Tencent Music Entertainment Group, the music arm of Tencent Holdings, on Wednesday (31 January 2018) announced with Sony Music Entertainment that they are forming a new music label, marking Tencent’s first move into having its own music label.
The new music label, Liquid State, will sign up electronic dance music talent across the region and collaborate with other artists from around the world.
“Our goal is to create an unmatched culture exchange between the East and the West through the power of electronic dance music. It is a music genre like no other,” said Cussion Pang, the chief executive of Tencent Music Entertainment Group.
Liquid State will feature original content through the record label expertise of Sony Music.
This will be augmented by Tencent Music Entertainment’s marketing and digital services including QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music.
Tencent media channels such as WeChat, QQ, Tencent Video and QZone will also support Liquid State and its artists.
Sony Music artist, Alan Walker, will be an integral part of Liquid State, with the 20-year-old Norwegian set to release a string of exclusive collaborations on the label in 2018.
Grammy-nominated global star ZHU, and multi-award winning Dubai-based duo Hollaphonic, are also set to release music through the label in the coming months.
China’s DJ Lizzy and Korean duo Junkilla are the first artists from Asia to be signed to Liquid State.
Three Asian celebrities have signed on as ambassadors for Liquid State across the region:
Chinese pop superstar Chris Lee as ambassador for Chinese mainland;
singer and actor Nicholas Tse as ambassador for Hong Kong and Taiwan;
and multi-talented artiste from BIGBANG, Seungri as ambassador for South Korea.
Tencent, China’s largest gaming and social media company, competes against Alibaba Group and NetEase Inc. for China’s growing digital music market, where more and more young people are willing to pay for content.
Revenue from live broadcast, video streaming and music streaming contributed to a 18 percent rise in Tencent’s third-quarter social networks’ revenues to 15.28 billion yuan.
According to consultancy iResearch, digital music subscription income in China is expected to more than double from 2 billion yuan in 2016 to 4.7 billion yuan in 2018.
Tencent Music, which is expected to be spun off from its parent for an initial public offering this year, says it has 700 million monthly active users across its apps including QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music.
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