Blog: Tencent

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

What got you here won’t get you there: how Spotify built a new business

Cover image for What got you here won’t get you there: how Spotify built a new business

Mark Mulligan

17 Jan 2025

Business Strategy

Since its inception, Spotify has been, and continues to be, the streaming music market’s lightning rod. This is due to its continued ability to maintain leading market share and the fact it is the only leading global DSP that is independent and therefore has to focus place more focus on commercial sustainability than peers owned by global tech superpowers.

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Music subscriber market shares 2023: New momentum

Cover image for Music subscriber market shares 2023: New momentum

Mark Mulligan

8 Feb 2024

music subscriber market shares

Streaming market share

With UMG leading the charge to reshape the music industry into a more label-friendly form, 2023 may, with hindsight, go down as the year before everything changed . Whatever lies ahead though, new models will take time to deliver benefits.

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Is the net closing in on TikTok?

Cover image for Is the net closing in on TikTok?

Ben Woods

17 Jan 2023

There is nothing quite like a recession to seemingly transform disruptors into incumbents. As the focus moves from R&D spend to cost-cutting, the customer focus also changes. Efforts to acquire new customers lose their lustre when there is a need to hold onto those already engaged with a service.

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Axing exclusive music licenses in China will drive new local music cultures

Cover image for Axing exclusive music licenses in China will drive new local music cultures

Srishti Das

15 Sep 2021

emerging markets

As a result of the new guidelines set out by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), record labels are no longer allowed to issue exclusive licenses to music services. Previously, music services in China were able to secure exclusive deals with record labels which meant that these services could then sub-license to other platforms in the region for an additional licensing fee.

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Newsflash: UMG, WMG and Spotify may have a problem with Tencent

Cover image for Newsflash: UMG, WMG and Spotify may have a problem with Tencent

Mark Mulligan

7 Aug 2020

Tencent Music Entertainment

UPDATE: A White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the announcement, at this stage, will not affect Tencent shareholdings of companies and clarified that the order only refers to transactions 'related to' WeChat.

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The MIDiA Research Podcast: Episode 1 – What Next for Tencent?

Cover image for The MIDiA Research Podcast: Episode 1 – What Next for Tencent?

Mark Mulligan

7 Aug 2020

Media & Marketing

We are excited to announce the first episode of the MIDiA Research podcast: What Next for Tencent? President Trump's executive orders concerning Bytedance and Tencent set the cat among the pigeons. In this podcast we explore what the potential ramifications are for Tencent's bold and disruptive entertainment business strategy in the West.

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Music Subscriber Market Shares Q1 2020

Cover image for Music Subscriber Market Shares Q1 2020

Mark Mulligan

23 Jun 2020

music subscribers

music subscriber market shares

WWDC would have been a perfect opportunity for Apple to announce another streaming milestone for Apple Music. It didn’t but the good news is that MIDiA already have a figure for Apple Music, as part of our latest music subscriber market shares.

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Just what is Tencent’s Endgame?

Cover image for Just what is Tencent’s Endgame?

Mark Mulligan

16 Jun 2020

Tencent’s combined $200 million investment in WMG follows on the heels of its $3.6 billion joint investment in Universal Music. It is hardly Tencent’s first investments in music, having spent $6.2 billion on music investments since 2016.

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Music Subscriber Market Shares H1 2019

Cover image for Music Subscriber Market Shares H1 2019

Mark Mulligan

5 Dec 2019

The global streaming market continues to grow at pace. At the end of June 2019 there were 304.9 million music subscribers globally. That was up 34 million on the end of 2018, while the June 2018 to June 2019 growth was 69 million – exactly the same rate of additions as one year earlier.

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The NFL and Pizza Hut: Future-Proofing with E-Sports

Cover image for The NFL and Pizza Hut: Future-Proofing with E-Sports

Alistair Taylor

18 Oct 2019

ad responsiveness

addressable audience

advert experimentation

While sharing pizza has already become synonymous with watching sports, e-sports could be about to leverage that same instilled behaviour. Restaurant chain Pizza Hut made history this July when it became the first brand to secure naming rights for a virtual football stadium in an agreement with Madden NFL creator EA Sports.

