This morning, Douyin officially announced that Jay Chou has settled in as “Classmate Zhou”, a superstar in the Chinese music scene who was once exclusively bound by Kuaishou, and has moved to a new platform with a huge fan base and commercial potential. From the nine-figure rumors of signing fees, to the bottleneck of traffic conversion in past cooperation, to the music copyright, film and television publicity and brand effect involved behind it, behind this star battle is the fierce competition of short video platforms for user attention and commercial value, and it also reflects the deep logic of the industry’s transformation from “quantity war” to “quality war”.
Douyin still “grabbed” Jay Chou from Kuaishou.
Today (9th), @抖音大明星 account posted a news, announcing: This time it’s really @ Zhou is here! Subsequently, the topic of “Jay Chou’s real Douyin account appeared” hung at the top of the Douyin hot search list, and was marked with the “exclusive” label.
When I searched for “Zhou”, I found that Douyin also created a special page for this hot search term, aggregating relevant content created by users. The page shows Jay Chou’s account @ Zhou, and the avatar is the doll image of the “Zhou” IP. But this page is really a bit rough.
Source: Douyin Tang Chen screenshot
Up to now, the account of “Classmate Zhou” has not released content, and when I took a screenshot, the number of fans has reached 4.13 million, and it is still growing.
Previously, some netizens revealed that Jay Chou will soon release his first Douyin. The netizen also said that this Douyin was filmed in Australia and had a magic link.
Before Jay Chou officially entered Douyin, there was also a hot search about signing fees. Some so-called sources said that Douyin spent as much as nine figures to win Jay Chou this time. Some netizens confirmed and added this, saying that it was not 100 million, but in units of 100 million.
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This was denied by the relevant person in charge of Douyin, saying that “the news is untrue and is a rumor”.
“Classmate Zhou” came to Douyin
The “falsehood” of Douyin’s refutation of rumors should be the specific amount of signing fees. But what is certain is that Douyin has paid extremely high chips to break the situation of Jay Chou’s “only one on the whole network, only in Kuaishou”.
In 2020, after dozens of rounds of difficult communication between Kuaishou and Jay Chou’s team, Jay Chou was finally invited to settle in. In addition, Kuaishou has also reached a copyright cooperation with Jewell Music, and has obtained the authorization of the short video platform of all Jay Chou’s songs and MVs, users can listen to songs and watch MVs for free, and creators can also use relevant materials.
Although Jay Chou has not released many albums and new songs, every time he appears, it will sweep the Internet, and Kuaishou, as the first Chinese short video platform, has received a large wave of traffic. For example, the MV of his new song “Mojito” was launched on Kuaishou, attracting more than 640 million people to watch.
But in general, Kuaishou holds the top Jay Chou and has not created too many successful out-of-the-circle topics, but more of a carnival within the Kuaishou system. At the same time, Kuaishou’s integration of Jay Chou’s IP into its own business is also relatively limited. What is more brilliant is that on December 29, 2022, Kuaishou officially announced that it had become the exclusive partner of Jay Chou’s metaverse, and Jay Chou’s personal music metaverse was officially settled in Kuaishou.
At that time, on Kuaishou Jay Chou’s personal homepage, you could directly enter Jay Chou’s metaverse through the “DEMO space”. Kuaishou also took this opportunity to create the industry’s first celebrity personal metaverse. But as the concept of the metaverse was extinguished, the cooperation between the two sides also fell silent.
This problem is also something that Douyin needs to think about. In the past few years, Douyin has also spent a lot of money on inviting celebrities to settle in, such as Andy Lau, Eason Chan, Jackie Chan, Wu Yanzu, etc. Douyin has also launched a series of operational activities around celebrities, even including self-made variety shows, such as summer singing clubs, online concerts, etc., to try to monetize the traffic of celebrity IP, but the response has been mediocre.
Even so, the competition for stars on Douyin, Kuaishou, including Bilibili, Channels and other video platforms will continue, and the intensity will be further escalated.
First of all, celebrities bring traffic to the platform, and “traffic is an asset”. Every star has a huge fan base, and the attention, interaction, and commercial value that comes from it are immeasurable. For example, in 2020, Jay Chou entered Kuaishou’s first live broadcast, which attracted 68 million views in 30 minutes, with a total interaction of 380 million and a live broadcast reward income of about 24 million yuan.
