Perhaps it is Didi's lesson that Himalaya, which has submitted the prospectus, suddenly "braked" and cancelled the plan of IPO in the United States. In the context of the upgrading of network security supervision, the future of Himalayan listing in the United States with a large amount of user information is uncertain. With the escalation of the war in the long audio market, the demand for funds will continue to increase. But the Himalayas are still unprofitable, as can be seen from their difficult situation.

Himalaya's main revenue comes from subscription fees and advertising. Among them, subscription payment, which marks the revenue of knowledge payment business, contributed 1.7 billion yuan in 2020, accounting for 43.3% of the total revenue, but in fact, the payment rate is not high. According to the prospectus, the monthly live member payment rates of Q1-Q4 Himalaya mobile terminal in 2020 were 7.9%, 9.0%, 10.2% and 12.2% respectively. Based on the 104 million monthly live users announced, the number of people paying was less than 14 million.

There are two main reasons why it is difficult to pay for knowledge: one is that it is difficult to match the user's preferences with the content. Each user has personalized preferences, just as so many famous crosstalk artists say "fenhewan", but some people like to listen to the overturned version of uncle. How can this be corrected? Pre produced audio is an unalterable work, which is difficult to meet the different needs of different users. The other is that users cannot judge the product quality when paying, which brings a contradiction. It is difficult for users to listen first and then pay; The user pays first. If he is not satisfied, there is no way to refund.

Therefore, it is not a good business for those intellectuals to pay for the knowledge of their dreams of becoming rich. In other words, the current knowledge payment model needs to be subverted.