In 2018 most of Tencent Music's money came from people singing karaoke and tipping live performers. Song subscriptions were the smaller business. The company ran QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo and WeSing, the four most-used music apps in China, with more than 800 million monthly users. It was formed in 2016, when Tencent merged its QQ Music business with China Music Corporation. It filed to go public in New York two years later.

Paying for Songs in China

For years Chinese listeners downloaded music for free, often from pirated sites. Tencent Music's bet was that licensed catalogs and a big enough audience would get people to pay. It signed deals with the major record labels and grew its paying users from 18.3 million to 24.9 million in a year. The bigger business was social. Users sang along in WeSing, watched live music streams, and bought virtual gifts for the performers.

A Quiet Debut, a Second Home

Tencent Music priced its ADSs at $13 in December 2018 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as TME. The shares edged up on the first day. Tencent kept control, and the offering raised about $1.1 billion. In 2022 the company added a second listing in Hong Kong. It remains public in both cities, with paid subscriptions now the core of its music business.

Cover: Beauty Admiring a Bush Warbler Singing in a Plum Tree, Suzuki Harunobu. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a songbird singing in a plum tree.