Tencent Music reveals subscriber surge & Universal Music JV label

It’s been a strong week for China’s Tencent Music Entertainment.

Tencent posted a buoyant growth in its Q2 (ending June 30), and announced a significant expansion of its partnership with the Universal Music Group for the Chinese market.

Social entertainment and online music dominate Tencent Music’s revenue, and online music paying users reached 47.1 million, a 51.9% increase year-on-year.

Average revenue grew 8.1% and paying ratio was up to 7.2% from 4.8%.

Growth in mobile MAUs (monthly average users) for online music was flat at 651 million.

In the social entertainment division, mobile MAU tipped 236 million, with 12.5 million subscribers, “registering sequential growth as the COVID-19 situation continued to improve in China,” CEO Cussion Pang said

Total revenues were RMB6.93 billion (A$1.39 billion), an increase of 17.5% year-on-year. Online music subscriptions revenue increased by 64.7% YoY to RMB1.31bn (A$262 million).

Operating profit was RMB1.11 billion ($222.5 million).

“As the industry leader of China’s online music market, we continue to pioneer and make contributions to support the development of the industry,” Pang continued. 

“Our efforts include continuous advocation of the pay-for-streaming model, deeper cultivation of indie musicians, promotion of digital albums and our innovative online concert TME Live. 

“To top artists, our platform is not only the preferred destination for digital album releases but also a unique performance venue to interact with fans real time.”

Tencent Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group have announced a new joint venture music label to break domestic Chinese acts.

At the same time, they expanded their licensing partnership.

Tencent Music will continue to distribute Universal Music content on its platforms as QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music, as well as its online Karaoke platform WeSing.

The two have collaborated on online music shows and videos.

Universal Music Group’s London-based, EVP of market development, Adam Granite, said, “We are pleased to extend and evolve our licensing agreement with TME for the Chinese market. 

“We look forward to working together with TME to help create compelling new experiences for fans across all TME platforms, and to expand on the opportunities available to UMG’s global and domestic family of artists in China.”

Tencent Music Entertainment was part of the consortium which acquired 10% of Universal Music Group for US$3.4 billion earlier this year and has the option to extend that to a 20% stake.

In 2018, Tencent Music and Sony Music started into their own joint venture label, Liquid State, focussing on electronic music.