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BBC Kids to LADbible: Video Providers Expand Their Reach

Amanda Stears

18 Oct 2019

In the streaming era, having international reach is just as important as being an established local brand. This week (October 14) sees TV players Tubi, Facebook Watch and Youku each expanding content reach and territory.

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Prosus – The Prometheus Rising of the Tech Major Era

Tim Mulligan

17 Sep 2019

Amsterdam Euronext

Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Post-war western alternative culture was distilled in Robert Anton Wilson’s cult classic Prometheus Rising . First published in 1983, it was considered a guidebook of “how to get from here to there” and described by its author as an “owner’s manual for the human brain”.

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Demographic cliff: Is gaming sports’ biggest problem?

Cover image for Demographic cliff: Is gaming sports’ biggest problem?

Alistair Taylor

14 Aug 2019

daily active usage

Is the peaking attention economy the underlying cause for the decline in sports consumption from the younger demographic, or is it the mediums through which rights holders are distributing sports content ? MIDiA argues… both.

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Backing Both Horses: The Thinking Behind Tencent’s UMG Stake

Mark Mulligan

6 Aug 2019

As long expected, Tencent is poised to take a stake in Vivendi, reported to be 10%. While the news might not be surprising, there are a number of important factors at play: Tencent fast-tracked? Given that various entities stated their interest in investing in UMG, Vivendi appears to have fast-tracked Tencent.

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Tencent Renewal: NBA the Envy of Global Sports Rights Holders?

Alistair Taylor

1 Aug 2019

Chinese Basketball Association

custom interactive services

The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent have announced a five-year extension of their existing partnership, with Tencent acting as the NBA’s official digital partner until the culmination of the 2024/2025 season.

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Why the UFC Wants to Replicate the Yao Ming effect

Alistair Taylor

25 Jun 2019

audience culture

The NBA is the third highest grossing league globally, generating $7.4 billion in 2017, behind domestic rivals MLB and NFL. Whereas the MLB and NFL have largely struggled to entice a truly global following, the NBA have become synonymous with Chinese sports fans, and offers a template for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to grow its international fanbase.

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Why Facebook Can Be the Future of Social Music, But Isn’t Yet

Cover image for Why Facebook Can Be the Future of Social Music, But Isn’t Yet

Mark Mulligan

21 Mar 2019

Facebook messenger

Facebook recently secured licensing deals with music rightsholders in India , an important step in what has thus far been an underwhelming social music strategy since first inking rights deals in June 2018.

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Japan Should Look to China for Future Streaming Growth

Mark Mulligan

30 Jan 2019

china streaming market

Japan is the world’s second largest recorded music market and accounts for 14% of the global total. However, Japan is not following the wider market path of surging streaming revenues driving overall market growth.

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Looking for the Music in Tencent Music

Cover image for Looking for the Music in Tencent Music

Mark Mulligan

5 Oct 2018

The Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) F1 filing makes for highly interesting reading, but don’t expect copious amounts of data to give you an inside track in the way that Spotify’s F1 filing did. Instead TME’s F1 bears much closer resemblance to iQyi’s F1, namely a basic level of KPIs, lots of market narrative and even more space assigned to explaining all of the risks associated with investing in a Chinese company.

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Tencent Announces Strategic Pivot, Focusing On Cloud and AI

Alistair Taylor

2 Oct 2018

business services

Chinese regulators

Chinese tech major Tencent announced its first restructuring in six years and third in its 20 year history, including creating a new division to focus on business services such as cloud computing. This pivot comes off the back of the Chinese regulators freezing approvals for games licenses, a key contributor to Tencent’s revenue and an overall tightening in government regulations, which has seen a severe reduction in gaming approvals since March .

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