Tencent Music Group post astonishing Q1 results
China’s leading music and entertainment company have revealed an incredible start to the year in revenue and subscriber growth.
Last year, China’s leading music service operator Tencent Music posted a whopping 38.8% year-over-year (YoY) growth for 2023. Their start to 2024 shows growth not just continuing but getting better! Tencent Music Entertainment have reported 39.2% YoY growth for Q1 2024.
Tencent Music Entertainment are responsible for many of China’s most popular music apps, including Kugou Music, QQ Music, Kuwo Music, and WeSing. Their services cover music streaming, karaoke services, live streaming, and online concert services.
Across their music services, subscriptions made $501 million leading to nearly 40% growth YoY. The total number of subscribers paying for their services increased an impressive 20.2% to 113.5 million. That’s an addition of 6.8 million users in the last quarter, an astonishing rate of growth that is their highest single quarter user increase yet.
Tencent’s Executive Chairman, Cussion Pang said: “We kicked off 2024 with impressive results. Online music continued to grow robustly, registering record-high net adds of 6.8 million music subscribers with healthy ARPPU for the first quarter. Our focus on high-quality growth also yielded solid net profit margin expansion. By broadening content and introducing more tailored platform offerings that resonate deeply with users, we continue to strengthen our vibrancy and competitiveness in this dynamic industry.”
In addition, Tencent are making their business more profitable through other means. They managed to decrease operating expenses by 7.6% on a year before. Their operating expenses made up 16.8% of their total revenues last year, dropping from 17.5% in the same period the year before.
Tencent CEO, Ross Liang said: “Drawing on our extensive industry experience and capitalising on the Chinese New Year seasonality, our effective marketing campaigns led to higher-than-expected first-quarter music subscriber growth.”
The global music streaming landscape is looking good as we move further into 2024. Deezer showed 15% growth in total revenue for Q1 whilst Spotify surpassed them with 20% YoY growth. However, both pale in comparison to Tencent’s staggering results. It is set to be a bright year for music streaming growth.