Tencent Music Entertainment Releases Q2 Financial Results, Lands New Cooperation with Universal Music

Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME), China’s biggest online music entertainment platform and Universal Music Group (UMG), today announced a multi-year extension of their licensing agreement. 

The companies also announced a new joint venture music label. The new label will be dedicated to reaching audiences across China through cultivating, developing, producing, and showcasing highly talented domestic artists and their original music.

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With the extension of the licensing agreement, TME will continue to distribute music from UMG’s record labels and its stable of domestic and global recording stars on its platforms, including QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music. UMG’s content will also be licensed for use on TME’s online Karaoke platform, WeSing, along with other live streaming and expanded digital services.

UMG and TME have been working closely in music licensing. Under the existing partnership, TME has promoted UMG’s licensed music to hundreds of millions of music fans through TME’s online platforms. The two companies have also collaborated on music product innovations, including online music shows and videos, to diversify the online music entertainment experience for users. 

TME today also announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2020. The company’s online music revenues in the second quarter of 2020 increased by 42.2% year-on-year, accelerating from 27.4% in the first quarter, which was mainly attributable to nearly 65% year-on-year growth in music subscription revenues as well as strong performance from digital album sales. 

Social entertainment and online music are the two biggest sectors of TME’s business. In the second quarter of 2020, TME’s online music paying users had reached 47.1 million, a 51.9% increase year-on-year, which boosted the paying ratio to 7.2%, up from 4.8% in the same quarter last year. In the social entertainment sector, TME’s mobile MAU reached 236 million, with 12.5 million paying users.