China’s 5th largest music service is seeing incredible levels of growth, putting pressure on Chinese powerhouse Tencent.

Tencent is China’s leading entertainment company and owns the three most popular music services in China: KuGou, QQ, and Kuwo. Whilst NetEase Cloud Music may be a way off the number of monthly active users that Tencent’s services have, they are catching up with incredible speed.

NetEase Cloud Music (NCM)’s latest financial results reveal that they’re seeing growth of 26.6% year-on-year for online music revenues. That encompasses streaming, subscriptions, and digital album sales on NCM. However, it doesn’t tell the full story.

NCM’s overall financial results tell a less significant success, with a modest 4.1% year-on-year increase in overall revenues. This is because NCM, like Tencent, operates two main businesses: Digital music and social entertainment. And, like Tencent, their entertainment business including livestreaming, karaoke, and other social services has fallen – down a 19.9% year-on-year.

NCM didn’t include numbers for listeners or paying users. They announced 205.9 million monthly active users at the end of 2023, with just over 44 million paying for music on their platforms.

What is NetEase Cloud Music and how to upload your music free

As music streaming continues to grow the world over, some look to the potential of the social side and non-musical content to bolster services’ offerings. But in China, it has long-been the standard for music services to go beyond a simple music streaming platform. The drop in popularity shows that perhaps audiences aren’t particularly interested in social extras.

In response to the changing attitudes, NCM have been putting emphasis on their discovery and recommendation features. They’ve been expanding their catalogue of K-Pop music and are developing AI tools for their platform. Unlike platforms like Spotify and Amazon Music, their AI tools seem to be based in creation rather than algorithmic music playlists.

Upload your music to China’s top music platforms on NetEase and Tencent’s services as well as the world’s biggest Western platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music with RouteNote. Upload unlimited music releases entirely free to the world.

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