According to news on July 12, Tencent Music may face rectification.

Sina Technology learned from people familiar with the matter that Tencent Music will issue an announcement to give up its exclusive copyright in the near future.

This means that if users want to listen to Jay Chou's songs in the future, they may be able to do so on NetEase Cloud.

In September 2017, the National Copyright Administration interviewed the heads of Tencent Music and other companies over music copyright issues.

Regulatory authorities require companies such as Tencent Music to allow cross-licensing of 99 copyrights, but there is still a status quo where some copyrights are exclusive.

Previously, Tencent Music was fined 500,000 yuan for failing to properly declare the acquisition of Kuwo Music and Kugou Music; it was also revealed that Tencent needs to sell these two music platforms

Tang When Daosheng was the chairman of Tencent Music, he internally reprimanded QQ Music and National Karaoke, "You make hundreds of millions more a year, what's the use of having such a bad product?"

Afterwards, Liang Zhu took over as Tencent The CEO of Music Entertainment Group directly attacked the person in charge of traffic growth, scolding him for spending money on third-party agents and volume brushing.

Some media reported that the assessment of some products under Tencent Music was extremely arbitrary, and some core departments still did not clarify this year’s OKR until April.

With an extremely comfortable monopoly position, Tencent Music has enough capital to "stage the music."

On the product side, Tencent Music owns three major brands: QQ Music, Kugou Music, and Kuwo Music, and its comprehensive market share covers almost the entire market.

In terms of content copyright, Tencent Music owns more than 40 million songs from domestic and foreign record companies, accounting for more than 80% of the music copyright in the Chinese market.

In terms of coverage of mainstream works, Tencent Music has bought out the exclusive copyrights of singers such as Jay Chou, Andy Lau, and Mayday, and has copyright agents including Warner, Universal, Sony, Emperor Entertainment, and Foremost Records. In China's online music It has an absolute leading advantage in the market.

The super moat of "exclusive copyright" has directly turned the music copyright battlefield into a zero-sum game of "with me and without you."

People familiar with the matter said this time that the State Administration for Market Regulation is preparing to ask Tencent Music to give up the record company’s exclusive music copyright.

After giving up exclusive music copyrights, Tencent no longer needs to sell Kuwo Music and Kugou Music.

Several giants have also suffered from the copyright issue of core songs.

In November 2019, Tencent Music sued NetEase Cloud due to copyright issues with Jay Chou's music. In the end, the court ruled that NetEase Cloud should compensate Tencent Music for its economic losses and reasonable expenses to stop the infringement of 850,000 yuan.

In February this year, Xiami Music, a subsidiary of Alibaba Music, was officially shut down. The core reason was that it was dragged down by copyright.

"The Death of Xiami" cannot shake Tencent Music's copyright empire. Tencent Music is the only one company. Users can only choose music products or apps owned by the copyright owners, but they cannot choose according to their own preferences.

But if the monopoly wall of Tencent Music does not fall, it will become increasingly difficult for other players to survive, and market competition will become deformed.

Tencent Music, Alibaba Music and NetEase Cloud Music compete fiercely, but they have not been able to truly improve the living conditions of upstream musicians.

The "2020 Chinese Musician Report" shows that musicians' copyright income is meager, and most of them even have no copyright income. 52% of musicians have no music income, and only 7% of musicians have music income accounting for 100%. The income structure of the entire music industry is imbalanced, and the income level is generally low.

Record companies and leading music platforms make a lot of money, but real content producers make very little.

This anti-monopoly, to a certain extent, will better regulate the market and promote healthy competition in the field of music copyright. Musicians are also expected to usher in new hope.

There is a saying in the industry that there is no second place in the online music industry.

On the surface, it seems that Tencent Music is connected with NetEase Cloud Music and Alibaba Music’s copyrighted music libraries, but in fact, the playlists of users of the latter two are still grayed out.

In terms of market size and share, NetEase Cloud Music and Tencent Music have obvious gaps in payment rates, revenue, net profit and other dimensions. Among Tencent music platforms, Kugou Music, QQ Music, Ku The number of monthly active users of My Music App is 298 million, 243 million, and 128 million respectively, all higher than NetEase Cloud Music.

Tencent is firmly the industry leader, far behind NetEase Cloud, the second largest player.

However, according to the latest data, Tencent Music is losing users and monthly active users are also declining, while NetEase Cloud Music is in a state of loss. NetEase Cloud Music will undoubtedly benefit from copyright opportunities this time, but the specific amount of the benefit remains to be seen. observe.