Whether it is a dark horse movie that breaks the box office ceiling, or a long video that moves forward under pressure and brings unexpected joy from time to time, or a micro-short drama that is moving forward at full speed and is in the limelight, in the entertainment industry, movies, long dramas, and micro-short dramas have always stood at the center of the stage, and new topics and cases have repeatedly broken into the public's attention.
However, while long and short dramas are changing and the competition between large and small screens is fierce, music, a content category that does not have a strong sense of existence, but has penetrated into every corner of life, is making a lot of money.
Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music have recently released 2024 full-year unaudited financial reports, and the online music business of the two platforms has continued to grow with high quality.TME在線音樂業務持續高質量增長，全年在線音樂服務收入同比增長25.5%至217.4億元，佔總收入的比例超75%。網易雲在線音樂服務收入53.5億元，較2023年的43.5億元增加23.1%，2024年會員訂閱收入44.6億元，同比增長22.2%。
Through the financial report and the layout of several major platforms in the past two years, it can be seen that online music has entered a new stage of consolidating the music ecology from competing for the copyright market.
Retain more listeners with AI
With the rapid iteration of artificial intelligence technology and the increasing expansion of application scenarios, the AI world is about to usher in greater changes and a new round of wrestling, which will also bring new creativity and vitality to online music, and give birth to more application scenarios and business opportunities.
According to the financial report,Benefiting from the rapid growth of the number of member subscribers, the performance of NetEase Cloud Music's core business has improved significantly, and the annual net profit has doubled in 2024 years.The company also recently announced the completion of the full-capacity access of the DeepSeek R1 large model, and the AI creation capability has been upgraded.
Tencent Music has also been refreshed based on AI technology to improve efficiency, and since the Spring Festival, Tencent's series of products have been intensively connected to the external model DeepSeek-R.Among them, Tencent Music integrates the DeepSeek large language model optimization recommendation algorithm to improve personalized experience; Launched AI accompaniment, virtual community (such as the Times Youth League fan community) and other functions to further enhance user stickiness。
In the past two years, AI technology is reshaping the core competitive dimension of music streaming, and from the perspective of content production, the changes brought by AI are opportunities for popular singers and online music platforms to break through the existing creative and copyright bottlenecks.
In the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 2025 years, the robot dance "Yang BOT" became popular in the circle, and the accompaniment music of this show was not created by humans, but the "electronic national tide" work generated by AI after analyzing the folk music of the Spring Festival in the past hundred years.In fact, AI is playing an increasingly important role in music creation as a variety of model tools continue to be iteratively upgraded.For example, AI can quickly generate customized music that adapts to game scenes and film and television OSTs, which can reduce dependence on external composers and enrich the music library of online music platforms at low cost.
recently歌曲《七天愛人》連續霸榜網易雲音樂榜單，抖音相關話題播放量超2億次，What's special about this song isn't how amazing the melody is, it's because it's an AI piece created by DeepSeek.Many netizens in the comment area praised "The whole song has a smooth melody and elegant lyrics, Fang Wenshan probably has to scratch his head when he sees it", although the song as a whole still lacks a breakthrough melody design, and has the taste of "assembly line love songs", its artistic height has not yet reached the level of top human creators, but it has been able to meet the market's demand for standardized emotional consumer goods.
The popularity of "Seven Days of Lovers" marks that AI music has broken through the threshold of "technical availability". NextThrough AI mass production of vertical content such as square dance and music for car DJs, seizing the long-tail market that traditional record companies have ignored will expand more content and value increment for online music platforms。 At the same time, AI songs can also create virtual idols with more emotional projection after binding to virtual human IP, further enhancing the user stickiness of the platform.
In terms of user experience, the intelligent recommendation algorithm empowered by AI technology has also become the product killer of major online music platforms. The multimodal recommendation engine can generate a "thousands of people, thousands of faces" playlist by integrating user listening records, social interactions, and offline scene (in-vehicle, sports mode) data. As they learn more and more about users, the tracks it recommends will become more and more appetizing to users, and there will be fewer and fewer content instructions that require user input.
By integrating large language models such as DeepSeek into the song creation function, and integrating AI assistants, comment areas, recommendation pages and other scenarios, AI stimulates users' enthusiasm for music creation and enriches the content ecology of the platform。 On the other hand, it uses a full range of personalized music experience to enhance users' willingness to pay.
According to Tencent Music's financial report, the number of online music paying users increased to 40 million in 0 years, a year-on-year increase of 0.0%, of which the share of recommended playback increased significantly, the number of user song collections increased by 0% year-on-year, and the participation of Q0 users and the average monthly income of a single paying user increased steadily.In 2025 years, Tencent Music will use AI to achieve content innovation, enhance personalized services, and bring users more fresh music experiences, which will become an important driving force for the development of online music platforms。
The "post-copyright" era
Differentiated experiences are critical
While all major platforms are embracing AI technology and emphasizing the importance of user experience, each has differentiated itself with its unique resources and technologies.In the "post-copyright" era, it has become an important topic for major music platforms to use AI to solve various pain points of users' music consumption and provide diversified, better and more unique music experiences.
