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HYBE, the South Korean entertainment company behind BTS, has entered into a music distribution partnership with Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), a major player in China’s music streaming industry.
partnership is Report go through Seoul Economic Daily Tuesday (May 23), one week after TME disclose In its first-quarter results, it entered into a “strategic partnership” with HYBE.news is also Report go through Reuters.
Through the deal, the catalog of HYBE artists, including Seventeen and Tomorrow x Together, will be available on Chinese streaming platforms QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo.
The deal comes as TME continues to grow its paid subscriber base.In the first quarter, TME paid users reached 94.4 million, This is a 17.7% increase from a year ago.
In addition to existing music, the agreement between HYBE and TME also covers upcoming songs from HYBE artists.The specific terms of the contract were not disclosed by HYBE official, he confirmed Seoul Economic Daily The agreement was signed earlier this month.
This partnership is of great significance to HYBE as it enables the company to accurately track sales and profits in the Chinese market. Without a formal distribution contract, HYBE’s artists cannot receive all of their income from China, resulting in only 1% of HYBE’s total sales coming from China in 2022. Seoul Economic Daily.
In comparison, Japan accounted for 32.7% of HYBE’s sales in Asia (excluding Korea) in the first quarter.
The agreement will also enable HYBE to take advantage of China’s growing music market. In 2021, Chinese record producers’ sales will hit $1.06 billion, surpassing their South Korean counterparts, according to South Korean news media.
TME’s revenue from online music services rose 33.8% year-on-year to RMB 3.5 billion (approximately US$496 million) in the first quarter.
Meanwhile, HYBE’s revenue grew 44.1% year-over-year in the first quarter to 410.6 billion won ($311 million), driven by strong album sales, which in turn were driven by solo releases from BTS members Jimin and Suga and strong album sales from Tomorrow x Together and Seventeen.
HYBE’s competitor, SM Entertainment, is already making strides in the Chinese market. In 2019, it signed a similar agreement with TME. The agreement allows SM artists such as SUPER JUNIOR, Girls’ Generation, SHINee, EXO, Red Velvet, KANGTA, BoA, TVXQ, NCT and aespa to distribute their music on China’s TME platform.
Nearly a year ago, SM also played a licensing deal with Chinese tech giants neteaseSubsidiary Cloud Village, which operates a music streaming service NetEase Cloud Music. The agreement allows Cloud Music to distribute SM’s music catalog in China.
Agreement with TME could also complement HYBE’s recent AI initiatives released a track and artificial intelligence driven Featuring vocals in six languages, the agency says it is the “first-ever multilingual track produced in Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese”.
TME is also actively involved in using AI to produce songs.Back in November, TME caused a stir by announcing the creation and release of over 1,000 tracks AI-generated vocals, Closely mimics the nuances of the human voice.
One of these AI-generated tracks had surpassed 100 million streams, TME said at the time.
Global Music Business
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