. Boyz. Jeffrey is a serial entrepreneur who created numerous businesses centered around artists and creativity. He believes that everyone has a talent and should have an opportunity to perform. This belief resulted in the creation of a live streaming 17Media app in Taiwan in 2015, with the aim of empowering artists and connecting them to an audience.

“The app’s name ‘17’ is a play on its Mandarin pronunciation ‘yi-qi’, which also means together,” shared Jeffrey.

17 Media eventually became M17 when Jeffrey met Joseph Phua, the current CEO of M17. Both Jeffrey and Joseph, also an entrepreneur, shared a common vision of revolutionizing mobile technology to entertain the world through an interactive social ecosystem.

The huge market potential

Since its launch in 2015, M17 has gained impressive traction with its live streaming app. Currently, M17 has more than 30 million global users and its streamers produce in excess of 10,000 hours of content daily – and numbers continue to grow.

M17 positions itself at the forefront of shifting media consumption patterns. As consumer preferences moved away from linear programming to individualized on-demand viewing, live streaming benefited. More and more internet users are looking to online platforms to socialize, find entertainment and instant gratification. It is estimated that the pure play live streaming industry i.e. platforms like M17 will be worth more than USD22.3 billion globally by 2022.

While 2020 has been a challenging year for many businesses, M17 – on the contrary – thrived.

Social distancing will be at play for the foreseeable future and people bracing for weeks indoors are spending more time on social platforms like live streaming. This digital interaction has become a lifeline for both artists and audiences hungry for some semblance of social life. In the last few months since the COVID-19 outbreak started, the online media industry has already seen significant user growth.

At M17, the positive data it has registered in 1Q20 corroborates the industry trend. Their number of active streamers increased by 15% MoM while new paying users increased even more significantly at 23.3% MoM. In addition, M17 is seeing an increased number of people interested in becoming streamers, including many traditional offline performers such as street artists and professional musicians who now find it hard to perform outdoors given the current environment.

Meanwhile in Japan, the M17 team also successfully introduced a wider variety of content, adding new formats such as rock band concerts, martial arts tournaments and classical music concerts to the platform. It was a feat for the team given the technical challenges of delivering these formats live. However, the positive feedback from its viewers redeemed M17’s effort, as the company saw its number of paying users hit a record high in March.

Growing from strength to strength

Today, M17 is undisputedly one of Asia’s leading tech-enabled live entertainment companies. In particular, it is by far the largest pure play video live streaming company in Japan, with more than 60% market share. This is a far cry from its underdog status in the early days, when 17Media had just over 250 contracted artists on their Japanese live streaming platform in August 2017.

With its can-do attitude, after a year of operations, M17’s app had more than 3900 contracted artists and became the leading live streaming platform in Japan.

What is it about M17 that makes the platform so appealing to both streamers and viewers?

M17 kept to its vision of empowering artists and being a global live entertainment platform, while differentiating itself through quality content and providing the best possible value-add to their streamers.

M17 was the first live streaming player to deploy a comprehensive end-to-end streamer management model. The company has a fully-operational talent training and management agency – all of M17 streamers are contracted artists who must undergo in-house training to best showcase their artistic talents in the live streaming format.

M17 has local teams in place to provide constant support to the streamers and ensure that they produce quality content that is engaging and highly interactive. And this approach worked – M17’s app started from the 8th position in the Taiwan live streaming industry back in 2016 but became the market leader within a year.

When the company decided to enter the competitive Japanese market, M17 leveraged the artist management and marketing know-how they had learnt over time. In addition to establishing direct relationships with their Japanese live streaming artists, M17 also built a strong network of local partners that offered strategic support and local resources, keeping in mind Japan’s unique culture and content preferences. All these helped propel its app to its live streaming leadership position in Japan.

Above all, M17’s key edge is its ability to stay ahead of the curve and capture fast changing trends of digital content consumption. This has been a constant pursuit for the company, developing in-depth analytics capabilities to optimize user engagement and further improve a user’s experience on the platform.

Looking ahead

M17 wants to empower more artists globally and deliver quality content to a wider audience. The company is standing at the cusp of next-level growth and it is diving right in.

M17 continues to explore new ideas to strengthen the diversity of its content, such as pioneering collaborations with production teams from traditional media houses to create interesting new programs. The company is also focused on deepening its presence in Japan and the rest of Developed Asia, while expanding into key overseas markets such as North America and the Middle East.

Aside from outward development efforts, M17 is also scaling up synergistic businesses within the group to provide a one-stop live social platform for its users. For one, M17 has merged its social commerce capability with live broadcast in Taiwan and Japan. This cross-social media synchronization of live broadcast sales, aided by technology, allows M17 to further engagement and monetization on its live stream platforms and drive a new economic trend.

On the technology front, M17’s engineering team is constantly innovating to stay ahead of the pack and ensure the infrastructure remains robust as the platform experiences rapid growth. For example, the company is working on an AI-system to scan and analyze anonymized streamer-user interaction for quality control and to identify key user engagement features from its trove of data.

Prompted by continuing market validation and seeing further opportunities across the group, M17 decided to seek for additional capital to accelerate its growth.

There for the future

Having monitored M17 for some time, as the company is part of the Vertex portfolio ecosystem, Vertex Growth was well-positioned to engage M17 on its fundraising journey. When the company exhibited interest for additional capital in late 2019, we immediately reached out to initiate the due diligence process and eventually, led the investment round.

We are confident in M17’s potential as it continues to expand its platform and provide quality live entertainment and interactive social engagements to a growing global user base. M17 has proven its core competencies in live streaming and is innovating internally to identify and cover additional growth opportunities. The company is also widening its reach through synergistic businesses to eventually create a virtuous online interaction cycle that optimizes user engagement and increases monetization.

Most importantly, we believe in M17’s highly capable management team, having steered the Group through a challenging period in the past and came back stronger than ever. With a proven track record of achieving operational targets, we know Joseph and the M17 team will be able to bring the company to greater heights.

Vertex Growth welcomes M17 to our family and we look forward to being a part of their next phase of growth.