In a time when music is mainly consumed via online platforms and music streaming, Tencent Music has established itself as a major player in the global music streaming industry.
Known by its full name of Tencent Music Entertainment or TME, it is a music streaming service based in China that offers a wide range of music services to its users. Like Spotify, it is a major player in the music streaming industry, with Tencent Music dominating the Chinese market and Spotify being a leading global platform.
Let’s take a look at what Tencent Music is, its main features and how you can use it to get the most out of your music.
1. Understanding Tencent Music
To define Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), let’s take the word of its CEO, who refers to it as an “ecosystem“. TME is part of the Tencent technology conglomerate and operates several music streaming platforms, including QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music. And these platforms collectively make up Tencent Music.
In short, it is a Chinese music streaming service and offers a wide range of music content, including songs, albums, live shows and music-related video content.
Like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, SoundCloud, Tidal, YouTube Music, iTunes and other music streaming services, Tencent Music allows users to stream music on demand, create playlists, discover new songs and enjoy a smooth listening experience across different devices with millions of songs spanning various genres, creating a large music collection and a diverse catalogue of songs (making it a great streaming service for discovering new music!).
But the reason it’s called an ‘ecosystem’ is because, whereas Spotify and Apple Music are just music streaming platforms, Tencent Music is slightly different, encompassing not just music streaming services but a wide range of interconnected features and platforms, including social features (kareoke and live streaming), content creation features (whether covers, original songs or music videos), artist promotion features (live performances, virtual gifts and advertising) and even partnership opportunities.
Basically, by integrating these different components into one space, Tencent Music Entertainment is a somewhat interconnected ecosystem that offers users a complete music entertainment experience, from discovering new music to engaging with artists and fans.
And an interesting thing to bear in mind is that while music streaming is what brings people in (traffic), it’s the various applications in the ecosystem that actually generate most of the revenue.
Finally, it’s important to repeat that Tencent Music boasts one of the largest user bases in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly active users across all its platforms, and has a huge influence, particularly in the Chinese market.
2. Key features of Tencent Music
Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), thanks to its various streaming services such as QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music, offers a range of features to its subscribers, including access to a vast library of music from local and international artists. And it also offers high-fidelity audio quality, allowing users to enjoy their favorite songs in CD-quality sound.
In terms of subscription models, Tencent Music offers a free, ad-supported version of its service, as well as a full-access premium subscription service for ad-free listening and additional features. After a free trial period, if you want to continue using the premium version of the service, you’ll have to pay a fee per month, and paying subscribers can download music for offline listening and playback. In addition, Tencent Music offers a family plan option, allowing multiple users to share a single subscription at a discounted rate.
On the other side of the equation, the most attractive quality of Tencent Music for artists is that they have access to a massive user base comprising millions of active users (it is the country’s leading music streaming platform and has more than 800 million monthly active users). This exposure can greatly enhance their visibility and reach within the highly competitive music industry, allowing them to reach listeners they might not otherwise have access to, both within China and internationally – and ultimately cultivate a devoted fanbase.
What’s more, as we saw in the first section, it’s an ecosystem that boasts a wide variety of features and musicians can use them all. For example, Tencent Music offers features for live streaming and virtual concerts, allowing artists to perform for their fans in real-time, even if they can’t perform in person. This can be a valuable way for artists to connect with their audience and foster a deeper connection with their fanbase, as well as generate revenue through ticket sales and virtual merchandise.
TME also provides artists with promotional tools that help them increase the visibility of their music, such as paid advertising, featured placements and the service also facilitates collaboration between artists, allowing them to connect with other musicians, producers, and songwriters which can in turn lead to creative collaborations and opportunities to reach new audiences through cross-promotion.
One of the unique features of Tencent Music is its integration with social media platforms, allowing users to share their favourite songs and playlists with their friends and followers and as an independent artist, this can be huge in helping you gain exposure and reach a wider audience.
Now, when it comes to artist remuneration, the platform offers a variety of monetization options for artists, including streaming royalties, digital downloads and advertising revenue, and artists can earn revenue based on how their music is used on Tencent’s platforms.This can provide artists with a source of income from their music.
Finally, TME offers analytics tools that provide insight into audience demographics, streaming figures and geographic trends. This data can help artists better understand their fanbase and make informed decisions about their marketing and promotional strategies, empowering them to manage their careers more effectively.
So, if we take all this into account, we can see that Tencent Music Entertainment can definitely be a valuable platform for musicians to showcase their talent, build their brand and ultimately advance their career in the digital age of music consumption.
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3. Making the most of Tencent Music
With all these features, you may be wondering how, as an independent artist, you can make the most of the music streaming platform to increase the visibility of your music within the music industry.
First you need to make sure that your own music is available on TME platforms including QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music. To upload your music to the various platforms, you can either use digital music distribution services such as TuneCore, CD Baby or Distrokid, or work directly with TME to make your music available to their millions of users.
Ok, once your music is uploaded, what’s next?
If you’re an independent artist, you know that it’s not enough to just put your music out there. You also need to promote it and thankfully, TME allows you to do that directly on their platforms.
Do you remember the various features we saw in the previous section? Well, you need to make the most of them.
A great thing that could help you promote and market your music is to organise live streaming events and live performances or gigs to showcase your tracks directly on the platform. In addition, you can schedule digital meet-ups or Q&As, and never forget to share behind-the-scenes footage, as people really like to see this and it can help you develop a loyal and devoted fanbase.
And don’t forget the various promotional possibilities available within the TME platform that we saw earlier. An excellent example would be having your music featured in a playlist.
Another good idea for extending your visibility on the music platform, and ultimately your reach in the music industry, would be to collaborate with other artists, influencers or brands (even international ones). Networking is always a good idea and it’s something you can do directly on the platform. And even if reaching out to fellow artists doesn’t result in the collaboration you wanted, it’s still a great contact to have.
Conclusion
Finally, to get the most out of the platform, you need to use its data analysis tools to learn more about the demographics of your audience, streaming trends and engagement metrics. The aim is to use this information to refine your marketing strategies, target your promotions effectively and tailor your music to your audience’s preferences.
Overall, Tencent Music is a comprehensive music service that offers a wide range of features and benefits to its users, be it listeners or artists, such as sharing tracks, listening to music on demand, creating and being featured in personalized playlists and discovering new music through curated playlists.
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