Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME; Chinese: 腾讯音乐娱乐集团) is a company that develops music streaming services for the Chinese market. Tencent Music's apps include QQ Music, KuGou, Kuwo, and WeSing; which have more than 800 million active users and 120 million paying subscribers.[2][3][4] As of July 2016, Tencent Music's three services held an estimated 56% market share of music streaming services in China.[5]
In the first quarter of 2021, Tencent Music announced it had 60.9 million paying users, up 42.6% compared to the 42.7 million paying users in the first quarter of 2020. In addition, the total number of music streaming users was announced to be 615 million, a drop of 6.4% compared to the first quarter of 2020 (657 million).[6]
History
Tencent Music was established in July 2016 with Tencent's purchase of China Music Corporation to strengthen its music offerings.[7] On July 4, 2018, Sony/ATV Music Publishing acquired an equity stake in Tencent Music.[8][9] In October 2018, the firm filed for IPOs of around $2 billion[10] in the United States.[11]
In December 2018, the company announced an IPO with the total value of shares around $1.23 billion, which includes 82 million ADS and 164 million regular shares priced around $13 - $15.[12]
On January 30, 2019, SM Entertainment, the largest entertainment agency of South Korea entered into strategic partnership agreement with China's Tencent Music that included music distribution and marketing in the Chinese market.[13]
In June 2020, the Government of India banned QQ Music with 58 other Chinese origin apps citing data and privacy issues. The border tensions in 2020 between India and China might have also played a role in the ban.[14][15]
As of 2023, 16.47% of Tencent Music class A ordinary shares are owned by Spotify.[16][17]
Charts
In 2018, Tencent Music Entertainment Group launched two music charts in China, the TME UNI Chart and TME Wave Chart. The TME UNI Chart ranks the top songs within China based on streaming and sales activity from the platforms QQ Music, KuGou, Kuwo, WeSing, Joox and Weixin Video Account, and listening data from China’s public radio stations. The TME Wave Chart is a ranking of the top songs in China compiled based on scores and recommendations from over 250 industry professionals.[18] In 2023, Tencent Music Entertainment Group announced a partnership with Billboard to integrate the TME UNI Chart into Billboard's official Hits of the World collection of global record charts.[19] In 2024, they launched the TME Korean Chart, a subchart that ranks the top Korean songs within China based on streaming and sales activity from the platforms QQ Music, KuGou, Kuwo, Polka Dot, and Joox.[20]
