The controversial Chinese livestreamer Xin Youzhi (known as Xinba) is launching a new content management service under his company Xinxuan Group.
The new subsidiary under Xinxuan will support businesses with the end-to-end process of producing and managing short video content, a key sales channel in China’s dynamic e-commerce space. According to local media outlet Blue Whale TMT, the service will include the planning, filming and editing of short videos, as well as online shop operation.
In addition, the newly established company will handle official clip authorisations on behalf of Xinba. Livestream hosts can sell smaller channels the right to use clips from their live broadcasts as marketing material and this can be a quite lucrative side business. With the help of the new subsidiary, Xinba and his team are eyeing a total annual GMV of 100 billion RMB (13.8 billion USD) this year with clip authorisation likely to offer a big boost.
Another top Chinese livestreamer Crazy Brother Yang has already been deploying this as an additional income stream, signing over clip authorisation to as many as 11,000 channels in 2022 alone.
This practice has proved controversial in the case of Dong Yuhui, the golden boy of private tutoring company turned livestreaming channel Oriental Selection. Fans of the beloved host were disgruntled to find a swath of accounts using clips of him to sell goods, with many believing it to be a scam. The use of these clips was in fact authorised, but Oriental Selection’s founder Yu Minhong apologised anyway for the misunderstanding.
Xin was permanently banned from posting content on TikTok’s Chinese sister app Douyin in November last year. The star had run afoul of internet regulators many times for selling counterfeit goods, such as the health-giving bird’s nest soup that actually turned out to be just sugar water. Now that the age of the star livestreamer is well and truly over, Xinba and his company seem to be seeking out a new business model.