The reason why many people choose QQ Music is nothing more than the music library, sound quality, and a more mature membership hierarchy system. Among the major online music platforms, QQ Music has covered more than 192% of Chinese hits, with the largest number and the most complete variety, and also has the exclusive copyright of top singers such as Jay Chou, Mayday, and BTS. The launch of "Best Sound Quality" (0bit/0kHz) and "Galaxy Sound" also meets the needs of audiophiles.
On this basis,With hierarchical services and scenario-based rights and interests as the core, QQ Music has formed a multi-dimensional and differentiated membership system, with luxury green diamonds, SVIP and device-exclusive membership segments corresponding to different needs, rights and interests and music consumption scenarios。 How to find a balance between the value-added space of members and the rights and interests of users, and carry out more refined and hierarchical operations, will be a key point for QQ Music to expand and increase in the coming period.
In addition, QQ Music's fan rights and diverse gameplay methods are also a highlight to attract users. Fan rankings, celebrity parachuting, peripheral lucky draws, one-click jump to karaoke functions, virtual performances and other gameplay will further strengthen the copyright + full-scene entertainment barriers of QQ Music.
ButQQ Music also has its own shortcomings, the community atmosphere is relatively weak, users are more inclined to "listening tools" rather than social interaction, the activity of the comment area is not high, and social networking is the advantage of NetEase Cloud Music。
NetEase Cloud Music's community culture and long-tail content have always been one of the biggest highlights to attract users, and after initially coming out of the circle with "Stories in the comment area", NetEase Cloud Music users' UGC interaction activity has been far ahead.The "Cloud Village" community ecology created by the platform is unique, and the dynamic square is centered on music reviews, and users can form a strong social connection through comments and interactions.The unique "hot comment culture" has become a carrier for users' emotional expression, and high-praise story messages often appear in the comment area of popular songs, and this kind of UGC content continues to enhance users' sense of belonging and stickiness.
在內容方面，雖然不及QQ音樂曲庫這麼全，但網易雲音樂覆蓋超50萬原創音樂人，小眾風格曲庫豐富，能更好滿足垂類樂迷需求。接下來，能否解決這幾年網易雲在頭部歌手版權上進步不大、在廣告上變本加厲這兩大痛點，尤為關鍵。
After the two giants became bigger, they sought stability and "defended", giving Huawei Music and Soda Music, two rising stars, a chance to break the game.Soda Music's sufficiently accurate personalized recommendation algorithm, the synchronous update and seamless jump of hot songs realized by Douyin linkage, the lower membership price, and the experience of replicating Douyin's interactive logic have all made it a lever for Douyin to leverage the music industry, and with the rapid expansion of the number of users, the value of soda music in Douyin's content ecology is increasing.
HUAWEI Music has accurately solved the pain point of online music software going further and further on the road of socialization, and its functions are bloated and unbearable, attracting a large number of users with a more concise pure music experience.In addition, the full-scene coverage and lossless sound quality realized by the hardware ecosystem are also ahead of the industry.
From "listening to music" to "music+" ecology
According to the annual financial report released by Tencent Music, the adjusted net profit in 7 years was 00 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.0%. The sharp increase in profit was mainly driven by the strong growth of music subscription revenue and advertising service revenue.Among them, subscription services contributed 9.0 billion yuan in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 0.0%。
而訂閱服務之所以大增，一方面得益於付費會員量增，全年淨增1300萬至1.21億。另一方面得益於價提，單使用者月收入同比提升3.7%至11.1元。
As can be seen,The growth logic of the number of paid users of Tencent Music is not the "price for volume" in the past, but through the supply of high-quality content and the construction of the "Music+" ecosystem, the experience has been upgraded and the scene has been extended, which ultimately drove the payment conversion, and achieved a benign double improvement in SVIP penetration rate and ARPPU.
By cooperating with classic singers such as Daolang and Luo Dayou, such as the 20th anniversary restart concert of "The First Snow of 0 Years", Tencent Music has launched the willingness of middle-aged and elderly users to pay. Since then, the "audio-visual +" co-creation model has been launched, deeply integrating music and film and television IP, and the OST content of works such as "Celebrating More Than Years Season 2", "The Story of Roses" and "Jade Plate" not only attracts traffic for film and television, but also drives the soaring volume of music playback, forming a closed loop of Tencent's content consumption.
In addition, the Super Membership (SVIP) launched for high-value users provides differentiated benefits such as AI sound optimization, high-definition concert viewing, and in-vehicle scene privileges, covering users' life scenarios in the whole domain.By upgrading the "Listening Tool" to the "Music Lifestyle Portal", the average daily usage time of QQ Music users has increased from 90 minutes to 0 minutes, and the value and potential of the "Music+" ecosystem have been initially revealed.
In factOnline music, which is entering the "Streaming Media 0.0 Era", is no longer a simple battle for copyright content, but a three-dimensional competition of "technology + scene + community".Ecological power will replace copyright power as the most important growth engine and the core of building differentiation barriers.
A number of industry insiders and investment institutions predict that China's online music industry will continue to maintain growth momentum in 2025 years, but the development model will shift from high-speed expansion to structural optimization, and the core driving force will gradually shift to technological innovation, scenario expansion and user value exploration. With music as the core, through technology empowerment, scene integration, cross-border cooperation and user stratification, whoever can take the lead in building a full-chain ecosystem covering "content production-consumer experience-derivative services" will be able to win the future in the next round of competition.