Image credit: Tencent Music

Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent release revenue and subscriber numbers for music streaming service Tencent Music Entertainment.

Tencent Music Entertainment Group published their Q3 2020 results last Tuesday, showing statistics from the music streaming platform between July and September.

By the end of September 2020, TME had 51.7 million paying music subscribers, a 46% growth over the same quarter last year and 4.6 million more than last quarter. This represents the largest net increase to the platform since 2016.

TME generated total revenues of 7.58 billion yuan ($1.15bn) in Q3 2020, an increase of 16.4% over Q3 2019. Online music subscription revenues were also up 55% year-over-year to 1.46 billion yuan ($221m). Gross profit increased 11.2% to 2.64 billion yuan ($400m).

Gross margin for Q3 decreased by 1.6% to 32.4% from 34% over the same quarter last year. Tencent say this is largely due to increased investments in new products and content offerings, such as long-form audio, TME Live and increased revenue sharing fees.

Third quarter results reflect significant progress in our ability to unlock the opportunities that are present in China’s dynamic online music industry as we achieved 55% year-over-year growth in online music subscription revenue with increasing paying ratio. In addition, our overall gross margin expanded at a healthy clip compared with the prior quarter, thanks to the continuous execution of our business strategy and improving operational efficiency. This strong performance reflects our philosophy of quality growth, investing with discipline and the unwavering pursuit to improve user satisfaction.

Mr. Cussion Pang, Chief Executive Officer, Tencent Music

Q3 2020 saw TME launch livestreamed concerts to over 100m viewers.

In July, Tencent also announced their Incentive Project had paid over $84m to indie artists.