China’s music streaming market could be moving back towards free music.

For several years, major Chinese streaming platforms have focused heavily on converting listeners into paying subscribers. But the rapid growth of ByteDance-owned Qishui Music, also known as Soda Music, is beginning to challenge that strategy.

Qishui Music has built a huge audience around free listening, algorithmic recommendations and a music discovery experience heavily connected with Douyin, ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok.

And now Tencent Music appears to be responding.

The company behind QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music has quietly launched an app simply called “Free Music”, suggesting that free, advertising-supported listening could once again become one of the biggest battlegrounds in China’s streaming market.

ByteDance’s Qishui Music is growing incredibly quickly

The catalyst appears to be Qishui Music.

According to QuestMobile figures reported in China, Qishui Music reached around 167 million monthly active users in June 2026, growing approximately 68.7% year-on-year.

That puts the service remarkably close to China’s established music giants.

For comparison, the same data put QQ Music at around 189 million monthly active users and Kugou Music at around 194 million.

Qishui has already overtaken NetEase Cloud Music by monthly active users.

That is an extraordinary rise for a service that only launched in 2022.

One of ByteDance’s biggest advantages is obvious: Douyin.

Rather than asking users to actively search for music, ByteDance can move people directly from discovering a song in a short video into listening to the full track.

It turns music discovery into a continuous recommendation feed.

See a song.

Like it.

Listen to it.

Discover another.

It is much closer to the behaviour users have learned from TikTok and Douyin than the traditional search-and-library model used by many streaming services.

Tencent launches its own Free Music app

Tencent Music now appears to be borrowing some of the same ideas.

Its new “Free Music” app reportedly launched through Huawei’s AppGallery in August 2026.

The app allows users to gain free listening time by completing tasks, while users can also collect virtual coins and exchange them for rewards.

There is also a “Swipe to Listen” section that resembles the vertical recommendation feeds popularised by short-form video platforms.

Rather than choosing an album or playlist and pressing play, listeners can simply keep moving through songs recommended to them.

The service still offers a membership option, meaning Tencent does not appear to be abandoning subscriptions.

Instead, it looks more like Tencent is creating another entry point into its music ecosystem for people who are unwilling to pay.

Why free music is suddenly important again

For years, the music streaming industry has been moving in the opposite direction.

The objective for platforms has generally been to turn free listeners into subscribers.

Spotify does it.

Tencent Music does it.

NetEase does it.

But ByteDance approaches digital entertainment slightly differently.

Its core expertise is capturing attention and then monetising that attention through advertising.

The company already has an enormous advertising infrastructure through Douyin and its wider ecosystem.

This means ByteDance may not need every Qishui Music listener to become a subscriber.

A listener who spends hours using the service can still be valuable through advertising, recommendations and their connection with other ByteDance products.

In June 2026, ByteDance products reportedly accounted for around 40% of the time Chinese users spent across the country’s top 50 apps.

That attention gives ByteDance an enormous distribution advantage.

Music streaming could start looking more like TikTok

There is another important change happening here.

The interface of music streaming itself is evolving.

Spotify, Apple Music and many traditional music platforms were originally built around a library.

Users search for artists.

They choose albums.

They build playlists.

ByteDance comes from an entirely different philosophy.

Open the app and the algorithm decides what you might like.

Then swipe.

And swipe again.

Music effectively becomes an infinite recommendation feed.

Qishui Music demonstrates how powerful that approach can become when combined with a platform like Douyin.

Tencent’s decision to include its own swipe-based music discovery feed suggests the model is becoming difficult for competitors to ignore.

Tencent Music still has a powerful subscription business

None of this means paid music subscriptions are disappearing in China.

Far from it.

Tencent Music reported revenue of RMB 8.93 billion for the second quarter of 2026, up 5.8% year-on-year.

Membership revenue reached approximately RMB 4.8 billion, increasing 8.1% year-on-year.

High-value subscribers remain extremely important to the company.

But Qishui Music appears to be putting pressure on the other end of the market: casual listeners.

Tencent executives have themselves highlighted competition for lighter and more casual music users while continuing to focus on higher-value subscribers and SVIP memberships.

That could ultimately create two parallel music streaming models.

One focused on subscriptions and superfans.

The other focused on enormous free audiences monetised through advertising and engagement.

What does this mean for artists and record labels?

For artists, labels and music distributors, the rise of free music in China could ultimately be positive if it expands overall music consumption.

Qishui Music is potentially bringing millions of casual listeners into licensed music streaming who may never have purchased a conventional music subscription.

The important question will be monetisation.

Free streaming only works for the music industry if advertising and other revenue generated by those users produces meaningful royalties for rights holders.

But scale matters too.

An additional 100 million or 200 million active listeners represents an enormous audience for artists.

It could also make Douyin even more important for breaking music in China.

Instead of treating short-form video purely as a promotional channel, the ByteDance ecosystem can potentially connect discovery, consumption and monetisation within the same group of apps.

China could be showing where music streaming goes next

The rise of Qishui Music is worth watching well beyond China.

Music streaming has spent the past decade becoming increasingly subscription-driven.

ByteDance is testing another model.

Make access extremely easy.

Keep the core experience free.

Use algorithms to maximise listening.

Monetise the resulting attention.

And offer paid memberships to listeners who want more.

Tencent Music launching a product called “Free Music” may be one of the strongest signs yet that the strategy is working.

The next battle in music streaming might therefore not simply be about which company has the most paying subscribers.

It could be about which company controls the most listening time.

And right now, ByteDance is proving that free music can still be an incredibly powerful way of getting it.