Tencent Music Entertainment has revealed that 590 million yuan (over $84m) has been paid out to indie artists using its ‘Tencent Musician Program’.
Launched three years ago, Tencent Musician is an online service for emerging independent artists to upload their music to TME platforms.
The program also provides indie artists with services such as music publishing, marketing, data management, copyright management and professional training.
In a press release announcing the revenue figure, TME also published data from its “One Hundred Million Yuan Incentive Project”.
Run by Tencent Musician, TME claims that the project has “opened up a new model for musicians to generate, or increase, their incomes via a variety of incentive methods”.
More than 40% of musicians using the program were able to double their incomes, reports TME, while over 80% saw their incomes rise by more than 50%.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tencent Musician also organized 50 live-streamed concerts that reached an audience of nearly 8m people.
With 800 million monthly active users, TME also reports that as of July 24, 2020, total playbacks exceeded 400 billion across TME platforms, including QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo.
TME reported in May that, during the first quarter of 2020, its online music subscription revenues jumped 70% year-on-year to $170m.
“TME is building a comprehensive social community to connect and benefit users, record companies, and talented musicians.”
Tencent Music Entertainment
“TME is building a comprehensive social community to connect and benefit users, record companies, and talented musicians,” stated the company in a press release.
“In addition to Tencent Musician, all of the other programs and platforms under TME cooperate with each other and third-party music labels to support different types of musicians, illustrating the openness and inclusiveness for original music.”Music Business Worldwide