Second, break through copyright barriers. QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music fought, and the most ruthless move was the copyright of the “Jay Chou” song. The removal of “Jay Chou’s songs” in 2018 led to 270,000 “farewell messages” in the comment area of Jay Chou’s songs on the NetEase cloud platform, and 2.16 million youthful memories remained on the single page of “Sunny Day”. According to data monitoring, NetEase Cloud’s daily active users fell by 12% in the month of the incident, while 38% of QQ Music’s new users clearly marked “for Jay Chou”.
Music is one of the most important building blocks of short video platforms, but copyright has always been its weakness. Through the entry of celebrities and the binding of music copyrights, Kuaishou obtained the copyright of 179 songs through Jay Chou’s settlement. This is also a strategy to bypass the “stuck neck” of music platforms for short video platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin, which often run naked in music copyrights, and it is very necessary.
Third, it is the linkage of film and television publicity. Short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have successfully snatched a large piece of film and television publicity cake from Weibo. Nowadays, whether it is a movie, a TV series, or a variety show, the short video platform is an extremely important position, and the collective entry of the crew, the daily visits of celebrities, the rotation of theater footage, etc., have become necessary means to increase the popularity. For example, the recent hits “Lychee in Chang’an”, “In the Name of the Law”, etc., many viewers said that through short video slices and tidbits, they went back to follow the drama again.
The most important thing is the brand effect. Celebrities come with their own traffic, which helps the platform attract new people, break the circle, enrich the platform content ecology, and improve user activity. At the same time, traffic stars are strongly bound to high-end brands, and the entry of celebrities can effectively leverage brand resources for the platform and raise the ceiling of brand advertising.
It can also be said that short video platforms need the blessing of celebrity traffic to break through different user circles and expand the boundaries of platform business.
Why Douyin was able to grab Jay Chou
With Jay Chou’s entry into Douyin, the star resource pattern of the short video industry will also be reshaped, and the competition for star resources by short video platforms has also shifted from a “quantity war” to a “quality war”. Because Jay Chou’s weight is enough to break the balance of the industry pattern, and the star group he represents, the traffic he leverages, is undoubtedly honey for video platforms.
But Kuaishou failed to keep Jay Chou, and only he may know the pain in his heart. The core reason is that celebrities are also profit-seeking and migrate with traffic. For Jay Chou and his associated business territory, Douyin’s traffic and business system are extremely tempting.
Source: Jay Chou Kuaishou account
According to data, as of March 2025, the monthly active users of Douyin (including Douyin and Douyin Express Edition) exceeded 1 billion, reaching 1.001 billion, a year-on-year increase of 12.3%, and the average monthly usage time of Douyin also increased to 46.54 hours. The scale of Kuaishou’s monthly active users reached 573 million, a year-on-year increase of 4.8%, and the average monthly usage time was 29.74 hours.
This also means that the user overlap between the two is getting higher and higher, and the larger Douyin occupies an advantageous position in negotiations with celebrities.
It is worth mentioning that Jay Chou entered the social media platform for the second time as “Classmate Zhou”, the driving force behind the IP of “Classmate Zhou”, and the business territory of the legend of the superstar of “Jay Chou Concept Stock” has also surfaced. The news of Jay Chou’s entry into Douyin came out, and its increase expanded by more than 145%.
According to my understanding, the superstar legend related people include Jay Chou’s mother Ye Huimei, whose business is divided into two major sectors: IP creation and operation and new consumption, and its business model is highly dependent on “Jay Chou’s IP + new retail”.
The former is deeply bound to Jay Chou and Liu Genghong, and has created two phenomenal star IPs, “Classmate Zhou” and “Coach Liu”, and signed star IP combinations such as Fang Wenshan and Kunling, and the cumulative fans have reached 250 million. In 2023, the company’s IP business revenue increased by 65% with the hit of the variety show “Travels 2”;
In the new consumer sector, Superstar Legend has a number of new consumer brands, which drive the sales of Jay Chou’s IP products such as coffee, cakes, and audio equipment through the combination of star IP and consumer brand IP.
Perhaps, you will soon be able to hear Jay Chou’s new song debut and variety show premiere on Douyin. Of course, Jay Chou fans may soon be able to see the affiliated companies of “Classmate Zhou” selling goods on Douyin live broadcast.
Resources:
Tech Planet, “Online Kuaishou and Douyin compete for Jay Chou”
China Net Finance, “How does the superstar legend use Jay Chou’s IP to leverage the economy of 100 billion fans?” 》
