Tencent Music unveils investment in virtual concert startup wave

Tencent Music has made a “minority equity investment” in Los Angeles-based virtual concert startup Wave.

Tencent Music and Wave unveiled the investment and strategic partnership this afternoon in a general statement. Big name backers, including Scooter Braun, Alex Rodriguez, and Twitch co-founder Alex Lin, participated in a $ 30 million Wave funding round over the summer. And in announcing the multi-billion dollar investment, Wave indicated that it intended to expand to Asia (and particularly China and Japan) in the future.

Now, having hosted more than 50 virtual events, with animated stages, artist and crowd avatars, effects, and more, Wave is ready to deliver its unique live music experiences to over 51.7 million listeners across the world. Tencent Music streaming apps (QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, and WeSing). Additionally, the companies will create “virtual concert content for TME Live performances,” which Tencent Music said in August had garnered more than 100 million views.

Finally, in terms of the nuances of the Tencent Music and Wave deal, the entities hope to “develop innovative promotional approaches, create high-quality music content, and provide an emerging, unique and interactive concert experience.[s] to the music lovers of China «. TME Live, the release notes, has already benefited from its strong audience figures by securing endorsement deals with “high-profile national and international brands” and selling digital content focused on interactions between fans and artists.

Unsurprisingly, given the unprecedented impact of COVID on the crowd-based entertainment space, multiple live streaming startups have attracted well-known investors to this point in 2020. In addition to advancing some of the cash for Wave, Braun invested on Moment House, a ticketed live streaming platform, and Jay-Z’s TIDAL in August dropped $ 7 million in Sensorium VR tokens.

Tencent Music, for its part, has continued to accumulate an already substantial collection of paying subscribers despite the pandemic. Although many industry observers doubted the revenue potential of the Chinese market in the not-too-distant past, the third quarter brought the company’s largest quarterly increase in paid users since 2016. The 46 percent year-on-year increase contributed to an increase of revenue and a net profit of about $ 170 million.

Furthermore, in recent months, Tencent Music has closed major licensing agreements with Peermusic, Kobalt Music Group, Thailand’s largest music company and media conglomerate GMM Grammy, and Japanese animation film studio CoMix Wave Films. (CWF). And in June, following Warner Music’s long-awaited return to the stock market, Tencent Music acquired 5.2 percent of all Class A shares in a deal of more than $ 100 million.

Tencent Music (TME) shares rose 1.55 percent that day, at a price per share of $ 16.40. At press time, after-hours trading had brought in a small additional increase (.49 percent).

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