Tencent have made a new equity investment in another Chinese music-for-business company with the potential to take a controlling stake. 

Tencent Music Entertainement are the Chinese company behind China’s biggest music services QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo. They’ve just made a major investment in another music company providing catalogues for streaming to businesses.

Their undisclosed equity investment in Radio Music Warehouse leaves them in a position to increase their shares for a “controlling stake in the company”. The investment will give Radio Music Warehouse access to TME’s music content for promotion and distribution.

Radio Music Warehouse is used by many companies as a source of music including many offline locations. Tencent seem keen to spread their shares across music businesses including many beyond China. Last year they finalised a huge investment to acquire a 10% stake in the major record label Universal.

TME’s Chief Strategy Oficcer, Tony Yip said:

Radio Music has a professional music-for-business service system and comprehensive offline coverage resources. Through this investment, we will jointly explore music-for-business market to add value to our music ecosystem.

TME will offer more diversified music content to resolve the challenge of a shortage of content for music solutions to business, and develop brand-new content promotion and distribution models in to provide a stage for artists and high-quality work everywhere.

We also look forward to a strong synergy between music-for-business service and our existing online music and social entertainment services, to bring users a more professional, immersive music experience that drives the healthy development of the music-for-business industry and the music industry as a whole.

Tencent have been going from strength to strength each year and their music business has been steadily expanding with the increasing success of their own services and various investments around the world. They entered 2020 with 39.9 million music subscribers announced and TME made more than $1 billion last year.

They’ve even even invested in Spotify to put their foot in other major streaming services. Their latest investment secures their presence in their native country even more.