Tencent Music has hosted 15 livestream concerts to date as part of its “TME Live” initiative, and the shows have reportedly garnered more than 100 million television views.
Tencent Music officials recently announced the milestone, which arrived less than six months following TME Live’s March 10th debut. The official title of the music streaming service’s livestream concert undertaking, TME Live, was rolled out to capitalize upon changing viewership habits – and live entertainment realities – amid the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown measures. Each approximately hour-long event features impressive production values, carefully arranged stages, live artist-fan interactions, and more.
The investment has evidently proved successful for Tencent Music, which also indicated that a substantial number of social media users posted about the high-definition sets. Plus, within the message detailing the results of its livestream concerts, Tencent Music may have suggested that some 20 percent of all Chinese fans are willing to pay to watch live music through their televisions, cell phones, and other devices.
Whether this assessment is overly optimistic remains to be seen, but some artists have had tremendous success with their livestream concerts. In June, for instance, we covered BTS’s record-breaking “Bang Bang Con: The Live” performance, which was remotely enjoyed by 750,000 concurrent viewers in over 100 countries. With pre-order tickets having cost $35 apiece and ARMY Fan Club tickets having set each purchaser back $26, the approximately 100-minute-long show generated a minimum of $20 million.
Furthermore, comments made by Tencent Music in a newly published press release about music’s digital pivot shed additional light upon the scope of Chinese fans’ embrace of livestreaming – and streaming as a whole – amid the coronavirus crisis. “In the first quarter of 2020, online music subscription revenues increased by 70.0% year-over-year,” reiterated Tsai Chun Pan, Tencent Music’s Group Vice President of the Content Cooperation Department. “The number of online music-paying users reached 42.7 million, a year-over-year increase of 50.4%.”
In terms of digital performances’ reach in the United States specifically, leading concert promoter Live Nation revealed in its Q2 earnings report this week that 67 million fans tuned in for the livestream gigs that it hosted between April and June. Consequently, the Beverly Hills-based company will continue to invest in and build its livestream presence even after the COVID-19 pandemic passes, per the earnings analysis.
Late last month, we reported that Tencent Music had claimed to have paid a total of more than $84 million to indie musicians via its Tencent Musician program. Today, the streaming service’s stock, bought and sold as TME, parted with roughly three percent of its value. However, White House officials have reportedly confirmed that the recent executive order concerning Tencent-owned WeChat will not impact Tencent’s other holdings, including a 40 percent stake in Fortnite developer Epic Games.