Tencent Music invests in growing long-form audio entertainment ecosystem

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Tencent Music invests in growing long-form audio entertainment ecosystem

Tencent Music Entertainment Group continues to make waves in the entertainment industry.

The leading online music entertainment platform in China takes a step forward by turning to the long-form audio market in China, which delivers podcasts, audiobooks, audio drama, talk shows, and more, as part of their strategic growth plan.

In January this year, TME acquired Shenzhen Lanren Online Technology Co, Ltd ("Lazy Audio", "Lanren tingshu"), a booming audio plaform in China. Through Lazy Audio, TME's content library advances further with its comprehensive catalog and production of audiobooks with its recording capacity. 

TME have quadrupled their number of licensed titles on its platforms year-over-year. It has driven a large increase in user time spent with monthly active users reaching 11.7% in the third quarter of 2020, compared with the 4.7% in the same period in 2019.

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Tencent Music first made their move into the long-form audio industry in December 2019 with the Ten Billion Sound Makers (百亿声机) campaign on Kuwo Music. The campaign led them to make a significant financial investment to raise the level of quantity and quality of user-generated content on the platform. To help incentivize creators to contribute content, the company also offers awards of up to 100,000 RMB (approx. 15,505 USD).

The company's growth pushed further in April 2020, when TME officially launched long-form audio tabs and content sections on QQ Music, Kugou Music, and Kuwo Music, as well as Kuwo Changting. They'd also launched Kugou Radio in the same month, unveiling collaborations with popular fiction authors, drama producers, children's channels, sleep-aid programs, and many more. In December 2020, QQ Music teamed up with leading podcasting app Xiaoyuzhou for a podcast section on its platform.

Tencent Music Entertainment aims to establish future endeavors in the long-form audio space, increasing support for user-generated content and creative content release and promotion.

TME previously held the second edition of the annual Tencent Music Entertainment Awards in January, where the likes of global icon Taylor Swift, K-pop stars BLACKPINK, EXO's Lay Zhang, and popular Chinese actor and singer Xiao Zhan made up the list of awardees.