Sep 19 2019 3 mins
2019-09-20 // Taylor Swift enjoys Chinese success on QQ Music, with R3HAB set to in the near future with Tencent
- Highlights
- If the 2000s belonged to 50 Cent, the future belongs to Tencent. We’ll check out a few Western artists who are active in the Chinese market, and how the tech conglomerate may matter to them in the near future.
- Mission
- Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.
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- Date
- This is your Data Dump for Friday, Sept. 20, 2019.
- Taylor Swift enjoys Chinese success on QQ Music, with R3HAB set to in the near future
- Music Business Worldwide yesterday reported on Tencent, the giant Chinese tech company responsible for running the massively popular WeChat messaging platform with over 1B users and related music streaming app QQ Music, with over 650M active monthly users.
- One piece highlighted how Tencent is reportedly in talks to buy 10 to 20% of Universal Music Group, in a move that would surely be a boon for all artists operating with the major label.
- Some already there don’t need it! Looking at the QQ Music Western chart for this week, one of their artists under the Republic Records imprint is already enjoying her access to Chinese music fans, an artist by the name of Taylor Swift.
- While Tay Tay isn’t in the Top 20 this week, she does have by far the most tracks on the 100 track chart, placing 17 tracks of her recent Lover album onto the list.
- This obviously suggests that her entire album is getting quite an amount of attention on the platform, rather than just a few hits like Camila Cabello at 3 tracks or Ed Sheeran at 2.
- She’s not the only artist with new album release doing well there however, as Post Malone placed seven of his 17-track album Hollywood’s Bleeding in the QQ Western Top 100 and showing that Chinese fans are into trap just as much as pop music.
- Someone who doesn’t show up on the QQ Chart this week but may be doing so very soon is Dutch-Moroccan DJ/producer R3HAB, who just signed to Tencent’s joint venture label with Sony, named Liquid State.
- The Hong-Kong based electronic-focused label must be excited to host the international artist’s content in the Chinese market, as he’s played at least five live shows on the mainland this year, the last three being in Shanghai, Harbin and Chengdu, according to Songkick data.
- R3HAB’s exposure on Spotify and YouTube has been mostly European, getting most of his streams from cities like Amsterdam, Oslo, Warsaw and Paris, but the electronic sound does indeed lend itself to a global audience, just like Liquid State “ambassador” Alan Walker can attest to.
- The British-Norwegian DJ has an almost 35% Instagram follower demographic from Asia, over 30% of them hailing from Indonesia and India alone and accounting for over 2M followers in those markets.
- So with Liquid State and Tencent now in his corner, it looks like R3HAB could very well start exhibiting Taylor Swift-like success there, because with over 83% of the Chinese music market controlled by Tencent, the promotional advantages will be plenty.
Outro
- That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
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- And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
- Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!