<\/p>\n
Taylor Swift\u2019s latest album \u201cMidnights\u201d has dropped, and it might be setting a new standard for China\u2019s digital music industry.<\/p>\n
Within a day of its release, the 13-track album, priced at 35 yuan or $4.83, has racked up nearly 200,000 copies on Tencent\u2019s QQ, one of the largest music streaming platforms in China. While $4.83 doesn\u2019t seem much \u2014 the album starts at $11.99 on the artist\u2019s own online store \u2014 it\u2019s the highest price ever set for digital albums in the market, which could indicate two things: the upstream cost of making albums has risen, or Chinese users are increasingly willing to pay for online music.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s digital music industry has taken quite a different route from the Western one. For a long time, music piracy was rampant across online and offline media, so streaming platforms like QQ came up with a variety of perks to get people to foot the bill. A lot of QQ Music\u2019s paid users are in effect signed up for bundle deals that give them access to other Tencent-affiliated products, such as video streaming, manga, or membership to Tencent-backed JD.com\u2019s online mall. Subscribers get all sorts of value-added services within QQ Music\u2019s platform as well, such as hi-fi streaming, access to online concerts, and customized app layouts.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to say whether the $4.83 pricing is the new pricing norm or simply a reflection of the fandom for Swift in China. After all, the American artist is one of the few foreign celebrities who reach 10 million followers on Weibo, China\u2019s answer to Twitter. So far only Jay Chou, the mandopop (Mandarin pop music) king whose songs are known to everyone from my generation, has matched Swift\u2019s pricing power at 30 yuan per album copy.<\/p>\n
In the wake of Beijing\u2019s crackdown on internet monopolies, Tencent\u2019s bargaining power on licensing deals might have weakened. For years, Tencent Music Entertainment, the firm\u2019s music arm, bled money on securing exclusive rights from UMG, Warner Music, and Sony Music Entertainment. That\u2019s no longer the case. Swift\u2019s latest digital release is also available through QQ Music\u2019s archrival NetEase Music, for instance.<\/p>\n
The good news is an increasing number of users are paying for Tencent\u2019s music offerings, though the penetration rate remains modest. In Q2, TME reported 82.7 million subscribers across its three music streaming apps, up 25% year-over-year; a total of 593 million people use these services every month, meaning only 14% of them are paying. In comparison, 188 million, or 43%, of Spotify\u2019s 433 million users are premium subscribers in Q2.<\/p>\n
Spotify also has a more profitable product. Looking strictly at their music services (TME is a more profitable business overall thanks to its more lucrative live streaming platform that lives off virtual gift sales), Spotify\u2019s premium average revenue per user (premium ARPU) from Q2 was \u20ac4.54 ($4.48). TME\u2019s average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) was 8.5 yuan or $1.17.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taylor Swift\u2019s latest album \u201cMidnights\u201d has dropped, and it might be setting a new standard for China\u2019s digital music industry. Within a day of its release, the 13-track album, priced at 35 yuan or $4.83, has racked up nearly 200,000 copies on Tencent\u2019s QQ, one of the largest music streaming platforms in China. While $4.83 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1231269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1231267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1231267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1231267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1231267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1231267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}